Bible-Thumper, Socialist, Gunman

The first I've heard about the latest school shooting has been via a round of conservative news sites, which have noted that the shooter is a socialist. That certainly merits mention, given the tendency of our leftist media to label any and all such acts as being motivated by "hate" -- which is code for "our stereotype/psychological projection of being a non-leftist".

It's no surprise to me that the gunman is a socialist. However, I must highlight something that I hadn't seen mentioned by the same conservative media. Gunman Karl Pierson is also from a very religious family:

Pierson has been described as a dedicated and bright student from a religious family who attends Bible study meetings, leaving those that knew him shocked.

"They're just a normal middle-class family, like many of the families around here," neighbour Diane Shea said.

Thomas Conrad, who had an economics class with the gunman, described him as a very opinionated Socialist.

That cleared up, let me state that I know little else about this person, except that he saw fit to enter a high school, armed, and seek out someone he was known to have a difference with. It is quite possible that this individual is violently mentally ill, like many other similar gunmen. But barring that possibility and assuming that he regards what he did as moral, one must ask why.

In other words, one must consider the moral ideals such a person upholds, and whether he can be said to act according to their implications. Much could be said on this score, but that will have to wait for another time.

In the meantime, I haven't the time to comb through the news, but I would hardly be surprised to find in this atrocity a kind of an ideological Rorschach test, leftists focusing on Pierson's Bible study and many conservatives on his socialist beliefs. What should be the subject of serious discussion here is whether religion or socialism is fit for training young minds how to think or respect the rights of others to do so. (Among other things, the historical evidence, in the form of bloody theocracies and socialist regimes, suggests otherwise.) 

Assuming we see this, it might be interesting to ask why socialists and religionists alike will point fingers at each other instead of asking a question like the above.

-- CAV