The Enterprise is a community newspaper and doesn’t often use this space to comment on issues relating to national and international incidents.
This week’s horrific news from the Virginia Tech campus provides the opportunity for an exception because, while there may not be an ultimate solution, one potentially mitigating influence is what The Enterprise is all about: community.
America is a compromise, weighing the awesome potential of personal freedoms against the unknowns of just how those freedoms might be exercised. The freedom of movement in public places has always been an opportunity and a risk, an equation tilting to the risk side in the wake of incidents such as Columbine High School in Colorado and, of course, Sept. 11, 2001.
Will we ever be unequivocally safe? No. The Constitution includes a right to bear arms, a right to assemble, a right speak one’s mind and to worship one’s god.
Americans are rightfully unwilling to abandon the hope and dreams that come with freedom for the stagnancy resulting from the onerous restrictions required for government to assure personal safety.
Still, there are questions to pondered. The stratospheric heights possible with unbridled personal initiative can be mirrored by unimaginable despair at failing to reach the brass ring.
No one knows for sure what was in the mind of the Virginia Tech shooter, but it can be imagined that it wasn’t a strong sense of connection and community.
A strong community fabric, one that lauds those who win yet supports those who fail, may not be bullet proof, but having it available can help bring those who may be feeling left behind in the cold back into the fold.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
