To the editor,

If the results of a new national poll reflect the state of our culture, parents, educators and faith leaders need to reconsider what our young people are learning about behavior and desired goals, and take immediate action to reverse the negative trends. 

According to Spencer Kimball, the executive director of Emerson College Polling, an appalling 41 percent of surveyed adults under 30 consider the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, acceptable. 

A startling 24 percent of those aged 18-29 found the murder “somewhat acceptable,” and 17 percent of that group found it completely acceptable. 

Kimball said the overall findings underscore “shifting societal attitudes among the youngest electorate and within party lines.” Those who identified as Democrats ranked highest for violence acceptability, followed by Independents and Republicans. 

Welcome to 21st Century outlaw justice. It explains the attitude that the intended assassin of President-elect Trump should have hit his target on July 13. And we wonder how alienated teens can shoot cohorts and teachers to make a statement about personal misery and become a hero to the “oppressed?” 

Recent words of New York City mayor Eric Adams advise discontinuing the status quo. “Our children are being radicalized to hate America. . . . And we better deal with the radicalization....” Knowing that some residents might complain about this opinion, he stated his observations. “I'm seeing our bench is hating the team [America], and we better start acknowledging and focusing on that." 

This country is no longer flirting with moral chaos. It has arrived. The problem of individual “righteous” violence is a contagion spread through social media, gaming, film, and news outlets. Natural Law—all humans having certain rights, moral values and responsibilities inherent to our nature—is hard to sell as truth without a divine Source to whom humans are accountable. 

But we're told that Godlessness in government is what our Founders intended. It's what atheists demand as the basis of our constitutional laws. 

The resulting secularism means that our young citizens must have reasons for Natural Law to make sense in their lives. Their ability to internalize that law for social order needs to be nurtured and developed while the consequences of actions, obvious to the older and wiser of us, need to be spelled out clearly and often. Respect is not simply niceness. We each cannot be our own gods. 

As English writer Samuel Johnson said in 1775, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Human history is filled with social and cultural mistakes making hell more than a religious concept. And the demise of Christendom has led to the bloodiest period in recorded Western history.

If this nation continues down the present road of educational good intentions that yield disastrous results, I pity future generations. 

DM Okeefe

Town of River Falls