Violent Mindset Starts Early On

Oregon needs to address Domestic Violence and School Bullying as forerunners to creating the Military Mindset. "Let there be light," so it says in Genesis. We who proclaim to love Peace must not ignore the homefront.

(SALEM, Ore.) - Aggression and violence are not programmed at birth but we get contaminated by our social environment. Poor examples propagate and contaminate others.

As I write this editorial in early April, this week's news describes the violence in Binghamton, New York.

I feel personally touched because I know that area and studied Public Affairs at the State University at Albany, NY, not far away. The shooting of mere innocents is a plague on civilization. It must be identified early on, and put into quarantine for the greater social good.

In our own backyard, from the Salem suburb of Turner emerges yet another story about Columbine-like activity in the planning of another school massacre. Our local Statesman Journal reveals that four Cascade Junior High students plotted to kill fellow students and certain school administrators, but luckily the scheme was discovered and thwarted. Several years earlier, a Springfield, OR high school student was found guilty in yet another massacre attempt.

Why do we act frightened by foreign terrorists and seem to wink when similar acts of terror are committed by home-grown aggressors?

Does anyone recall the childhood of JFK's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was seen by guidance counselors as a "troubled student" when he attend the Bronx HS of Science? His teachers urged he undergo counseling.

Yet his mother shrugged her shoulders and branded it "a teenager's phase". As a result, he later became a marine with a lust for guns and notoriety.

How many other potential timebombs lurk in the wings? Is our school system at all capable of screening for violence and court-ordering some variety of rehab? Perhaps we will also shrug our shoulders, and opt for inaction.

A combined career of journalism and gerontology shaped the values of this writer-therapist, who often views the world as the masks of comedy and tragedy placed upon the scales of justice. For him, optimism inevitably wins. "Lyrical Lee" has traveled to 30 nations aboard and was once a press intern at the UN. His first published article was in The NY Daily News in '59, dealing with the need for integrity in public office. He also launched the nation's first tele-conference on health education for shut-ins, created the Eldermentors project in VA to pair retirees with immigrant students needing role models, and was the main catalyst behind CCTV's "Public Public" panel show here in Salem. Lee received his BA in International Relations and an MSW in community organization. He currently serves as a member of Salem's Library Advisory Board.