As it happens, the next topic of the debate was “America’s gun violence epidemic.” In the clip, you will hear Norah O’Donnell introduce the topic, then ask JD Vance a specific question about whether or not parents should be held liable for a child who engages in a school shooting.
Senator Vance does a nice job of answering the question, using it as an opportunity to talk about his own young family and humanizing himself neatly in the process. A little later he begins to talk about the need for increased security in our schools. He says flat out that he does not like the idea, but that he thinks it’s necessary.
I have no issue with the portion of his reply that is in the clip, but I think there is a specific reason why he doesn’t like his answer when he starts talking about security, even if he can’t put his finger on that reason. The problem is, increased security does not address the core problem. In fact, none of the proferred solutions, including the gun control that is favored by the Democrats, addresses the core problem. There does not seem to be a politician in the entire country who is willing to publicly delve into the depths of the issue. Perhaps they think the American people are not sophisticated enough to understand the arguments?
If any of them have ideas similar to what I am about to suggest, they certainly are not speaking them out loud. Instead of giving an answer based on increased security, I wish JD Vance would have had the courage to say something like this: (Note that the answer I suggested in the first post about the VP debates lays the ground work and opens the door perfectly for this one. That is not my doing. CBS picked the order of the topics for the debate, not me.)
“Norah, in your introduction, you stated that the leading cause of death of children and teens in America is fire arms. Tonight, I would like to suggest that America consider having a frank discussion about whether or not this is true. I wonder, perhaps, if we ought to open up ourselves to the possibility that the leading cause of death in America for children and teens is actually abortion.
In the last segment, I suggested that our country is suffering from a fifty-year long “abortion epidemic” and that we have been deeply injured as a people as a result. I also suggested that we need to start talking about this in order to heal the entrenched divisions that are currently plaguing our politics. So I want to thank you for asking this question about gun violence at this juncture, because it allows me to further expand on that idea.
We have to understand that our children are watching what we do as adults. They are paying attention and they are learning from the examples that we set. They may not process the consequences of the last fifty years as precisely as I am about to, but they internalize the implications deeply nonetheless.
As I noted earlier, our country has openly sanctioned the death of 64 million innocent unborn children in the past fifty years. A significant portion of our population and one of our two major political parties has not only enthusiastically consented to these deaths, they have overtly campaigned in favor of disallowing any reasonable attempts to limit the availability of abortion.
Governor Walz sidestepped this issue in the last segment, but the truth is the Minnesota law has no restrictions in it whatsoever. It grants a right to abortions without a single caveat or clarification. The reason the Governor is charged with signing a law that does not protect the life of a baby born during an attempted abortion is because his law does not require the doctor to treat the baby if he or she is alive when removed from the womb. It is completely silent on the issue.
We are asking, if the intent of the procedure is to end the life of the fetus, what are the obligations of the doctor if the fetus survives the procedure? This is the question both the law and the Governor do not answer.
But putting that aside, we have to understand that there are teenagers watching this debate. Some of those teenagers may be deeply troubled. Some of them may be considering the very violence that was at the heart of the question that has been asked.
When those teenagers consider the 64 million lives that have been aborted, when they consider the reality that Minnesota has passed a law that does not expressly protect the life of a fetus that survives an abortion, when they see that thousands of convicted murderers and sex offenders have crossed the border uninhibited, what conclusions will they draw about the value of life in American culture?
The answer is obvious, isn’t it? America simply does not see life as precious. It does not value life the way it ought to.
When I suggest that we, as a country, need to start discussing the fallout of the “abortion epidemic,” I am suggesting that we need to begin to address the possible root causes of what Norah named the “American gun violence epidemic.” Are these two things related?
Is the “abortion epidemic” and the callousness toward the preciousness of life that is unavoidably inferred from it a contributing factor to the gun violence that plagues our schools and streets today?
Should we have anticipated that a decreased respect for the value of life is the lesson our children would learn from making unfettered access to abortion the law of the land?
And there is another aspect of this, Norah, that also needs to be brought into the open.
When the Supreme Court promulgated Roe V Wade, it essentially transferred responsibility for final decisions on morality from the hands of God to the hands of men. When we decided as a country that we could negate the Creative Will of God via a simple medical procedure, we took the responsibility of Creation from God and placed it on ourselves. God might be present at the moment of conception, but the decision on whether or not a fetus should be brought to fruition was no longer His. We usurped that power from Him and in the process made ourselves our own gods.
Have our children also absorbed and internalized this lesson in ways we never would have expected?
If we are all equal, and we have assumed the power of God, then we are all gods. Our equality and our godhood gives each of us the right to determine our own moral code. There may be cultural norms, but they are under constant assault. Words like marriage and gender are being redefined and those former cultural norms are passing away. When there is no Truth with a capital T to define the difference between good and evil, then any cultural norm, including norms that prohibit violence against others, can be altered to suit our own individual sense of justice because each of us now possesses the power of God and the final right of decision.
The cultural revolution of the past fifty years has done everything it can to eliminate God not just from our schools, but from our public life entirely. God is no longer sovereign. Man is, which means every individual man is. No eternal Truth means the elimination of cultural norms entirely. Justice becomes completely individualized and therefore, quite literally, anything goes.
We have taught our children to internalize the notion that they have not only the ability, but the human right, to define justice on their own terms.
And they are acting on it. Why are we surprised that when they feel abused by a classmate, or a teacher, or the system as a whole, that the take matters into their own hands? The last fifty years has done everything it can to teach them to do just that. They are taking the deepest lessons preached by our evolved culture and applying them. We should have expected these things to happen.
But we didn’t foresee it, because we are unwilling to talk about such things in public. To do so opens us to the possibility that we might have to admit that we made some grave errors in our recent political history and that is the last thing any politician wants to do.
We need to bring these things into the open. These verboten topics cause the divisions that currently grip our nation. There are millions of Americans who understand intuitively exactly what I am saying, but they have no voice and no one speaks on their behalf.
I know that as soon as this debates ends, I will be attacked vociferously for suggesting that there is even such a thing as an “abortion epidemic.” You, Norah, and you, Margaret, and your entire network will help lead those attacks. You will shout me down and drag me through the mud from every angle you can muster in an attempt to discredit the arguments I have just made.
As journalists, your responsibility is to foster the discussion. But you are not really journalists, are you? You are advocates for the Harris campaign and you will therefore be unable to do what the American people so desperately need and want you to do, which is simply to report fairly on both sides without surrendering to your overwhelming need to editorialize instead of just presenting the opposing arguments and leaving the decisions and conclusions to the American voter.
You need to be aware that your efforts to quash this discussion will fail. Now that it is opened, President Trump and I will continue to speak directly to the American people about the things they most wish to hear about. No matter the outcome of the election, this discussion will move forward. We, and Americans in general, are tired of being told what to think. The efforts to sensor our campaign and our point of view will escalate but we will remain undaunted. We will use whatever means necessary to make sure our voices are heard.
We will do this because the lives of our children, my children, are at stake. The question you asked, Norah, is valid. There is a “gun violence epidemic” in America. Discussions on security and gun control are fine, but they are at best temporary solutions.
This discussion I have suggested is about root causes, and we can never resolve the problem completely until we identify those root causes and begin to address them honestly and openly from both sides of the aisle.
It will take all of us to tackle the issue, but we have to start, now, today, to talk about the real causes behind the problems that are plaguing us.
We have to figure out as soon as possible how to make respect for life a precious tenet of American culture once again.
OFS Ongoing 
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