[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12716]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                   PAUL HARVEY'S LETTER TO THE EDITOR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, later this week this House will take up 
the explosive issue of youth violence and guns.
  I would like to read from a column by Paul Harvey. I quote:
  For the life of me, I cannot understand what could have gone wrong in 
Littleton, Colorado. If only the parents had kept their children away 
from guns, we wouldn't have had such a tragedy.
  Yeah, it must have been the guns. It couldn't have been because half 
of our children are being raised in broken homes. It couldn't have been 
because our children get to spend an average of 30 seconds in 
meaningful conversation with their parents each day. After all, we give 
our children quality time.
  It couldn't have been because we treat our children as pets and our 
pets as children. It couldn't have been because we place our children 
in day care centers where they learn their socialization skills from 
their peers under the law of the jungle while employees who have no 
vested interest in the children look on and make certain that no blood 
is spilled.
  It couldn't have been because we allow our children to watch, on 
average, 7 hours of television every day, filled with the glorification 
of sex and violence that is not fit for adult consumption. It couldn't 
have been because we allow our children to enter into virtual worlds in 
which, to win the game, one must kill as many opponents as possible in 
the most sadistic way possible.
  It couldn't have been because we sterilized and contracepted our 
families down to sizes so small that the children that we do have are 
so spoiled with material things that they come to equate the receiving 
of material with love. It couldn't have been because our children, who 
historically have been seen as a blessing from God, are now being 
viewed as either a mistake created when contraception fails or 
inconveniences that parents try to raise in their spare time.

                              {time}  1900

  It could not have been because our Nation has become the world leader 
in developing a culture of death in which 20 to 30 million babies have 
been killed by abortion. It could not have been because we give 2-year 
prison sentences to children who kill their newborns. It could not have 
been because our school systems teach children that they are nothing 
but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial soup 
of mud by teaching them that evolution is a fact and by handing out 
condoms as if they were candy.
  It could not have been because we teach our children that there are 
no laws of morality that transcend us; that everything is relative and 
that actions do not have consequences. What the heck. The President 
gets away with it. Nah, it must have been the guns, closed quote.

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