You make some good valid points of your own as well, as you did after the Aurora shootings when you noted the much greater difficulty of involuntarily committing people since the reforms of the '70s.

However, your reference to our declining sense of community is the critical factor I had in mind. The Churchs declining influence is just one part of that, because the US, like all nations, is more than merely many diverese religious groups living within the same geographic borders. Healthy competition is one thing, but competition becomes unhealthy and destructive when it reaches the point of pitting each of a nations residents against each other in an unrestricted, winner-take-all contest for success by any means necessary. The Church did not popularize that; rather than causing it, since the late '70s the Church has often been simply another of its victims.

Many congregations and ministers have been infiltrated and corrupted by ravening political wolves in sheeps doctrinal clothing. If you want to criticize anyone for injecting personal political agenda into inappropriate venues, call preachers of the "prosperity gospel," then Albert Mohler, William Donovan, Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed. When the Southern Baptist Convention splintered into separate denominations because a small group orchestrates a takeover of its leadership for purely political reasons, a NC church expels members who refused to vote for a specific presidential candidate, and bishops deny Communion to politicians who support abortion rights, whom is forsaking whom? Many churches have told political dissenters to GTFO, and the response has often been "gladly."

Where does that leave the AMERICAN community, within the Church or anywhere else? Personal responsibility is a fine and vital thing, but does not justify social irresponsibility. If we continue attaching Somebody Elses Problem markers to the disenfranchised and ostracized we can expect more alienation and less empathy. That is not some profound insight, just basic common sense. Indoctrinate people with the belief anything goes because it is a dog-eat-dog world, and they start munching indiscriminately. I sincerely hope and pray most Americans do not need to lose a friend or family member before accepting that, sooner or later, this is a problem for ALL Americans (i.e. the national community.)

We need to stop encouraging violent acts, and I do not mean Americas overhyped so-called "culture of violence," be it hunters and self-defense advocates or entertainment. The entertainment industrys only agenda is profits from meeting audience demands, so the prevalence of sex and violence in the media is the effect, not cause, of societys obsession with both. The tacit concern in a generation of warnings about alienation is that it BREEDS dangerous mental illness by destroying empathy and handing out triggers for psychotic breaks like carnies hand out raffle tickets.

You are right we need better mental health diagnosis, and treatment, but the latter is not available at the emergency rooms so many assure us adequately meet the health needs of the poor (while passing the cost along to the insured.) What good is diagnosing dangerous mental illness if the cost of exam, consultation and treatment bankrupts the patients family? That prevents no dangerous alienation in the mentally ill, only encourages it in their previously healthy close relatives.

With regard to murder and alienations influence on and by media, consider "John Q" and "Falling Down." Neither was any more graphically violent than the last generations "Apocalypse Now" or "Patton." "John Q" dealt with a man holding a hospital hostage to get his son life-saving treatment otherwise unobtainable since he lost his employer insurance after being reduced from a full time to part time employee. Whether that was mental illness is debatable, but, if it was, it was TRIGGERED by alienation of a previously rational but increasingly desperate man. "Falling Down" concerned a mans frustrated and ALIENATED desperation at his lifes disintegration when his patriotically motivated defense contractor career ended because he was overskilled and undereducated (or vice versa; he cannot recall which.)

Neither of those films concerned the Church, but both are relevant here because of the violent alienation they DID concern, and because, once again, Hollywood does not tell audiences what they want to see, it makes what they not only tolerate but DEMAND seeing. Unless we want more murderers disbelievingly asking, "I'M the bad guy...?" as they confront police with a gun in their hand, it is past time we made them EVERYONES problem before they do it for us. The problem with "John Q" and "Falling Down" was their violence, but Hollywoods willingness to spend millions on them, certain of a healthy profit because so much of the public so easily identified with the protagonists.

That has many political implications and consequences; how much are we willing to pay to ignore them, and how long do we think we can? Note the first person plural; America should use it more often, and stop deriding it as Marxism. Communism need not require communism, but nations require community.