“right-wing o’ertones” except perhaps hisrnenthusiasm for capital punishment.rnBut what finally and definitely exposedrnthe fantasies, speculations, unexaminedrnassumptions, and outright lies the newsrnmedia concocted and inflicted on us forrntwo weeks was an interview in the NewrnYork Times on April 30 with several studentsrnat the high school who had actuallyrnknown the killers. What they had tornsay should have ended the professionalrncareers of several of the con artists whornpass themselves off as “reporters” andrnwhose misreporting had already fabricatedrnmyths and legends about the Littletonrnkillings that will probably never die completely.rnThe infamous “Trenchcoat Mafia”rnthat was supposedly behind the bloodshed,rnsaid 16-year-old Devon Adams,rnconsisted last year of about 15 or 20 peoplernwho wore black trenchcoats as a kindrnof clique uniform. They played cardsrnand hung out and smoked together.rn”That’s all it was,” and anyway, morernthan half of them had graduated last year;rnthe group barely existed anymore. Harrisrnand Klebold weren’t even part of it, herntold the Times.rnWell, but what about the racism, thernsympathy for Hitler, the obsession withrnWorld War II? Meg Hains, 17, said,rnI am black/white mixed. Andrnwhen the media is coming up withrnthis thing that Dylan and Eric werernracist, they weren’t. They were myrnfriends. They were very nice tornme, both of them. I don’t get thisrnwhole racial thing that people arerncoming up with.rnMiss Hains, you can see, has a lot tornlearn, and no doubt a good deal of the remainderrnof her learning experience willrnbe devoted to “getting” the “whole racialrnthing” with which her elders are so obsessed.rnDevon Adams acknowledgedrnthat Harris and Klebold did use “racialrnslurs,” but “I don’t think it meant thatrnthey were racist.” “What about the Nazirnstuff?” the Times insisted. Meg Hainsrnreplied, “That is the biggest load of [expletirne] I’ve ever heard. They neverrnwore swastikas around their arni[s].rnNever. Not in this entire year that I’vernknown them. No.” Devon Adams said,rn”They’re not Nazis. They didn’t worshiprnNazis.” They read books about Nazis becausernthev were studying World War IIrnhistor)’ in school, he said. The report thatrnthey shouted “Heil Hitler” when bowlingrnwas also untrue, said Dustin Thurman,rn18.rnIn short, when the press told the publicrnthat Harris and Klebold were “whiternsupremacists,” “right-wingers,” “racists,”rn”neo-Nazis,” etc., they lied. Journalistsrnassumed, probably because unconsciouslyrnthey have come to believe their ownrnpropaganda line, that all mass violence isrnthe work of the “right,” a catch-all termrnthat can include anyone from ElizabethrnDole to the Aryan Nations. If it’s the assassinationrnof a president, the bombingrnof a federal building, or the mass murderrnof high-school students by wigged-outrnteenagers full of pubescent resentment,rnplugged-up hormones, and the mentalrnand moral garbage regularly served themrnby their schools, their televisions, theirrnmovies, their music, their books, theirrngovernment, and their newspapers, thenrnit has to be because “the right” is on thernmarch. And of course, this myth is usefulrnfor discrediting anyone who really is onrn”the right” when he questions the quackrnnostrums and increased state power thatrnthe left demands as a “solution” to thern”crisis.”rnWhat, then, did cause the massacre atrnLittleton? The simple answer is “humanrnnature,” the propensity that all humanrnbeings have to explode, as Mr. Kehos explodedrnback in 1927 and as lots of otherrnpeople do in one way or another everyrnnow and then. Of course, not everybodyrndoes explode. Why did Eric Harris andrnDylan Klebold do so?rnThe question is probably still unanswerable,rnbut one story that popped up inrnthe Washington Post is suggestive. Arnwoman who was a friend of the Kleboldrnfamily recalls that Dylan used to playrnwith her daughters and remembersrntelling his mother that in her house shernhad only girl toys while in your house,rnyou have only “boy toys.” “Boy toys,”rnreplied Mrs. Klebold, “but no toy guns.”rnDylan Klebold’s father is said to be “arnliberal who favors gun control,” yet anotherrnAssociated Press story reported severalrndays after the killings. His motherrnworked in a community program thatrnhelped “disabled shidents gain access torneducation.” When Dylan and Eric brokerninto a car and got caught, thev werernplaced in an “anger management” program,rnand the police who ran the programrnpraised them for their conduct. Asrnfor Mark Manes, the pal of Eric and Dylanrnwho sold them the semi-automaticrnpistol they used in the shootings, hisrnmother is a member of Handgun Control,rnInc., the country’s largest gun-controlrnlobbying organization. “She hasrnbeen against guns forever,” Manes’rnlawyer told the New York Times. “Markrngrew up in a house where no weaponsrnwere present.” Much the same seems tornhave been true of Eric Harris, who was anrnenthusiastic fan of Bill Clinton’s bombingrnof Serbia. “I hope we do go to war,”rnhe told a classmate. “I’ll be the first onernthere.” That’s exactly why Harris tried tornenlist in the Marines a few days beforernthe blow-up at school. Maybe it wasn’trnMarilyn Manson that lit his fuse so muchrnas the Weekly Standard or the Wall Streetrn]oumal editorial page.rnThe dirty little truth the American propagandarnmachine won’t tell us directiy,rnthe secret that has to be pried out fromrnbetween the lines of the machine’s unreliablernnewspapers and thinly disguisedrnpoliticization, is that all three of thesernyoung men grew up in the make-believernworld concocted by liberalism, a fantasticrnplace where race and sex mean nothing;rnwhere violence and crime don’t exist andrnguns have no function and no meaning,rneven as toys; where wars against “ethnicrnnationalists” for “humanitarian goals” arernmorally imperative but owning a handgunrnto protect your home and familyrnought to be a crime; where war is onlyrnone more goody-good community projectrnlike getting disabled students accessrnto education; where people who adherernto “RACISM!” deserve to have their armsrnripped off and be burned and humanrnbeings, including healthy young menrnwhose genes and glands and brains drivernthem to aggression and conflict, are simplyrnblank slates to be shaped and twistedrnand scribbled over by “anger management”rnprograms and all the therapeuticrnwitchcraft that Hillary Clinton and herrnfriends really believe in. It was not AdolfrnHitier or Marilyn Manson or guns or thern”right” that made Eric Harris and DylanrnKlebold pop their corks in April but liberalismrnitself and all the illusions liberalismrnconjures up to mask the truths about humanrnbeings and human society that it refusesrnto face. That’s a secret the news mediarncan’t expose, partly because thosernwho run them can’t even recognize itrnand parriy because, if they ever did, thernwhole system constructed on the lies ofrnliberalism would crumble. trnS)Oj (V77-c;/jyrnAUGUST 1999/37rnrnrn