No Answer for Littleton
The mass shooting of high-school students in Colorado has inevitably been called “a tragedy,” a word commonly misused in our culture. In classic Greek tragedy there was a conflict between two principles each of which was true in itself but which could not be harmonized. A true tragedy has about it a kind of terrible grandeur, a solemn sense of fated necessity, and the word should not be applied to events that have no positive dimensions that the human eye can see.
I here enter into the almost compulsive chattering to which events of this kind give rise, as every person in some way licensed to express a public opinion is expected to do so. But I also suggest that most of what has been said about Littleton is of little value, except in helping us to attain catharsis for our emotions, the illusion that by talking about it we are somehow doing something.
Events of this kind show in starkest form the ultimate emptiness of modern liberal culture. I don’t mean by that the facile claim that, by its general permissiveness, liberal culture caused two adolescents to gun down their classmates and themselves. I mean rather that modern liberal culture has no way of even beginning to cope with such events and the very fact that they occur itself demonstrates how shallow that culture is.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
James Hitchcock is Professor emeritus of History at St. Louis University in St. Louis. He and his late wife Helen have four daughters. His most recent book is the two-volume work, The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life (Princeton University Press, 2004). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
19.4—May 2006
The Culture War Is Between Religious Believers on Both Sides by Howard P. Kainz
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
