American concept of decency 
The legs in the picture, held together by a chain to dangerous detainees and covered with a heavy pair of pants, are those of Joseph McVay, a 10 year old child who killed his mother with a gunshot to the head. For light, it seems: it would have been asked to go to collect firewood. Joseph is no stranger to outbursts. In 2007 he hit the director of elementary school with a spatula and for this reason had been transferred to an institution for children with behavior problems. Even if the neighbors do not describe him as a bad boy you ask him how to let the availability of a weapon. More than one, actually. In his bedroom, In fact, the police found, as well as the murder weapon, a shotgun and 12 gauge, in a rack on the wall, two 22-caliber rifles. Moreover, the rifle with which Joseph killed his mother had been given by his grandfather, now deceased. Deborah, the mother was not an eccentric person. The eldest son called it a very loving woman, working as a managed health care center and taught disabled children. So what? What went wrong?
The feeling is that America just does not work. It makes monsters of its citizens and then destroys them. With all the inconsistencies that men are capable of. There to get a beer but it takes 21 years weapons are freed prisoners. Now is not that so often makes the headlines, a boy enters the classroom and shot classmates and teachers. Is immediately mobilized a team of psychologists to treat injuries to the people involved but to revise the laws on the free purchase and possession of weapons will not speak. Some people have tried but there is now silenced not only by the gun lobby but also by the public for which the Second Amendment is intangible and possession of weapons is part of individual rights. Indeed, the tendency is to further strengthen this law and when, in June 2008, a Supreme Court went a step further in that direction, the Americans I appreciate so much the direction of the Board that a leap in popularity grew to seven points. This exercise of individual right to violence, even in self-defense, is not considered to be so deeply rooted in conflict with Christian teaching of which Americans see themselves as the best companies. There are churches that come to organize the 'Open Carry
celebration, a unique event during which all the faithful are invited to come to the church service carrying a gun in his pocket. After the sermon follows the buffet and the lottery is giving away guns, rifles and video courses on the use of arms. "I see no contradiction between having weapons and being a Christian - said Ken Pagano, pastor of New Bethel Church of Louisville - God and guns are part of the history of this country ... The right to own weapons is not forbidden by the Bible nor is it unconstitutional. Not all Christians actually have to be pacifists. "
Then when the right to private violence becomes violent shaking, especially the most vulnerable to mental structure, by education or age, then it does not take a collective solidarity, the recovery action, but the public vengeance. Children are the first victims of this perverse mechanism. The American justice system is barely aware of their peculiarities, the
Family Court are something other than juvenile courts, and even today in the U.S. in many cases are judged by the juvenile courts for adults. The United States, in good company of Somalia are the only country that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted by the UN in 1989. Indeed in that year the Supreme Court stated that it was acceptable to the execution of criminals of 16/17 years, stating that international standards were irrelevant and that what really mattered was the "American ... conception of decency." On the same day always the same Court to determine the eligibility of the death penalty for mentally retarded defendants. Since then there has been a timid approach to the principles of juvenile criminal law brought forward by the "Western industrialized countries" to mitigate the international isolation that sees the United States the only democracy to enable the "juvenile death penalty" in the words of a Supreme Court Justice. But the distances are still abysmal. Currently 24 EU states allow the execution of juvenile offenders. The twenty-first century began with the execution of three young 17 year olds at the time of the crime and they are still held eighty juvenile offenders awaiting execution.
The exasperated statement of freedom individual muscle and justice in America are the two sides of one coin. The man who builds and defends itself by itself is also the man who despises those who fail to realize this project of self-affirmation. The American is not a cohesive society and what is not in contradiction to his profession of Christianity. Because in the end the Americans and the Calvinist ethic of success as an outward sign of predestination to salvation. So those who go bankrupt he does not deserve help bringing the contempt for God even before that of men. Then it goes without saying that rampant individualism brings unbridled selfishness which is fully realized in the most sinister market economy. In our collective imagination after the war the Americans are the ones who were opposed to the German raids, are throwing chocolate to the kids, are those of the Marshall Plan, who handed out flour, margarine, milk powder and clothes. So it is hard to believe deeply selfish soul of this people, but it's true (or at least, is increasingly the case). The Americans when they invite you to the restaurant but do not offer everybody pays for himself. The Americans are the ones who have fiercely opposed health care reform desired by Obama, was approved by a thousand compromises, and are now determined to be repealed.
This is not to say that the American people is the most selfish and ruthless in the world. Everywhere we find examples that make one shiver. If the way we treat children is the litmus test of the moral sense of a company (to make up for a finding of Bonhoeffer), then we find examples of much more gruesome. In Africa, children are expelled and even killed if you think that will bring bad luck, being kidnapped to make militia killers. The students of the madrassas in Pakistan are very diligent beaten to death in Iran, the child who steals a piece of candy you see the amputated hand or crush under the wheels of a truck. But the United States are those that are considered the first democracy in the world and make it a model of export. However they still retain the death penalty, even for minors. And while they see the welfare state
as smoke and mirrors they have no problem to save taxpayer money with those same banks that bump in the road who can not pay the mortgage of the house. But if Athens
cries Sparta does not laugh. We Europeans are rude to the American model because we come from different historical developments. The United States, strictly speaking, not even the home of capitalism that was born in England, namely in Europe. A ruthless capitalism, with no protection for workers, so well described in the social novels of Dickens. But Europe has had to deal with the Marxist idea, first, and then with a communist revolution in front of the door. The fear of ending up revolutionary wave swept the ruling class reacted first with the introduction of shy pension reforms aimed at specific categories and, in extreme situations, opening the repression of various nazionalfascismi. Then, with the failure of these schemes, introducing the welfare state that mitigates the distortions of the market economy with redistributive policies in welfare, health and education in the universal sense, that is no longer directed to certain categories but as citizenship rights. This step, which ensured greater social justice in Europe, has not happened in the United States because less exposed to the sirens of Marxist theories quite distant both geographically and culturally from the American reality. But for years now that this is changing as well in Europe. The collapse of communist regimes, well represented by the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the distortions in terms of sustainability of social protection systems are leading to a rethinking of policies
welfare, which in fact is taking shape in a gradual dismantling . The watchword is privatization: public services and even goods such as water unavailable. Commending the market economy on public services, the center-left governments and even more to the center are introducing a distortion in the opposite direction and even more serious than that caused by the policies of welfare
. In fact, the process of privatization of services is not limited to exclude them from a settlement of costs with public funds but introduces the element of profit, however, maximized thanks to collusion with the political administrative sphere. Western countries are gradually falling into a market economy without rules and safeguards for the citizen and the consumer, with a move away from their social class and centralization of wealth in the hands of a few as not occurred since the nineteenth century . Currunt Mala tempora!
Justice is closely related to social justice in the courts. The adaptation of codes and the judgments of the courts inevitably reflect the social context. Our judicial system has its historical contradictions that leave live poor prosecution of crimes with a medieval prison system, not at all aimed at the recovery of the prisoner. If we add to these contradictions are those that are ushering in the body in terms antisolidaristici social justice-and, we expect a hardening of interpersonal relationships and, subsequently, the rules governing them. Perhaps we will never see a child in chains while being brought before the courts, perhaps even an adult, because these practices are too far away from our sensitivity, our "conception of decency", although the sensitivity may change as circumstances change. But beyond the forms is the change of content that we expect to see and fear. After two centuries of growth, western societies are in obvious decline compared to the emerging economies of the Far East. It should also hurt the clash of civilization against the world of Islamic culture. The peaceful people of the West will not accept this inevitable decline, and each will defend itself in its own way. The American is a violent society and there a resurgence of physical violence at every level we expect, also institutional. Illustrated by the attack yesterday against Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, seriously wounded by a deranged gunman in the black list, and the leader of the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, outstanding for verbal violence with which his team led the recent campaign. Here are the two arms together easy and intolerance exasperated that turns your opponents into enemies. Hatred and bigotry are pushing for special laws and make them plausible. McCarthyism taught. That European civilization is more constrained in this respect. Some point to the analogy that exists between our time and what preceded the rise of fascism: social injustice, restlessness the impoverished classes, the desire to defend at all costs privileges acquired, the ineptitude and corruption of the political class, the desire to gag the freedom of information. This can not be denied. But it is also true that then you gave credit to the doctrines of race, was seen in the war a legitimate instrument to resolve disputes, to improve the "living space" to expand their civilization. Then there was the European Union. All this involves major constraints, both cultural and legal. Therefore, what awaits me is yes I an increase in violence, especially in the interpersonal, which is inevitable with the increase injustice and the impoverishment of the social context, but in the institutional context that violence, but would be effective, will result in a barbarism even more than the content of the forms, we no longer bound to the codes and international treaties. It has recently been asked Lucio Caracciolo, editor of Limes
, if it believed that Putin's Russia is formally a democracy, I can get over time, in terms of freedom and human rights, standards of Western democracies. His response was: "Given the blowing wind, unfortunately I fear that we will come closer to the standards of Russia."
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