Today was just an horrific day.  20 chidren and 7 adults murdered.  The thoughts that kept running through my head were about the babies that were murdered.  How scared they must have been.  The sound of them crying for their momma’s and daddy’s…  I just makes me so sad.

The news just went on for hours and hours.  I don’t know why I couldn’t seem to change the channel.  Maybe I was hoping that at some point someone would come out and say they found maybe just one baby alive in all that horror.

Every news pundit offered their view on why this happened. It was blamed on lack of gun control, maybe drugs, maybe psychological issues, etc.  But what I didn’t see what the blame being put where it needed to be put.  The blame needed to be put directly in the hands of the young man that planned this carnage and pulled the trigger.

Later this afternoon, I heard Mike Huckabee’s interview.   

Appearing on Fox News’ Your World this afternoon to discuss the tragic massacre in Newtown, Conn., former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said that we shouldn’t be surprised that schools have become a place of carnage after Americans have rejected teaching about life and responsibility by “removing God from our schools.”

Host Neil Cavuto, trying to make sense of the horrific events that have transpired, asked the religious commentator what he believes many will now wonder: “How could God let this happen?”

“It’s an interesting thing,” Huckabee said. “We ask why there’s violence in our schools but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage? Because we’ve made it a place where we do not want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability. That we’re not just going to have to be accountable to the police, if they catch us, but we stand one day before a holy God in judgment.”

He continued: “If we don’t believe that, then we don’t fear that. When people say, ‘Why did god let it happen?’ You know, God wasn’t armed. He didn’t go to the school. But God will be there in the form of a lot people with hugs and therapy and a lot of ways in which he will be involved in the aftermath.”

“Maybe we ought to let him in on the front end and we would not have to call him to show up when it’s all said and done at the back end,” he concluded.

I tend to agree with Mr. Huckabee.  But I also see that we as a society have turned from a culture of  life, to a culture of death.  We abort 10’s of thousands of babies a year and call it “a woman choice”.  If you’re from Massachusetts and you don’t want to live any longer, your doctor (by law passed in 2012) will now hand you a perscription for 100 Seconal, crush them up, drink them up and it’s over and we call that “patients rights”.  We stap a criminal down on a table and send a lethal cocktail into their veins and call it “victims rights”.  We allow such crazy garbage on our television screens where hour after hour our children watch one murder after another and call it entertainment.  There has to be a numbing effect from all of this that dulls the thought process when it comes to taking the life of another.  There is such a mentatility out there that life isn’t worth what it used to be.  We are raising our children in a culture that says life isn’t precious and should be gaurded and guaranteed at all cost.  Life is not something to be taken away when it irritates us.  Life

What I also believe is that we have become a society without personal responsibility.  When our kids act out, we give it a medical diagnosis and hand him a pill.  We won’t stand for anyone disciplining our children, for fear they will “break their self-esteem”.  When little Johnny or little Janey is acting up in class, there is no discipline…  no… we merely “re-direct them” so they move onto something else and forget about what they were doing wrong.   We no longer give our children an “A” or “B” or “F” on their homework, we don’t want them to feel inferior.  Am I the only one that sees something wrong with this? 

I am NOT advocating that we should use corporal punishment on our children.  No.  Never.  I never have, and never will agree that spanking a child produces anything good.

That being said, should a child be held accountable for his behavior.  I know that I was.  I know that when I didn’t do my chores as momma wanted them done…  I got to do them all over again.  I know that when I grumbled at one of my brothers, that mom was right there.  She wouldn’t stand for it.  When I didn’t clean my room, there were consequences.  When I didn’t come home when the streetlights came on, there were consequences.  When I didn’t do my homework, there were consequences.  Perhaps it was knowing that every Saturday afternoon, I was going to have to go to confession and tell the Priest what I had done wrong that week.  And I knew that if the Priest knew, the God for sure knew.  I have a healthy respect for my parents… and not just in my younger years.  That respect for my parents authority has lasted these 56 years.  I also have love and respect for God’s moral laws.  I know that my actions or in-actions are not something that the devil made me do.  No… if I have done something out of God’s order, then I have done it and no one else.  I am the one responsible.  I am the one with the consequences of my actions.  I am the one that must repent.

I’ve seen first hand what lack of rules and consequences can do to a family.  I’ve seen what a young 18-year old woman can do when she gets so mad that she murders her little sister.  That story is part of my history.  I watched that young woman grow up from the age of 1.  She did  not have rules, she did not have boundaries, she did not have consequences.  What she did have was a cunning and coniving mind that conjuered up the idea to murder her 16 year old sister.  Why did this happen?  Because she could not control her anger at finding out about that 16 year old’s puppy-love attraction to the 18 year olds boyfriend. 

How angry do you have to be to methodically plan out how you are going to murder your sister?  To what level of depravity do you have to sink to even begin that thought process?

Was evil involved in this young woman life?  Yes.  But…  regardless of what evil forces had ahold of the woman, she chose the behavior.  She chose to take her sister life.  She chose to hide it from the family and the police.  She chose the next 15 years sitting in prison.  She chose.  She chose.  She chose.

This is a story that I could write for days and days (and perhaps someday I will share more).  But what I do know is that there is an age where there has to be personal accountability.  Do not blame God for this, He didn’t do it.  Do not blame his parents, they didn’t do it.  Do not blame video games, they didn’t do it.  Do not blame lack of gun control, that didn’t do it.  We need to stop dancing around and put the blame for tragedies directly where they belong.  Directly on the murderer.