* Again, "Bring Hell Back"

The Price of Secularism: Murder is Here to Stay

Op-Ed Columnist
Upending Twisted Norms

By BOB HERBERT
Published: May 10, 2010
Chicago


Bob Herbert
Post a Comment »
One of the most frightening aspects of the murderous violence plaguing so many urban neighborhoods across the country is the widespread notion among young people that killing somebody who ticks you off is normal. It’s something that is only to be expected, like eating when you’re hungry.
If a stranger or someone from a rival clique steps on your clean, white sneakers, or makes a crack about your manhood, or laughs at you, putting a bullet in his heart or his head is seen by an awful lot of young people as an appropriate response. This is a form of crazed thinking that needs to be confronted and changed.
Dr. Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist who began focusing more than a decade ago on urban violence as a public health matter, has developed a program that is making progress in altering such behavior, and thus reducing the violence. Antiviolence initiatives that actually work are desperately needed to cut down on the slaughter that continues with numbing regularity, year after tragic year.
Two to three dozen school-age children are killed in Chicago every year. More than 150 have been shot in the current school year. And Chicago is hardly America’s most dangerous city.


Uncooking the Egg: Bring Hell Back

I have written on this topic with the same title (Bring Hell Back) elsewhere in this blog, but it is needed again.


Bob Herbert's Op-Ed in the NY Times today begins with this quote: "One of the most frightening aspects of the murderous violence plaguing so many urban neighborhoods across the country is the widespread notion among young people that killing somebody who ticks you off is normal."


The only reason it is normal is that religion is a vestigial appendage in our country, a kind of feel-good society, instead of the Skinner Box it was intended to be, correcting inappropriate behavior with ZAPS from Hell and REWARDS from Heaven.

With the death of "Hell" ( Be honest: NOBODY believes in amn ACTUAL PLACE OF ETERNAL PUNISHMENT called Hell any more, in America, except perhaps some octagenarian Roman Catholics and some cultish zealots) fear of Divine Retribution has vanished from the human psyche in modern America.

There is supreme social utility in keeping people from slaughtering each other over a pair of sneakers, or a "diss".

Hell---or the FEAR of hell -- did just that. And as corny and Unconstitutional as it may seem, "Thou shalt not kill" had a lot more power when kids were raised
having to memorize The Ten Commandments, for some kind of religious ceremony.

I say : Bring Hell back for fifty years, and see if the national murder rate doesn't decrease.

There's only one problem: You can't uncook an egg, unpickle a cucumber, or unenlighten a secular society.

I am sorry to say murder may be is here to stay.

And hell?

Just a mise-en-scene for New Yorker cartoons