Nineteen students and two teachers are dead after the horrific mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Democrats blame guns and Republicans. Some conservatives, such as David French, are calling for red flag laws that I would argue suspend due process. Even our favorite conservatives seem more intent on arguing over attending the NRA convention and saying the shooter’s name than looking for solutions.
We expect the Left to exploit such a tragedy in pursuit of its own agenda. But we should expect more from conservatives. Here’s the dirty little secret: Our broken culture is the problem, not guns.
The New York Post has published a still from a video it obtained of Uvalde shooter Salvador Ramos holding a bag filled with dead cats. The photograph was so graphic that the Post censored the contents of the bag. Meanwhile, the Washington Post is reporting that Ramos regularly threatened young women online with sexual assault and death. Who intervened when Ramos displayed this disturbing pattern of behavior?
Nobody.
Ramos had no involved father in his life. His mother was addicted to drugs. After conflicts with his mother, he was sent to live with his grandmother (whom he subsequently shot in the face). Ramos was reportedly a loner, further isolated by COVID-19 lockdowns. He only had a few friends, instead chatting online with strangers. He was reportedly aggressive, engaging in fights in school. A former friend reported that Ramos also engaged in self-harm, cutting his own face with a knife. He was obsessed with violent video games, demonstrating his unrestricted access to the internet.
Again, who spoke up? Again, nobody.
Ramos encapsulates the decline and eventual death of a culture. It’s happening before our eyes. Who is ready to address these behaviors before they escalate into massacres? The administrators of online chat rooms? The government, through mass surveillance? These are not effective or just means. We should expect the family to intervene first. Parents. The parents of the young women he threatened, for example. Families should identify and take action before disturbing behavior becomes violent. When families are broken, the most critical layer of protection fails.
This is where some conservatives completely miss the point. This isn’t just a policy debate. Policy is important because it will either make us safer or less safe. Certainly, we should ask what powers of government we can wield to reduce the occurrence of violent crime. But the evil we are facing in our nation cannot be overcome by mere policy. We are watching the battle unfold between good and evil for the very foundations of our society. This is what some conservatives and Congressional Republicans are afraid to say and unwilling to prioritize. You defeat evil by promoting the institutions that are best equipped to defeat it: institutions such as the family and the place of religious worship.
The people who advocate that we ignore the killer are ignoring this battle. You don’t open fire on 19 children if you have the Holy Spirit in you. This is pure evil, the work of the devil himself. It can only happen if we, as a community, fail to reject evil actively and build a fortress of institutions against it. If we fail to inculcate a society that values the true, the good, and the beautiful, then we have left our youth vulnerable to unimaginable persistence — the same persistence the enemy used against Christ in the wilderness — from the forces of evil at work among us.
We must win the culture war in our country: CRT, queer theory, abortion, the assault on the family. Our children, and our country, are at stake. The economy and jobs are important, but as we crunch numbers, a wall of flames is enveloping our country. Civil institutions such as the family serve as guardians of our children against evil. When the family is broken, evil thrives. Maybe it’s time we take a hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves, are we willing to fight the fight that actually matters?
Liz Wheeler hosts the Liz Wheeler Show, a popular conservative podcast.
