CULTURE IS SLIPPING AWAY FROM US, MAKING IT HARDER TO RAISE CHILDREN

One year past Columbine, and where are we? Could it happen again? Could it happen here?

The answers, of course, are yes and yes -- with one huge and encouraging qualification: Shootings and other violence have been falling, not rising, as schools are becoming safer. The highly publicized atrocities from Pearl, Miss., to West Paducah to Columbine and all the rest are exceptions to this welcome trend.

Just this last week, though, amid rumors throughout neighboring Mississippi County, one juvenile was taken into custody for posting vicious threats on East Prairie's school Web page, while rumors of trouble caused attendance at Charleston schools to drop drastically. As you might imagine, turmoil reigned throughout the county just the week after the famously lovely Dogwood-Azalea Festival. And just a year ago, another neighboring community was roiled by incredible true tales of a "prank" that got far, far out of hand in the hazing of a young boy, hazing so offensive that his parents moved him 250 miles away for a while to live with his aunt.

Four years ago, we in the General Assembly passed a Safe Schools Act. One hopes it has helped.

Deep down, though, most of us know the underlying reasons are a culture slipping away from us, a culture making it harder than ever to raise decent children. My colleague from Rolla tells of a bunch of young kids from "good" families whose teen-agers are embroiled in an appalling mess involving rampant casual sex, much of it of the oral variety, including even rape charges filed on behalf of a girl who got boozed up and, it is alleged, taken advantage of. As columnist Mona Charen writes, many teen-agers, learning well from President Clinton, have adopted the "oral-sex-isn't-sex" approach and are treating it with all the significance of a goodnight kiss. Behold a portion of the Clinton legacy.

Colorado Gov. Bill Owens delivered a superb address on the cultural implications of Columbine at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. You can read a copy of Owens' speech by accessing it on the World Wide Web at TownHall.com or Heritage.org. Owens stresses the devastating impact of fatherlessness on all aspects of today's culture. "In 1960," Owens notes, "8 percent of America's children were growing up in a household with their mother only. That number was up to 18 percent in 1980 and this year it is up to 24 percent.

"As disturbing as this trend is, there is amazingly little concern expressed among social scientists about the ramifications. ..."

Owens quotes Darrell Scott, father of Columbine victim Rachel Scott, who wrote this poetry:

Your laws ignore our deepest needs, your words are empty air/You've stripped away our heritage, you've outlawed simple prayer./Now gunshots fill our classrooms and precious children die,/You seek for answers everywhere and ask the question `Why?'/You regulate restrictive laws through legislative creed/And yet you fail to understand that God is what we need.

Recall the wisdom of C.S. Lewis: "We create men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are surprised to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful."

Laws can help only at the margin. In your heart you know our cultural crisis is spiritual.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.