I've been dismayed by the number of incidents, the increased gun violence reported lately. It's not like guns have just been discovered here though. Ann Althouse points out the incivility of Senator Durbin's response to the NRA president. The Speaker of the House said that Obama's intent was to 'annihilate' the Republicans. That attitude does seem to be taken up by Mr. Coates at the Atlantic and has been commented on today in the Wall Street Journal. The idea of a 'gun free zone' might have originated in the regulation of bars where one might assume that people might act, 'liquored up,' more impulsively than they might otherwise. It seems like that statement though at a grade school is more a religious statement. It seems to say that guns kill people, and we don't want that. Why not just post 'Thou shall not kill?' Except for the separation of Church and state issue, it would seem to say the same thing. After all 'Thou shall not kill' expresses a rule and an ideal which might be broken but 'gun free zone' is equally easy to break. Perhaps the reason for the increase in violence is due to the national temper. Studying Hamlet, our teacher informed us of the medieval idea that the tone of a state flowed out from the king. If annihilating one's opponents is appropriate for the president then perhaps his 'subjects' are more inclined to annihilate their opponents.

In re: Kevin Drum's hypothesis about lead and criminality, there were other things going on then of course. There was a nice article in the British Medical Journal on a critical period in brain development, the first two years of life. That period is 'critical' in that you have to have nutrition then for brain development; you can't make it up with a normal diet at some other 2 years of life. Our WIC (Womens Infant and Children) nutrition program started then. At least what I heard from Parkland in Dallas, pre-eclamsia which had maybe affected a third of pregnancies declined in incidence following WIC. And this hypertensive disorder in pregnancy may be associated with a doubling of the incidence* of ADHD which is in turn associated with later criminal behavior. *Zinc and childhood hyperactivity. Brophy MH. Biol Psychiatry. 1986 Jun;21(7):704-5. No abstract available. PMID: 3708042 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE

Peggy Noonan links to an interesting article on American conservatism.

Clive Crook has some interesting book recommendations including something called 'dreaming in Chinese'.

Adam Lanza didn't have a good time at the school in Newton. Of all the people described in the article I bet he would have had on a typical day the least serious mental illness diagnosis. The Atlantic had an article the other day about upper class girls having a less stressful time in middle class schools than in upper class schools. The idyllic Newton wasn't idyllic for him. I wonder if he wasn't initially put down by peers in kindergarten. At some point too a teacher may have slyly cooperated with this; so his thought was 'even the teacher!' You know it was a day or two before that we had the shooting in Oregon. Do you recall a reporter breathlessly asking someone who left the mall, 'Did you see anyone being carried out?' In terms of banning things, I'm up for banning CNN. This case does suggest an association between suicide and the desire to murder. 'Knowing yourself' may be better than expressing yourself.

When I read, regarding mother, that 'she needed to stay with him' I assumed that it was a family of modest means. After reading the linked article, it seems that it is not at all true that she 'needed to stay with him' except from her enmeshment. Now it may be that some placement was tried and he was able to object; so guardianship laws would need to be looked at. Regardless of what one thinks of psychiatry or psychology, one of the values of the professional playing a role is that we are independent of the family structure, and one of the developmental tasks of a child is to participate in relationships outside the home. One of the perhaps unfortunate effects of these murders is that kids may be withdrawn from schools for safety reasons. From a preventive standpoint, I don't know that we want to go just 'voting people off the island,' perhaps like Palladin I like being on it. He was weird because he 'carried his books in a black briefcase rather than a backpack.' If there were indicators of outward violence they weren't cited in the article.

Exit, Voice and Loyalty recommended at the Atlantic. Other reflections on Albert Hirschman. And yet more. Also here by Fukuyama.

HuffPo has a good post mortem on the Romney campaign. This from a conference which included David Axelrod and senior Romney staffers.

Which Tablet to Buy

via an Althouse article find in the NY Times.