Bob Rudy: Focus on the real problem, lack of strong families in the US

To The Daily Sun,

After having read the letter blaming “racist extremism” and “free speech” for two recent tragic shootings, I cannot help feeling that again the fault is misplaced. It is critically important to understand the true causes. When we fight symptoms and not the sickness, the problems will never be solved. Guns, gun free zones, mental health, drugs, bad policy, and now racism and even free speech are implicated with varying degrees of complicity. But I suggest a deeper problem that certainly is really causative in each occurrence. The problem is, that we have a “hole” in our country where God used to be, and a corollary to that, is our national attempt to replace the family as the basic unit of society. If we were to look deeply at each of these horrors, we will find that the perpetrator had either no family background or an extremely dysfunctional family. I could point out many things that we (as a nation) do to degrade the American family, but I will not because any person can find many examples with a cursory look.

In each case, I think the answer to the problem is the family. We must begin at the beginning and fix all of our policies that interfere with the ability of parents to parent. Let us also help parents gain the tools to be better parents, and let’s stop taking their authority from them. The schools, the government, and the churches should be advising, helping and sustaining parents in the most important thing they can do for society... raise good children.

Bob Rudy

Gilford