On the Orlando Club Shootings, Have We Lost Ourselves Completely?

I feel tired and defeated. 

The lives destroyed by this monstrous excuse for a human being pain me, but the murders themselves don’t discourage me. Evil only provokes me to want to prevail for the cause of good. 

What I find discouraging is the way people respond to this story. Anytime something bad happens, it's just used as an excuse for the government to seize more control, and people are not only letting this happen but begging for it to happen. When I see evil, I wish more power were in the hands of good people so they could defend themselves, but so many of my fellow citizens, well-meaning but misguided, wish to see power consolidated in the hands of the already overpowered and undeniably corrupt government. In a million tiny ways, the American people have allowed their fears to guide them and bind them. They've said, "I don't care what you do. Just make us safe!" and those with wicked hearts and ambitious minds lick their lips when they hear those words. 

Too many of us have become cowardly and lazy. Freedom is hard. It's so much easier to hand the problems off to someone who promises us utopia. It's so much easier than considering, striving, working, struggling and taking personal responsibility. 

We look at these tragedies and say, "Why us? Why here? Why now?" but in so many ways, we are merely reaping the seeds we continue to sow. Generations have been so isolated from responsibility that they don't know how to handle it to the point that the very idea that people should be held responsible for their own actions is now deemed offensive. We refuse to think about or even listen to any ideas outside our comfort zone locking ourselves in safe echo chambers where everyone affirms our own beliefs. Rather than attempt to understand the world around us and growing as people, we demonize and attack those who view the world differently. We hate each other, and as we waste effort in hating one another, those who hate us all implement their plots. We wonder how a soul can become so lost as to murder in the name of a god, and yet we say morality is relative, all views are equally valid, there is no truth and there is certainly no Truth-Giver. We wonder how things got so wrong while rejecting the very concept of right.  

The solutions to our problems will never be found in Washington. The answer has been and always will be with the individual who chooses the difficult path of righteousness. Any society which through its own wickedness degrades and destroys itself will eventually require a strongman to put the house back in order. Only a moral people can be a free people.