Organization: Virginia Department of Health
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Mon, 21 Dec 1992 19:49:39 EST
From:         "Michael A. Kline" <MKLINE@VDH.BITNET>
Subject:      The Sanctity Of Life

    From Friday's Rush Show - On Life and Values ----------------------->

    This one is pretty good. I think even those that don't necessarily
like Rush may well appreciate this one. He makes good sense.

    Bob Greene writes a column (In the Daily News, Soulless killer kids
will be death of us all") in which he chronicles a horrible murder that
took place in San Jose, CA. last month. Teenage burglars, and this is
gruesome stuff here, what I have to tell you so, be prepared.

    3 teenagers, 15, 16, 17, or 18 years old walked into a house, a
neighborhood house. Tried to get in and there's an 8 year old boy at
home. He's by himself, and he lets them in eventually in, because he
knows them, and trusts them. And the upshot of the story is that these
16, 15, 17 year old kids, stabbed him, hacked him, butchered him, tied
him up, mutilated him, and he died a slow death by bleeding to death.
They did this for the fun of it. They did this to see what it was like,
and to steal $100 worth of stuff from this house.

    Bob Greene, troubled by this, writes this column, and in this column
is this paragraph. "Our nation grows increasingly violent. And children
are being killed in heartbreaking numbers by teenagers who seem to have
concept of the value of life." Now before I continue with this, ladies
and gentlemen, where have you heard the concept of "the value of life"
discussed? Where do you hear it these days? Primarily here, on this show,
and on my radio show.

    When we talk about values, period, in our society. What generally
happens? "Well, you can't talk about values, whose right is it to push
your values on me? You can't force your morality on me!" So values are
never discussed. But this show, radio and television, concentrate a lot
on the value of life, and sanctity of life, and this is the first thing
that excited me when I saw this. Now let's go back...

    "We can try to fix the economy. We can strive for a strong military.
We can endeavor to help people in need around the world. But if we cannot
solve, the terrifying soleLESSness that we are seeing among murderous
young criminals from one coast to the other, nothing else will matter. We
will be finished. Unless, " This is how he concludes his column. "Unless
we can figure out a way to cure the dying national soul, we may as well
just turn out the lights and say a prayer on the way out, because it's
over."

    Now, he's hit on it. The national soul. The dying national soul. May
I ask you to think about something here for a second? Does science talk
about the concept of the soul? Does science try to prove the existence of
the soul? Does science even concern itself with the soul?

    What is the soul? I mean the dictionary of the soul is "That which
animates us." , gives us our animating qualities. But the soul is what we
are. Soul is our conscienceness. Soul is our being. Soul is what makes us
unique from one another. Biologically, we are all the same, but it's the
soul. And science doesn't deal with the soul.

    What does? Where do you go in our society to learn about the soul?
The origination of the soul, the depth of the soul, the future of the
soul, where do you go? Religion. Not any particular religion, but
religion is where the soul is discussed. Well, we can't talk about
religion in America today.

    In New York City, and around the country we are trying to teach kids
to get along with one another. We're doing it by giving them condoms.
We're doing it by teaching them about tolerance for alternative
lifestyles. But there's this "thing" out there called the 10
commandments. We can't teach that. But there's no better lesson for all
of humanity as to how to get along with each other. But you can't teach
the 10 commandments because that stems from somebody's religion.

    Why do kids take guns into schools? Because they have no respect for
the sanctity of life. Told you that time and time again. You can't have
1.5 million abortions every year in this country, for all the years that
we've had, Folks, without life itself being cheapened. We can't start
killing and calling it "Death with Dignity". We can't start killing and
calling it "Right to Die." We can't let guys like Jack Kevorkian run
around and "assist" people in dying, which is really killing them,
and not cheapen life at the same time.

    Life is the most precious thing there is on this planet. Human life,
the most precious. Everything else is academic without it. We can't
create it from scratch. We will never be able to recapture a lost life,
never ever. It is our most precious, most sacred thing, and we're
cheapening it, according to the convenience of those who live.

    We take kids to school, and they have guns and knives in their
pockets. What do we do? We put metal detectors up in the schools, and if
the ACLU doesn't come along and say "You can't do that! That violates the
4th amendment search and seizure clause." Then they get into school with
guns, and as we pointed out the other day, they show up with play guns,
water guns, start shooting people. People with real guns turn around and
shoot them back.

    What do we do? We get the TOY gun off the market. We don't go after
the PEOPLE who are shooting the real guns. We have people who think we
should go after the real gun, the gun doesn't shoot itself. (MAKS> This
makes me think Rush is looking for ways to get the PEOPLE, not the guns
doing the wrong. Like me, I think he believes the bad side of "When guns
are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." )

    We have this killer disease out there, and it's behaviorally spread.
What do we do. We TEACH THE BEHAVIOR! We TEACH THE ACTIVITY! We sanction
it. We encourage it. We say "Use this condom." We do not let people
anymore, be taught, right from wrong, good from bad, because we have a
bunch of people who think there is no difference. What ever I WANT TO DO
IS WHAT I GET TO DO. Freedom means I can do what ever I want and if you
tell me I can't do it, then you are interrupting my good time. That's
what they say.

    Well, in my mind, ladies and gentlemen, all of this is totally
understandable. This lack of respect for life, especially in kids and
teenagers. Look at the movies they watch. I remember when I was a kid my
parents were all concerned about the Beatle's music. I grew up in the 60s,
and in the mid-60s, Beatle music "I wanna hold you hand," "I saw her
standing there," all of that stuff was deemed revolutionary and bad, but
look at the lyrics. They were harmless. They were love songs.  It was the
hair and the appearance that my parents were afraid of.

    But you look at what's out there today. Look at 2 Live Crew's "Mean
So Horny". You know what that's about? It's about the destruction of the
female vagina by a bunch of men having a good time. Can't ban that.
Nope! That's freedom of speech. That's art.

    We then have all kinds of songs by rapers like Iced Tea, called "Cop
Killer". Can't interrupt that. That's called freedom of expression and
art as well.

    We got all of these hacker and slasher movies. We have people getting
slashed to death, hacked to death, shot to death, killers get killed, 25
and 30 times over like in the Friday the Thirteenth movies and the ALWAYS
come back to life.

    Life has become cheap in our society. It's become a commodity that we
can broker for our own convenience. This should not be any surprise. I am
happy. I am proud that I have been on the cutting edge, the leading edge
of this. And I am glad and happy as I can be that Bob Greene a nationally
syndicated columnist has dared bring up the concept of the soul in all of
this because science can try to explain behavior all they want. Science
can try to explain psychological temptation this and that, it's the soul.

    It is respect for the essence of humanity and life, and when that is
not respected and when you can't teach that, what we have in our society
is no wonder. I hope you'll think about it.

Maks.
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