It happened again.  Another mass shooting in the United States.  At least nineteenth children are dead.  Why?  Does not anyone realize that the more guns people have, the more apt they are to use them?  Americans are the most heavily armed people on the planet.  It has more guns than people.  Yet are Americans really safer?

    Hardly.  Talk of gun control notwithstanding, I believe that America needs to look deeply at itself.  What is it about American culture, a culture that, in various manifestations, has penetrated to almost every corner of the globe, that breeds the level of fear and angst that leads to these shootings?  It's not because America has, according to many commentators, allegedly rejected God.  America is one of the most religious nations of the globe.  Besides, religious people own guns, too.  And they are more than willing to use them to defend themselves and their property.

    No, this shooting is one more expression of the continuing fracturing and misinterpretation of the fine balance between freedom and order.  Americans treasure their freedom, treasure it more, it seems, than life, each other, or even God.  And that's the problem.  Americans need to learn to trust each other with their freedom.  We cannot separate freedom from integrity and community.

    Having freedom will not set us free from ourselves.