No, this is beyond all of that. This is about our children. ALL of our children, everywhere. If we do not appreciate the basic fact that we are all responsible for all of the world's children, then there is precious little hope for any viable human future on this world. We simply cannot continue to steal the future from our children, to wantonly consume the habitat and undermine its inherent resiliency, to seed the world with weapons of mass insanity and the implements of violence that are all too readily available for acts of grave cowardice such as the one we are seeing today -- and everyday.


The "mass shooting" has become a dominant motif in the production of social relations, the last refuge of the disaffected and unloved, the final epitaph for a culture that has payed far too little attention to its children and the responsibility to ensure for them a positive future.


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As a parent, my heart breaks; as a human being, my soul aches. What will it take? In a just world, this episode alone would be enough to jolt us out of our torpor and get us to put down all of the weapons of war in our midst. We would reexamine the deep-seated societal roots of despair and violence, and take an honest accounting of the ways in which we are all culpable in its perpetuation. We would re-dedicate ourselves to establishing a societal foundation based on empathy and compassion, and build our economies and politics around these values. And above all, we would use every peaceful means at our disposal to ensure that our children can play and grow in this world.

My fervent hope is that out of tragedy comes revelation. What will it take? Nothing less than the unwavering commitment of all people of good conscience to step back from the abyss of hopelessness, and to reclaim the virtues of being caretakers rather than consumers of ourselves, one another, and the world around us. For the sake of all that makes life worth living, let us from today forward build a society whose highest ideal is to save our children and preserve our future.