We're ruining freedom along with families

Another child is killed in Chicago, and people look for answers to this violence. People clamor for more laws. But we already have a law against killing. The gun used here was stolen. And we also have laws against stealing. The gun in this killing jammed, and someone fixed it and gave it back to the killer to use.

The problem is a lot bigger than guns. What's wrong with our kids? In our enlightened wisdom, we have separated sex from love, commitment and marriage in the name of freedom and equality. We have separated children from marriage in the name of personal autonomy. And we have separated women from the home, again, in the name of equality.

We've destroyed the home, which was always the primary source of teaching our children how to live. We have taught our daughters that it is more important to have a career than to have a family.

The state is quite willing to teach social skills in our schools. They can teach our children how to adapt and get along, but not how to live. They will not teach our children to value human life, to know right from wrong, or to love or care about their classmates. We used to teach our children to love our neighbor. Now we teach them children to tolerate each other. That means to put up with or ignore each other.

Only religion teaches love. There is no basis in secularism, evolutionism, or science for loving your neighbor. As we have destroyed the family in the name of freedom, we are destroying our own freedoms as the state assumes more control over our lives, as we seem no longer able to manage it by ourselves.

Larry Craig

Wilmette