THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

After the school shootings in Santee, California, the usual demand for gun control was muted. By now, everyone knows that that demand is just another opportunistic attempt to use human tragedy to push the liberal agenda. Though, of course, no respectable conservative ever puts that in plain English.

So liberals have used the latest school shootings to push another part of their agenda.

Liberals want more money spent on social programs and social experts. Those "experts," after all, are their people, and the more students that are exposed to such programs, the more liberalism can advance.

Naturally, no respectable conservative is going to point this out. When the liberal "experts" recommend something, they agree.

So the only recommendation everybody agreed on was that we need to institute lots of school "anti-violence programs." Practically no one mentioned that just such a program -- a BIG one -- already was in force at Sanatana High in Santee, California long before the shooting took place.

The fact that a program doesn't WORK means nothing.

The Santee "anti-violence" program spent $132,000 last year. It would be hard to imagine a more blatant proof that something didn't work.

But the media and public response made two things clear: 1) absolutely nobody is surprised that it didn't work and 2) it never occurs to anybody that such a program will actually work.

In one interview I saw, one of the experts was demanding that more money be spent on people like him. He tried to explain why their anti-violence exercise at Sanatana didn't work. He said it was because 1) there were guns around and 2) we have not yet learned to enforce the difference between free speech and hate speech.

Point 2) is what everybody says who wants to limit freedom of speech. See March 17, 2001, Whitaker Online: HARMLESS FREEDOM IS AN OXYMORON.

So let's go back to the real explanation of why it failed: Nothing liberals recommend ever WORKS.

But if we all know it won't work, how do they sell it?

Liberals have won by convincing us that all we need is to DO SOMETHING, even though that something is not supposed to do any good. If it costs us money and freedom, that shows we are trying, and that's enough.

But this "do something" logic is more than just ineffective. While a tragedy like this is used to push the liberal agenda, it has another effect.

When we just "do something," knowing it won't work, we ask for more deaths. We will only find out what is effective when we ABANDON THINGS THAT DON"T WORK.

In the meantime, liberals benefit, respectable conservatives make them happy, and children die.