By Rep. James Talent*
Reprinted from American Sound magazine, 6/98
September 1998 – When life is cheapened and the news is hard to distinguish from pulp fiction, mothers and fathers and teachers and ministers need to construct an alternate and better reality in which love matters, and bravery is about showing kindness and doing the right thing. The old copybook maxims need to be revived, rather than mocked in the most stylish ways.
The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 3/26/98
Months later, the echo of the gunshots still lingers. Jonesboro,Arkansas – kids killing kids. To most, it was an impossible and unspeakable horror. Tragedies like this simply didn’t happen, especially in small rural towns. But to the seasoned observer, Jonesboro does not stand alone. It is the latest installment in a series of profoundly disturbing incidents of frightening behavior.
Before Jonesboro there was the teenager in New Jersey who gave birth to her child in the girl’s room during the high school prom. The baby was found in the garbage and the girl was dancing the night away. InDelaware, college freshmen left their newborn baby in a dumpster. At a high school in Paducah, Kentucky, a student opened fire on a group of students at a morning Bible study.
In the post-Jonesboro world, a student in Pennsylvania shot a teacher dead at a school dance. In California, a barely alive newborn baby was found partially buried on a hiking trail. The young boy’s umbilical cord was still attached and his body temperature had dropped to 80 degrees.
Obviously, there are unique circumstances surrounding each of these tragedies. But there is also a common thread evident in each case: a lack of respect for human life. Or, as the Arkansas Democrat Gazette puts it, life has been cheapened. This is moral degradation.And we are now reaching the point where this degradation is frequently reflected in our youth.
For several generations now, American culture has devalued life. This has been the message emanating from much of popular culture. And we are now witnesses to the results.
There is an old adage that the law is a teacher. It should reflect virtue and morality, punishing or discouraging what is wrong, protecting and encouraging what is right.
Abortion is an obvious example of where the courts have perverted the idea of law as a teacher. Abortion teaches children (and adults) that life has no value. At the most basic level, the fight for abortion “rights” has been waged on the premise that nothing is more important than individual desires. The value of the human life in the womb is viewed as a secondary consideration, usurped by the primacy of individual desires. Human life thus becomes disposable, its value not unalienable but dependent on circumstances.
Partial-birth abortion highlights this effect. After all, in the grand scheme of things, what’s the real difference between a partial-birth abortion where the child is almost born before his or her skull is punctured and the brains are removed and a normal delivery after which the parent or parents decide to toss the baby in a dumpster? The only difference is that one is legal and one is not.
But why? There is little, if any, medical difference for the child. Is it any wonder then that our children (and society as a whole) fail to respect human life in the face of this gross contradiction? That is not to say that the laws on the books (or simply created by the courts) dealing with abortion or partial-birth abortion turn people into killers. It is to say that they have an effect on the culture, devaluing the sanctity of human life.
Assisted suicide is another example. According to the Jack Kevorkian way of thinking, the value of life is not in the human soul, but the “quality of life.” When the quality isn’t good anymore, life becomes disposable. Exactly how one defines quality life is, of course, a murky question. One man’s quality may just be another’s nightmare.
Writing shortly after the tragedy at the New Jersey prom, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Claude Lewis noted, “A half century ago, a Jack Kevorkian would have been seen as the abominable Frankenstein that he is in his determination to ‘assist’ the terminally ill to die with dignity. Unfortunately, in an atmosphere where orchestrated death is seen as ‘normal,’ Kevorkian has surprising credibility.”
Like the law, popular culture also serves as a teacher, especially for children. For instance, as Reginald Dodrill notes in his book Violence, Values & The Media: “Gone with the Wind was released in 1939. Its closing line set a new benchmark in movie language. ‘Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,’ was shocking public language. Of course, many people used that and even much worse language in private conversations, but there is a big difference between what we know people are prone to do and say in private and what is publicly acceptable. There is much that we recognize as existing within human behavior that we have traditionally said is not acceptable behavior. The common swear word was prohibited in public for the very simple reasons that it offended some people, and it did not set a good example for our children.”
To say the least, we’ve come a long way since Gone with the Wind. In recent years, Hollywood has become an easy target, and deservedly so. Our movies and entertainment are saturated with violence, crude language, and promiscuous sex. Senseless acts of violence on television and in movies far outnumber the portrayal of hard work, responsibility and accountability. Former Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander recently described a number of video games, marketed toward children, where the purpose of the games was shockingly violent – one company has an entire “kill-a-ton collection.” Does watching 10,000 murders on television by the age of 10 turn a child into a killer? No. Does it desensitize a young mind to the horrors and consequences of violence? Most definitely.
The excerpt from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette editorial that appears at the beginning of this essay notes that when faced with a cheapening of the value of human life, it is up to “mothers and fathers and teachers and ministers to construct an alternate and better reality in which love matters, and bravery is about showing kindness and doing the right thing.” This is an important task, and one every parent in America should take to heart. But there is also a role for public officials to play. We, after all, are the ones who write the laws. And we, as community leaders, have a heightened platform from which we can offer moral persuasion.
President Ronald Reagan understood the importance of providing moral leadership for the nation. Faced with a hostile media, Reagan still marked the 15th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision by declaring Sunday, January 17, 1988 to be National Sanctity of Human Life Day. In his official proclamation, Reagan asked “all citizens of this blessed land to gather on that day in their homes and places of worship to give thanks for the gift of life they enjoy and to reaffirm their commitment to the dignity of every human being and the sanctity of every human life.” Perhaps it is time for another National Sanctity of Human Life day.
Reagan knew he couldn’t change the laws that day, but he still felt it was important to lend his voice in support of the value of human life. That is a model today’s public officials should consider following.
As long as our culture continues to devalue life, we will continue to see more and more Jonesboro-like tragedies. Indeed, as long as this world exists, these types of tragedies will always be with us. Such is man’s capacity for evil.The present challenge is to work to change the culture and restore the value of human life in our society. 
*James Talent (R-MO) was first elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in 1992.
