Murder and suicide are nothing to be glad about!

Will We Ever Simply Be Good Again?

Andrew Lidden Pate - 11:00 am, CDT

By murder or by suicide, death is horrible, much more so than when loved ones die after having enjoyed a natural life span, or from illness after having lived a good life whatever its length.

The suicide this morning of Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire awaiting trial for multiple sexual misdeeds with young teenage women and for operating a sex trafficking ring, sounded an alarm as loud if not louder than did the two terrorists acts of a week ago that killed 31 persons in El Paso (22) and Dayton, OH (9).

We are a violent nation.  We are a divided people.  We are a sick nation overpopulated by sick people.

My reactions are filled with a Big Plus and at the moment, an even bigger Minus.

The Big Minus is that we have become so amoral, so grossly immoral that we are no longer able to function as a healthy nation.  The increase in the wanton taking of life, by terrorists or when self-inflicted, tells us as much....bluntly, pointedly, beyond any doubt.

If we want to be a healthier people we must change.  All of us, from the top of us to the bottom of us.

The enemy is not outside our borders.  It is in our heartland.  In us.

I have searched in earnest for answers, for directions that will reverse our downward fall and enable us to return to having high moments of good will and sound patriotism...with one another.  And not unsuccessfully, my quest has been a rewarding one.

For me, you see, there is One Answer, the Big Plus, a turning toward the Way of the Master from Galilee, which is, fundamentally and pragmatically, a matter of centering our thoughts on reverence for life, on the sanctity of all life, of every age or prenatal age, of ever station, place, nationality, religion and race.

Every life is sacred—mother, father, child, unborn, the abused, the evildoer, the crippled, the critically ill, the very notion of creating life.  And in America, our individual freedom to choose life is itself sacred.

We brag big.  But we  think small.  We pretend we're Christian, most of us, but in reality we're nothing more than 21st century pagans obsessed with our hedonistic yearnings to enjoy every possible pleasure that comes with total self-gratification.

If our leaders do not see and and are not inspired by the Big Plus—as Christians, Jews, Muslims, whatever—we will surely fail and sink deeper into the abyss which we have come to know as our ugly and filthy national swampland.