Is this not the ultimate irony? A madman starts shooting at Republicans playing softball and who are the heroes that charge the gunman and engage in a firefight to save them? Two black Capitol police officers- David Bailey, an immigrant man from Brazil and Crystal Griner,  a lesbian who's married to another woman. No one denies that their behavior was absolutely heroic in nature, especially the GOP senators and representatives who were saved from being shot. There is no doubt that they will receive Congressional commendations for their actions and that a full joint session of Congress will give them a well deserved standing ovation. Then we can watch to see how those Republicans vote on issues most concerning to blacks, gays and immigrants.

(This is in response to an email from a friend who blames bad parenting for all the mass shootings in recent years.)

 I'm sure that bad parenting is the root cause for some of the shootings, but I think the guy who shot Steve Scalise is older than us and he seems to have led a somewhat normal life until now. It's kind of hard to blame his parents. Some people are just crazy; some people are plain evil, some people have bad events that change their personality; some people are influenced by bad people other than their parents; some people have mental illness that suddenly appears. There are lots of reasons why people commit acts of terror. Frustration about sex, religion and/or politics also leads people to commit desperate acts.
 Also, a lot of people in this country have an abnormal fondness for guns and consider the idea of using them as a reasonable approach to solving their problems. American culture glorifies their use. How often do people get shot in movies, TV shows, and video games? It is presented to us as an acceptable thing. A few things for certain: gun violence in America is out of control; easy access to guns is definitely a problem; the American attitude toward gun use is culturally influenced. We'll never make progress in any way without collecting data about these things. The fact that our government prohibits the pursuit of knowledge about these subjects makes us look like a country of idiots.

   When we complain about another person's behavior, we are referring to that person's inability to conduct themselves in a reasonably civil manner. We are actually saying that that person doesn't discipline themselves properly, or better yet, they just don't govern themselves well. I believe that this type of self-government is what the founders of our country had in mind when they originally tried to establish a system of law for America. They envisioned an ideal society comprised of self-governing individuals, whose system of laws would serve to the benefit of everyone by limiting potential conflicts of interest. Self control, self government, would be the ultimate expression of their freedom.

   This is why a lack  of seriousness about self government is so hard to comprehend. When Walter Williams writes about a population hoax (Another View, The Advocate, 6/5/17), he gives a definition of overpopulation as "when an ecological footprint of a human population in a given geographical location exceeds the carrying capacity of the place occupied by that group." Then he proceeds to give the population densities of Hong Kong, Congo, Somalia, and Singapore, with numbers that are quite probably correct for those areas. He launches from here into a heap of conclusions about how horrible are the U.N. programs based on population moderation.

   Please notice that not once does he mention anything about the carrying capacity of those locations. He leaves out half of each equation. He gives us fractions that have numerators but no denominators. It's an utterly wrong approach to the problems of overpopulation. It's quite incomprehensible when one considers that Mr. Williams, who serves as a member of the elite when it comes to the formation of public opinion because he is a regular contributor to the editorial pages of this newspaper, doesn't possess the self discipline required to address a real problem head on. It seems to be a deliberate hoax. He wants to create a hoax about population, to the effect that we need more people in the world. As if more people is the solution to our inability to govern ourselves better.

   He confirms as much when he states that "The greatest threat to mankind's prosperity is government, not population growth." No, Mr. Williams, the greatest threat to mankind's prosperity is a lack of government- especially the lack of self government by members of society's elite.