What Are We Doing To Ourselves?

I expected a surge in crime as the stock market tumbled.

I figured we would see marked increases in armed robberies, drugstore stickups and the like. Basically crimes of opportunity where the motive was money.

I sure didn't expect a rash of mass murder/suicides such as we've seen throughout March. Locally there's the guy who killed his wife and step-son in the parsonage of a Wilmette church and then shot himself. Over this last weekend, a man went on a killing spree at a North Carolina nursing home and, just this morning, I read of a mass murder/suicide in California.

What's up with that?

Used to be, someone wanted to kill themselves, they did it. What have we become as a nation when suicidal individuals decide to, not only off themselves, but take a whole crew of people with them? Often people they don't even know? What's happened to our culture?

I'm not going to try and armchair shrink an answer. That one I'll leave for the professionals.

Where I will inject an opinion is in the case of another mass murder, one of the most diabolical and evil cases I can recall. It happened in Los Angeles in 1969 when a guy named Charles Manson and his followers broke into Hollywood producer Roman Polanski's home and murdered his pregnant wife and six others.

The CNN website today has an article entitled "Aging Manson 'Family' Members Long for Freedom."

These are four people who held down an eight-months pregnant woman and stabbed her in the stomach until she and her baby died. Yeah, I imagine they 'long' for freedom.

Good luck with that.

They are described as "model prisoners."

Used car dealers throw around the phrase "excellent condition," too. And just as long as we leave those cars parked on the lot, they'll remain in "excellent condition," won't they?

Some inmates deserve parole and a second chance. Even some who have committed murder.

No matter how old or sick they are, no matter how well they have behaved in the regimented society of a prison population, the Manson 'Family' members should never be freed.

May God have mercy on their souls.