Just one time please...

 

 

"Many of us are tired of selective outrage. Either all lives (and I mean all) matter, or they do not..."

First off, what happened down in South Carolina this week was abhorrent. I think we all can agree on that. This young man, who obviously had a huge, huge problem, wrecked many lives with one reckless act. Even though our President tried to parlay this tragedy into an anti-gun rant, there is another, much deeper side to this continual loss of life.

In the paper this morning, I read about some of the newer neighborhood thugs in Northern Africa. True to their MO, Boko Haram crossed into Nigeria, burned villages, and butchered 40 people. Yes, just like the people who were killed in South Carolina, they were black. So far not a peep from anyone in our Government. Not a peep from Al Sharpton. As for me, I believe that all lives matter. I believe that all black lives matter.

This past Memorial Day weekend, a time to kick of the summer and celebrate, Chicago had something else to contend with. 56 people were shot in one weekend. 56 just in Chicago! And twelve of them died from their wounds. Many were African-American. But I don't care about that. All I care is that 56 people were shot. I care that 12 of them died. So far not a peep from anyone in our Government. Not a peep from Al Sharpton. As for me, I believe that all lives matter. I believe that all black lives matter.

In our country, in our world, human life has become cheap. In this year of 2015, the value of life, all life, should be going up. But it is not. We have become numb and are getting number. We read about carnage all over the country, all over the world, and just turn the page. And yet if we have a white officer shooting a black person in any city, all hell breaks loose. If there are injustices, we need to fix them. Period. No matter where. That includes the problems which plague many of our large cities. It means having people look in the mirror to see what the problem is, and what the solution are.

Back to the shooting in South Carolina. There is one person and only one person responsible. And that is the shooter. It was not the gun, it was not our gun laws, it was not the Second Amendment, it was the shooter. True, people that heard some of his racial rants could have told someone. In the land of free speech, I don't know what anyone could have done. The idiot who gave this young man a .45 should probably have his head examined. However at the end of the day, it was still this young man who pulled the trigger. And with that one act, nine innocent people perished. Just for worshipping in a church.

So it was another sad day in America. Another blemish for the world to see. Another act of domestic terrorism. Another example of the selective outrage demonstrated by many of our leaders. Until we get to the point of how precious all life is, we will not change. We need to remember how John Donne put it, where we can truly say in unison, "Every man's (or person's) death diminishes me." Until we can get to that point, please spare us grandstanding and self-aggrandizing. We are better than that. At least we should be better.