The gangs of TV stenographers are reporting that the soldier who killed 3 men at Ft. Hood had been confronted by a female MP just before his pulling out his pistol and killing himself. It was also reported that another female MP had confronted another soldier who, in 2009, had killed 13 fellow soldiers at this same base. Whether these MPs had been men or women, I applaud them for acting responsibly and helping bring these killings to an end. It would have been politically-incorrect, however, for the networks to have mentioned another woman, Suzanna Hupp, who was with her parents in Luby’s restaurant in 1991 in Killeen, Texas, when another murderer came into that restaurant and methodically killed some 23 unarmed victims, including Ms. Hupp’s parents. She commented, afterwards, about having left her loaded gun in her car – “a hundred feet away” – so as not to be in violation of a Texas statute criminalizing the carrying of concealed weapons. (I wonder if the victims of this slaughter took comfort in knowing how the state of Texas had thus “protected” them from someone who might get a gun and shoot them, without their being able to defend themselves!) Ms. Hupp later helped to get the Texas legislature to end this prohibition, action on her part that has probably helped prevent the killing of more innocents. That Killeen is the home of Ft. Hood might have added some perspective to all of this, but causal understanding is far from the purposes of the owners and operators of the Establishment, or those who propagandize inform the public on its behalf.

News reports also speak of an Army chaplain at Ft. Hood. As Laurence Vance would doubtless agree, this news might have provided an opportunity to discuss why the military needs chaplains with which to deal with its personnel. Is there something dispiriting or immoral about the warfare system for which chaplains might need to intervene with young men and women who might have troubled consciences about the nature of their work? Might this inner upheaval help to explain why some 22 military veterans commit suicide every day? Is this the price young soldiers must pay for the destruction of their sense of integrity, when they were promised they could “be all you can be in the Army”? Are drugs and chaplains desperate efforts by the military to control the souls and psyches of the troops, lest an outbreak of non-cooperation with its dehumanizing behavior occur? We do not have a chaplain at our law school, nor am I familiar with their being generally employed in banks, manufacturing firms, or other institutions. Do companies that make up the mainstream media employ chaplains to help reconcile their reporters’ search for truth with the institutional interests of those who employ them? If not, why does the military engage in a practice that is clearly in violation of the First Amendment?

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