‘It’s at a new level’

An increasing acceptance of violence is not without consequences | Joel Belz

"So what," I asked my host for Sunday dinner, "was the biggest change you saw in student behavior during your 30 years with the police department?"

Dan Stearns, a deacon in his church who had just retired from the local police force, surprised me with the promptness, the directness, and the urgency of his answer. No stalling, no searching for words. "It's their acceptance of violence," he said. "It's part of who they are. People've always had fights—but it's at a new level. Sometimes I just can't believe that human beings can behave like they do toward each other."

My Sunday dinner was sandwiched between two remarkable weeks. Just behind us was the week that had found the nation preoccupied with the firing of Don Imus, a man who had risen to stardom precisely because he had never been able to control his violent mouth. Just ahead—though none of us knew it then, of course—was the week that would find the same nation consumed with yet another campus massacre, trying desperately to understand how a young man could so totally lose control of his natural human instincts.