ANTI-GLOBALIST EXPATRIATE writes:

Neither the press nor Adam Lanza’s father, in his recent heavily publicized interviews with The New Yorker, will admit the roles of separation, divorce, and accommodative parenting in the Sandy Hook school shooting. 

[Peter Lanza and his wife, Nancy, separated when Adam was nine.  Peter moved an hour away and later remarried. In the interview, he says, “The funny part is that the separation didn’t really change things for the kids very much.”]

If I’d ever tried to tell my mother how she ought to behave, as Adam Lanza repeatedly did when he was living in isolation with his mother for years, she would’ve slapped me silly, and my father would’ve turned me over his knee.

If I’d ever tried to close the door to my room when my parents were talking to me, my father would’ve broken it down, if necessary.

If I’d ever been an iota as disrespectful and disobedient towards my parents as Adam Lanza had been, my father would’ve turned me over his knee, or worse.

If the commercial Internet had existed when I was child living at home, my parents would’ve monitored my use of it (I accessed BBSes, and online services like CompuServ, the Source, and BIX, but those were very different from the modern online world).

If I’d exhibited the kind of mental problems that Adam Lanza had, my parents would’ve committed me to a mental institution for my own protection, if nothing else.

And they would’ve been right to do all these things.

Permissive parenting, absentee fathers, and divorce make the already-difficult challenges of dealing with a mentally disturbed child simply impossible to surmount. But today, it’s all about ‘choice’, isn’t it?

Laura writes:

Our society creates Adam Lanzas.

In looking at what these parents did, that truth should never be forgotten.

This was a crime fostered by society. Adam Lanza was a social creature despite his anti-social tendencies and mental illness. We are all social creatures, created to a large degree by the world around us. Adam was not so sick that he could not understand the concept of hell.

The school he attended, the psychiatric specialists he saw, and his parents — all of them denied him this basic knowledge. This interview is part of the same mentality. It views Adam Lanza as if he had no soul.

— Comments —

James N. writes:

It is tempting, after an event like this one, to seek reasons in the past.

But there are many noble individuals with rotten parents/horrible childhoods, and there are monsters whose parents never put a foot wrong.

Evil derives from the nature of man, and its most extravagant displays retain their ability to mystify us.

Laura writes:

Adam Lanza was known to be mentally disturbed and yet he lived alone with his mother for years. That is a highly unnatural situation. There is no word of extended family, friends, or neighbors intervening to do something about this isolation. The loneliness of their lives is chilling. So I guess I don’t see it as all that mystifying.

Paul writes:

Although I would be speculating to speak about Adam’s complex situation, people need to know that patients with serious mental illnesses need sanitariums.  In the 50s, the government began throwing the seriously ill out into the streets.  Almost all were out by the 80s.  I expect money was the decisive reason.  Today a psychotic is committed only for as long as it takes for the drugs to work.  Then they are discharged and stop taking their drugs.  They are in a revolving door.

For example, a patient in one of my earliest commitments had been carted back to the U.S. by the Secret Service after getting into some  mischief in Nicaragua, a country that was big trouble for the U.S. in the 80s.  He was huge, about 6’ 7,” and in his 30s.  Being a friendly and curious sort, I had a few words with him before the proceedings began.  He was pleasant and seemed completely normal.  Somehow he had a girlfriend, who was there to provide testimony that he could stay with her.  (I don’t recall whether she testified.)

But of course I had discussed his case with his treating psychiatrist beforehand.  I therefore knew what to ask.  After I had called the treating and examining psychiatrists to put on my case-in-chief and the mental health advocate attorney cross examined them to no avail, the advocate called the patient to the stand.  This is something the poor advocates are supposed to do.  Our stupid culture insists Constitutional rights must be protected even if the patient is harmed.

Although I did not want to cross this sick fellow human being, I asked whether someone had implanted radios in his teeth.  He said, “Yes.”  I asked whether he was the son of the Soviet Union’s former premier, Nikita Khruschchev.  He said, “Yes.”  I asked one or two more such questions and sat down (something attorneys often forget to do).  He was committed of course and no doubt released days or weeks later.  His psychiatrist told me the patient had been committed multiple times before.

Pan Dora writes:

You speak of the loneliness of Adam Lanza and his mother. I see much more loneliness for Adam than Nancy. She was apparently well known at a local gathering place (My Place) and traveled to various places, including to New Hampshire days prior to the Sandy Hook shooting.

Laura writes:

Yes, apparently he did not go out at all during the summer before the shooting. The decision to homeschool him was very misguided. A person who has “Asperger’s,” a pseudo-scientific diagnosis that is a broad catch-all for social awkwardness, still needs social interaction.

Notice the difficulties he had with middle school. Even normal boys have difficulty with the transition to middle school, which requires stressful multi-tasking. Children are pushed into a high school setting prematurely. This is done for the convenience of the organization, which is focused on the student’s quantitative performance not the development of the whole personality. His father said he was happy at Sandy Hook Elementary.

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