After hearing about the tragic Arizona sweat lodge deaths that dominated the headlines last week, I started trying to think of a reason for it all. First, I wondered why anyone would pay ten thousand dollars just to cook their own brain in a ten dollar hut in the desert. Then I wondered what kind of contaminants they had in their bodies that would require such radical purging methods, and my final question to myself was, why is anyone even being considered for prosecution in this case?

It always seems that the provider of the weapon always becomes the cause of the death. Firearms manufacturers are blamed for all gunshot wounds, bridge builders are blamed for building bridges tall enough for people to jump from, and cult leaders are blamed for the mental weakness possessed by those who drink their toxic brew. I think it is high time for the blame to be placed on the individual, regardless of the final outcome.

The second I decide to put the cold steel of a gun barrel to the roof of my mouth and pull the trigger, I step across the threshold into the world of the lost. When I give ten thousand of my hard earned dollars to another human to help me cleanse my soul, I am lost, and when we focus on the leaders, and not the followers in such cases, we then see why these people ended up dead.

In our society, we have people who are on a constant search for the weakest among us. They prey on the segments of our society who are in search of personal characteristics they were born without. High school girls are ridiculed for being fat and ugly, instead of being praised for their natural intelligence and charm. Somehow they feel as if they are freaks of nature, and the only way they will ever be accepted by their peers is to become as skinny as possible. These easily influenced children start puking up their meals, depriving themselves of life sustaining nutrients, and when they see that puking alone does not give them the desired effect, they start eating speed like candy.

Too many young lives have been thrown into the dumpster. Not because they are fat, shy, or awkward, but because their parents are to selfish and busy to notice the changes they are going through. Today’s children are under too much pressure to perform, but the pressure is coming from outside influences, and is not being intercepted by the family, or replaced by spiritual guidance. Even Charles Manson knew the value of well placed praise. The problem was, he used his praise of young girls to benefit himself, and not them. He told the girls to look at themselves in the mirror and see how beautiful they were. He made them feel good about themselves, thus making them feel like they were capable of anything. That anything became murder, but if that praise were given by someone with genuine intentions, those girls could have used their self-confidence to seek out a worthwhile life for themselves.

At the risk of sounding like Ward Cleaver, I will declare that the anti –     establishment movement of the sixties opened the door for our current wave of human hunters. In the past forty years we have witnessed a growing number of liberal, know it all, self-proclaimed, self-help experts, who are more than willing to spew their opinions daily, in hopes of drawing in those who still see themselves as fat, ugly, shy, and awkward. Acting as champions of good will, those like Oprah, Montel Williams, Phil Donahue, and the ladies of “The View,” have willingly endorsed, and given credibility to evil. But hey, that’s what liberalism is all about. Seek out the weak, and pick their bones clean.

We are a nation of laws, and it is not a crime for people to prey on the weak. The crime was committed when these self-destructive adults were children and allowed to go through life without a stable moral upbringing. Mass cult suicides, homosexuality, gang activity, and death by ignorance, are all byproducts of progressive legislation through absence of morality, and an overdose of forced tolerance for the intolerable.

Was the sweat lodge incident a tragic event worthy of scrutiny? Only if the source of the problem is realized. We can no longer afford to allow entire generations of our youth to go through life as zombies in search of a better life. We have to turn whatever valve is necessary to reverse the flow of pressure from the children, to the parents. Legislation limiting and prohibiting predatory enterprise will only be effective when the parents of this country do their part to eliminate the number of available victims.

I don’t blame James Arthur Ray for providing the death facility, and I don’t blame Oprah for her endorsement. I do however blame our country as a whole for allowing liberalism to grow into the cancerous tumor it has become. Throwing God under the bus, allowing mothers to kill their babies, and allowing single parent families to become fashionable is what causes the lost to turn to mortal man for salvation, and it is that liberal attitude that is to blame for all that is bad in America today.