In a highly charged, emotional story like the Littleton Massacre, one can always suspect the motives of outsiders who suddenly interpose themselves into the event. Then the floodgates overwhelm us, with each advocate or special interest supplying his own interpretation. Gun control advocates want laws to further restrict firearm ownership. Media watchers want to browbeat movie, TV and music producers. Psychologists recommend more youth counselors for alienated teens.
Ministers bemoan the proscription of religious values in the classroom.
Each of these groups thinks that a mechanical adjustment in some way will remedy the situation. There are larger forces at work that result in eruptions of hate such as what took place in Littleton. They are surely the outcome of America's embrace of secularism as the nation's dominant social philosophy. From the 1960s on, our country increasingly has denied the national need to connect shared religious and moral values, in effect, banning religion from the public square. Almost like a hobby that one chooses or not to undertake, religious belief is relegated to the status of a private matter for individuals.