Today, of course, is the time of tragedy. A gunman, aged in his early 20s, shot and killed nearly 30 people in a school in Newtown, Connecticut. Among the dead as of this writing are 18 children and both of the killer’s parents.

My first thought is this: there is a strain of total emptiness running through a swath of American youth. Whether guns, explosive, drugs, or something else, a shockingly high number of young people have replaced any sense of hope and uplift with a dark force. That dark force takes them to the worst place. From there they pull in countless other people, caught in pain. Suffering follows.