"To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." — George Mason

Colorado officials ordered Columbine High School closed for two days after a student reported receiving a threat in an Internet chat room earlier this week. The school is on alert after last spring's massacre was thrust back into the limelight by Time magazine's current issue, which printed transcripts from videotapes made by two sociopaths who later murdered 12 of their classmates.

Interestingly, the transcripts expose a gaping hole in the Left's rationale for politicizing such tragedies — claiming these incidents are indicative of a "gun problem" in an effort to advance their aggressive "gun control" agenda. Comments from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold tell another story entirely: It's the culture, stupid.

In the tapes, Harris (who named his shotgun Arlene after a character in the gory Doom video game series) says, "Isn't it fun to get the respect we're going to deserve? ... We're going to kick-start a revolution [of the dispossessed, and] create flashbacks from what we do, and drive them insane."

Klebold says, "I'm sorry I have so much rage," and that the attack will be the most "nerve-wracking fifteen minutes of my life, after the bombs are set and we're waiting to charge through the school. Seconds will be like hours. I can't wait. I'll be shaking like a leaf. ... I hope we will kill 250 of you."

Clearly, the transcripts indicate a serious disconnect with reality.

The two miscreants went on to discuss how they wanted movies made of their life stories: "Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino.... Directors will be fighting over this story," Klebold said.

Time's editor, Walter Isaacson, concludes the tapes indicate the problem "is not so much about kids seeking glory as it is about grownups not looking and seeing...." He resisted placing all the blame — as Time has previously done — on the "gun problem."

Regarding the actions of Harris and Klebold, we conclude that, indeed, by all accounts, responsible parents should and would have noticed a problem with each of these sociopaths. More than simply 20/20 hindsight analysis, the indicators were obvious. But indiscriminate parents are often as immersed in the media culture of violence as their children, and thus desensitized to their children's obvious "symptoms."

A recent study found that teenagers on average spend almost 33 hours each week absorbed in some form of media — television programs, video and computer games, and Internet surfing. Most of that immersion involves violence. Plenty of evidence indicates that the actions of Harris and Klebold were cultivated by their exposure to media violence.

It is therefor curious that not a single Clintonista in the country has seized on the opportunity to make political capital out of the condemnation of the media culture of violence. Where are the federal, state and local class action suits against the purveyors of such violence? Where are Tipper and Al Gore, who a decade ago were on a crusade against music lyrics? The deafening silence and misdirected legal assaults against gun manufacturers are indicative of a superseding political agenda.

Declaring the causation of the Columbine attack and every other sociopathic assault as symptomatic of a "gun problem" rather than a media-driven "culture problem" betrays a political alliance and a long-term political agenda that the Sociocrats and their media mouthpieces are relentlessly pursuing with stunning vigor.

The Left has corralled the mass media as an instrument for its own opinion-shaping objectives, and does not want to offend that alliance by implicating the media as a major factor promoting the culture of violence. The Left has also corralled the courts to largely suppress the remaining First Amendment rights (particularly those pertaining to that "separation of church and state" fallacy).

Thus, the major long-term obstacle to the Clintonistas' overarching agenda to incrementally implement their elite "tyranny of the few" worldview is, as our Founders expressly intended, our Second Amendment rights. And that explains their total preoccupation with the "gun problem."

At the time of the American Revolution, Patrick Henry argued:

"The great object is that every man be armed.... Everyone who is able may have a gun. ... Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel." Noah Webster proclaimed, "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed...they will possess the power."

During the formative debates on our Constitution, James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 26:

"The advantage of being armed...the Americans possess over the people of all other nations.... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several Kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 29:

"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights and those of their fellow citizens."

These Founders were not talking about defending individual liberty from foreign invasion — but from tyranny within.

In his Commentaries on the Constitution, Justice Joseph Story (appointed by James Madison) considered the right to keep and bear arms "the palladium of the liberties of the republic," which enables the citizenry to deter tyranny.

The Left's assault on the First and Second Amendments is a gross violation of our liberties, but too many of us refuse to attend to its potential impact on our liberty. However, ignoring the signs of this impending tyranny, we are no less guilty of betraying the blood of our Patriot Founders than the parents of sociopaths, ignoring the signs of impending tragedy, are guilty of spilling the blood of their community children.

And a final note: Bill Clinton is being promoted as a possible 2001 successor to Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, that medium so instrumental in shaping cultural opinion — and propagating the culture of violence. But if Al Gore is elected president, the MPAA is out of luck. Bill Clinton will be heading for the United Nations, and our liberties for the bone yard of failed experiments in freedom.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
The Federalist is an advocate of individual, family and community governance, rights and responsibilities as espoused by our nation's Founders, and as originally intended by our Republic's Constitution as set forth in the Federalist Papers. The mission of our Editorial Board is to provide Constitutional Conservatives with a brief, timely, informative and entertaining survey and analysis of the week's most significant news, policy and opinion. The Federalist is an antidote to the liberal rhetoric of the mass media.

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