Commentary
In 1954, the Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding published the book “Lord of the Flies.” The novel, and subsequent movie made from the book, deals with a group of British boys who find themselves stranded on an uninhabited island with no adults. The boys try to govern themselves—with disastrous results—as they struggle with emotions, morality, cruelty, and other issues.
As I read about the increased violence in our inner cities, as well as the attacks on innocent human beings by alienated, unsupervised young men, I cannot help but harken back to Golding’s sadly prophetic novel.
One such example, as reported in a recent City Journal article by Michael Torres, involved a group of seven Philadelphia teens who beat a 73-year-old man to death with a traffic cone. Their heinous actions were caught on surveillance camera, with the footage showing them laughing and recording their brutal assault on the defenseless man. The elderly man’s niece would ask, “Where are the parents?”…