I've made a lot of stupid mistakes during my seventy-five years, so maybe I have no right to speak, but I just can't help myself.  Some mistakes are beyond the pale — and they are numerous.  Some have implications far in excess of the immediate events.  

Three examples will suffice.

The first of these happened in Newport News, Virginia at Richneck Elementary School.  A six-year-old boy pulled a gun out of his pocket and shot his teacher, Abby Zwerner, who suffered serious injuries requiring multiple surgeries, with possible life-long impairments to follow.  

I say, "it happened," but in fact, there were so many mistakes that one is appalled at the number of them and, moreover, at the severity of the mistakes.  There were so many explicit warnings that the term "red flags" is too weak to describe them.  At any point in the long chain of events, the entire matter could have been prevented, easily, by people who are supposedly trained to know better.  Instead, no one stepped in, and there was almost a death as a result.  

The shooter, known in the press as "John Doe," is, according to news reports, a troubled child.  "Troubled" is a euphemism in this case.  Doe has reportedly exhibited violent tendencies from the time he entered kindergarten.   

The second example involves a related video, in which an eleven-year-old boy brazenly and persistently bullies adults, repeatedly punching one, and using X-rated epithets at others.  When he is physically resisted by one of his victims, he loudly accuses the adults of child abuse.  He has learned the vocabulary of victimhood.  

As inexcusable as were the mistakes that were made in the Richneck Elementary School shooting, these two incidents when considered together point to a much more widespread and impending catastrophe in the making as we watch.  The mistakes are being made by adults, and they are not honest errors.  Ignorance can be excusable, but deliberate obliviousness to obvious facts is not.  

Our third and final illustration will tie much of it together.  

On the second of December, 2015, fourteen people were murdered in San Bernardino, California, by a married couple who were Islamic-motivated terrorists.  Many more were seriously injured before the two terrorists were killed by police.

The part of the story I remember most is that neighbors of the terrorists had wished to alert authorities about their suspicious behavior but were deterred by the prospect of being labeled Islamophobes.  Fourteen murders could possibly have been prevented, but "see something, say nothing," is the new, unofficial guideline.  "Tolerance" is the new virtue.  

How do these three incidents expose the increasing rot that is infecting our society?  In a word, "Woke."  Among the varied definitions of woke, all of them have in common an abandonment of the moral principles that, until recently, were moving this nation forward from an imperfect past toward the "more perfect union," aspired to in our Constitution.  

Because our past was imperfect, abysmally so at times, it became fashionable to focus solely on our national sins, and to ignore our national strengths drawn from our Creator.  According to some, the entire history of America is one of slavery and genocide, nothing else.  Yes, our forebears did some horrific things, but they also constructed the foundations of an expansion of human rights that has lifted many millions of people from tyranny to freedom, and from abject poverty to prosperity.

By defining us as inhuman beasts, to the exclusion of every virtue, the perpetrators of that fraud have weakened us against the brutal and tyrannical forces in the world which credibly threaten not only world peace, but civilization itself.  

We have replaced competence with ineptitude, truth with propaganda, and courage with cowardice.  

It is long past time that we re-establish the principles of Judeo-Christian values; unapologetically embed them in our laws and jurisprudence; and stop bowing down to our woke, would-be masters every time they call us Nazis.  We must return force with overwhelming force, and never slow down until they stop ruining our nation.  

Yes, even if it hurts their feelings.

Image via Max Pixel.