Robert Hawkins already had a drinking problem by the time he was 19. He was a stalker, a chronic drug user and was thrown out of his house for threatening his mother or step mother depending on the source you read. The day he went into a Nebraska mall and murdered 9 people and critically wounded several others was a culmination of years of narcissism, selfishness and of society allowing him to develop a sense of self-entitlement so grandiose that he believed his private pain was the burden of the world.

And now he’s famous.

Now we will sit and dissect his life and find someone to blame all the while ignoring our responsibility for the Robert Hawkins of the world. Hawkins wanted to “go out in style”, in a blaze of glory so to speak and thought that turning a gun on unarmed Christmas shoppers was just that.
How do we raise children into adults who don’t know the difference between glory and evil? Why do the Robert Hawkins’ of the world not know the difference between fame and infamy? Who teaches them that atrocities like this are glorious?

In our media driven culture it is easy to make the connection to the amount of coverage he receives and the motive for his crime. A drug fueled, self absorbed miscreant may be so desperate to prove to those around him he was worthy of notice that he was willing to murder random people then commit suicide. Certainly these vile individuals receive too much media attention for the horrors they inflict on society.

But is that really all of it? Certainly if we spent more time celebrating heroism like Alexis Goggins and less time pondering the squandered life of a man who didn’t deserve to live at all the prospect of mass murder followed by suicide would seem less appealing to the fame craving losers who are the so often the perpetrators. But would it stop them completely?

Fame may be a motive but it isn’t why Hawkins would do this horrible thing. Robert Hawkins was described as “lost” by friends but he was a by-product of a culture in decline. His family feared him as a young man because they failed him as a child. The schools failed him, the alcohol treatment centers failed him. And then he failed us.

This isn’t to take the responsibility away from him, he was truly an evil individual. But evil isn’t random, it is something you give yourself over to. It is learned. It is learned in the absence of goodness, honor and virtue.

These are all things we no longer teach our children. I’m not talking about prayer in schools I’m talking about something much deeper. I’m talking about a cultural sense of right and wrong. I’m talking about universal agreement as to what makes a hero. I’m talking about teaching children that some things are black and white, that some things are inherently good or evil. And I’m talking about the lack of objective morality that is part of modern American society.

Who taught him to be this selfish? He ended the lives of others so he could get on T.V. and be one of a parade of criminals who are given hero status in our culture or perhaps anti-hero status would be a better description. When did it become acceptable to see others as extensions of society, and thus your troubles, and not individuals whose lives are as valuable as your own?

I am not a man of unusually high morals nor am I more virtuous than most. But if you asked me how I would go out in a blaze of glory, “in style” so to speak, I and most in my generation would describe some spectacular assault on a Hell’s Angels compound or wrestling a bear, not assassinating Christmas shoppers. But when I grew up we still celebrated heroism and valor.

Nowadays such things are lumped in as “conservative” and nihilistic anti-Americanism is what most children are exposed to. Most kids Hawkins age have seen nothing but a barrage of hateful charactures from the media portraying their fellow Americans as selfish, greedy buffoons. Americans who are doing a little early morning Christmas shopping are nothing more than cretin supporting crass consumerism at the worlds expense. And radical Islamists are “freedom fighters” struggling against American empire. That is the mythology at least half of Americans believe in.
Is it any wonder killing these people was no problem for him? Think about what you teach your children about your fellow Americans and ask yourself would they, do they, feel bad about another Americans death?

Right and wrong. Simple concepts turned on their head by multiculturalism, mocked by elitists and abandoned by society. But without it society rushes headlong into collapse. I will no celebrate Robert Hawkins, I will write no more about him. Instead I will mourn his victims, and the part of us that could have prevented him from becoming a monster.