DISRESPECT FOR AUTHORITY IS CAUSING MASS KILLINGS: NOT GUNS

DISRESPECT FOR AUTHORITY IS CAUSING MASS KILLINGS: NOT GUNS

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist

Our modern childrearing experts have put children on an equal footing or even above their parents. Elected officials are diluting the power of law enforcement, while protecting hoodlums and chronic criminals. Due to financial and progressive humanitarian concerns, our legal system is reluctant to incarcerate convicts for significant crimes. Pressure for early release is creating a mockery of our criminal justice system. Our teachers are not allowed to intervene in student fights or attacks on other teachers. Authority figure’s hands are tied on every level. Even sports umpires are quitting as disrespectful parents and players verbally and physically attack them.

This weakening of consequences, enforcement and duration of punishment for serious transgressions is causing our authority figures to be paper tigers. There is little reason for the average person to listen to or obey people in positions of authority, including their own parents. Most people think everyone is equal, doing their own thing instead of respecting an officials’ powerful position.

In California two big 15-year-old female students physically punch and kick a small stature female teacher, while she is helplessly curled into a ball. This vicious act shows a lack of feelings for others. Students in the room took videos instead of intervening to stop this cruel act on the teacher. Something is radically wrong with our moral values to see so many examples of this type of behavior over the last couple of decades.

The respect for brute force and lack of respect for people with superior knowledge and experience is a frightening sign for our nation’s growing instability. Without allegiance to our parents, teachers, firemen, policemen, elders, representatives, social law and order will crumble. This is a major reason for random acts of mass violence.

The adage that you have to give respect to earn it is still true. Another perspective is if you have authority, you need to use it and be backed up by your superiors. When police are forced by politicians to “stand down,” that official is undermining their function and power. When a parent says to a child that they will take away something due to their behavior but does not follow through, their word becomes a joke.

Parkland, Florida mass killer, Nikolas Cruz, showed all the behaviors, psychological signs and vicious threats to commit the mass slaughter he actually did. He was known to the school personnel, police and his family to be a ticking time bomb. Multiple authorities dropped the ball allowing him to remain free without incarceration or mental health treatment. Everyone in authority who passed the buck and allowed this tragedy to unfold deserves the loss of respect after they chose not to do their duty for the public.

Parents often witness their child exhibiting antisocial behavior without taking significant measures to put them on a more normal track. In school parents are not supporting their children’s teachers by following through on consequences for their inappropriate behavior or lack of effort. At the first sign of the child’s appeasing them they end their attempt at confrontation. The parents disregarding their duty to shape their child’s actions is setting up the child to be alienated from others in power.

Teachers are also in a bind as they are unable to exercise their responsibility with all the bureaucratic rules that keep them from doing what previously worked. Educators of the past used these methods with positive results. They are not backed by school administration or in many cases by the parents so are unable to do what they know works.

Most teachers play bureaucratic games to survive or have left the profession. They want to be dedicated teachers but are handicapped by a myriad of regulations.  The public expects positive results from our public servants although we constantly second-guess them. This lack of bureaucratic and public support has weakened their ability to do their conscientious best.  Almost anyone in an authority position appears to be protecting himself first instead of accomplishing stated objectives.

Blaming guns for mass killings is a cover up for a cultural breakdown. Our traditionally balanced culture is out-of–whack. We are undermining our essential authority not only by lax parental expectations, poor follow through and lack of support by superiors. We do not mention the effects of mental illness, drugs, shabby education, lazy and ineffective parenting and rampant lying that are factors in mass shootings.

Targeting guns is a diversion from the real problems affecting our society. The moral decay of our sacred institutions and weakening authority figures’ power in the family and in our traditional institutions is where the responsibility lies.

Domenick Maglio, PhD. is a columnist carried by various newspapers, an author of several books and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. Dr. Maglio is an author of weekly newspaper articles, INVASION WITHIN  and a new book entitled, IN CHARGE PARENTING In a PC World. You can see many of Dr. Maglio’s articles at www.drmaglioblogspot.com.