By CHARLES A. MORSE
Michael M. McDermott, a computer software engineer, stands accused of the massacre of seven of his co-workers at his place of employment, Edgewater Technology, in Wakefield, Mass. The alleged killer calmly and methodically gunned down his 7 victims as they hid under desks and pleaded for their lives. There are few people who have not, at some time or another, experienced the urge to murder someone, however, the vast majority of us choose not to act on this impulse. We are constrained by basic, civilizing factors such as morality, practicality, self control, upbringing, respect for law and order, and a healthy fear of the consequences. The McDermott case should be looked at within the larger context of similar murders in recent years. This new and unprecedented type of terror and carnage utterly rips away the natural order and shatters the peace. These senseless murderous sprees are unique in these times of relative peace and prosperity. What are the circumstances that precipitate this evil phenomena? Why are individuals suddenly murdering innocent strangers in cold blood? What is going on that a person feels empowered to act on this evil hate and rage? What do these killers have in common? However incomplete, we must begin to examine some theories and background.

The Left

The left introduced to America, in the early 19th century, the idea of using violence as a tool to effect political and social change. Government, property, or innocent people would be a fair target for the terror that would, theoretically, trigger revolution. The theory was that the chaos, which would be the result of the planned terror, would help usher in a new , authoritarian social order. Tom Mooney became the first American political mass murderer when he dynamited a San Francisco parade on July 22, 1916, which resulted in 10 deaths and about 50 injured. Revered and defended by the left for decades, Mooneys crime, conducted in the name of creating a new social order, held the record as the most deadly terrorist act on American soil. That record was broken, 78 years later, by a Mooney protégé, Timothy McVeigh, in the bombing of the Alfred T. Murrah building, Oklahoma City, April 20, 1994, another mass murderer using violence to effect political change. Left propaganda and agitation, in the 1960's, glorified random acts of violence, encouraged riots and the killing of police, defended such murderous Marxist militias as the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground, and normalized acts of violence and murder in their campaign to cheapen individual human life, thus moving society in a collectivist direction. Thanks to the left, we have come to accept violence, conducted in the name of a cause, as a virtue. The result has been the decay of law and order.

Secular Humanism

Secular Humanism, the prevailing faith of our public education establishment, has gone a long way toward supplanting the Judeo/Christian belief in a creator of the universe, who created man in his image, and who created immutable truths that can guide a seeker toward a life of moral constraints, with amoral atheism, evolution and relativism. Evolution, the unproven theory of Darwin, claims that man mysteriously evolved, over eons, from the primordial amoeba. Rather than viewing man as created with a divine spark and ability to seek greater meaning, man is reduced to a mere bag of plasma who "evolved". Perhaps McDermott, cut off from meaning himself, felt he was firing into plasma as opposed to human beings with souls. Rather than honoring the painstaking development, over thousands of years of trial and error, of a divinely inspired, proven moral standard which can guide moral conduct, the Relativist believes that man himself and his perception is the source of morality and, therefore, can feel that anything he says, goes. To dis-agree with a conception of morality, according to the relativist, is to judge, discriminate and repress. Theoretically, McDermott, perceiving morality, could choose to murder and who would have the right to stand in the way. This point is brought to an extreme manifestation simply to make the point with regard to the philosophical underpinnings of what were dealing with here.

Sex Education

Phillip Rieff, the author of the influential book The Triumph of the Therapeutic : Uses of Faith After Freud succinctly captures the sex education agenda on page 159:

"Sex education becomes the main weapon in the ideological war against the family; its aim was to divest the parents of their moral authority".
Sex education, along with other "experimental" educational modalities such as Values Clarification, Outcome Based Education and Whole Language has done just that. Our alienated young are placed under the influence of government run schools which increasingly churn out "human resources." People are being mentally lobotomized to the degree that they are able to take their place as cogs in the wheel of a planned society. According to the Dept. of Health and Human Services, since the introduction of sex education in 1965, there has been massive increases in teenage pregnancy, out of wedlock birth, abortion of human fetuses, sexually transmitted disease, AIDS, pre marital sex, rape, sexual assault, murder, prostitution, homosexual activity, drug use and suicide. It is reasonable to question whether the stripping of our children's innocence leads, possibly, to homicidal tendencies upon maturity.

Psychiatry

Psychobabble has increasingly replaced academic substance and real meaning in education and in society generally. Focusing on our navels has largely replaced focusing on the development of cognitive thinking and problem solving. G. Brock Chisholm, first head of the World Federation of Mental Health, in an address delivered in October, 1945 to an assemblage of psychiatrists and high government officials sheds light on the motive:

"What basic psychological distortion can be found in every civilization of which we know anything? The only psychological force capable of producing these perversions is morality…the concept of right and wrong. The re-interpretation and eventual eradication of the concept of right and wrong are the belated objectives of nearly all psychotherapy."

Drugs

The use of mind altering drugs, both legal and illegal, has experienced an astonishing upsurge since the mid 1960's. These drugs can, in some people, have the effect of creating a sensation of un-reality where a person may experience a sense of invincibility and this may accentuate in some users negative personality traits that already exist. McDermott was, according to the Boston Herald (12/29) on Paxil, Prozac and Desyrel at the time of the murders. Almost every one of these recent murder sprees, including the infamous Columbine High School case, involved killers who were taking a psych drug. Why are so many people, particularly young people, being prescribed these dangerous substances? Are people really so miserable that they need hallucinogens to cope with life? Have we as a society reached such a level of dis-function that millions of people need to sedate themselves just to get through a day?

McDermott was, no doubt, effected, to varying degrees, by all of the above and much more. Perhaps a national conversation can be launched on this issue. Certainly Congressional hearings would be in order. These occurrences are clearly no accident and the blood of the innocents cry out from the grave for an answer. Lets hope an investigation can be launched before more people are murdered.