> One type of killing, school killings are actually lower today than
> they were in the 60's. (Of course the 60's and early 70's had
> especially higher levels of internal U.S. violence than the present -
> at least the present through 2007. Don't know figures for 2008, or the
> past few months, yet.) So I'd want to see statistics before I was
> convinced that this kind of "spree" killing is higher today than at
> other times in recent history.
>
I'd only ask of the motivation, or lack thereof, of these groups... and, of course I wouldn't say that my criticism is an historical judgement; more so a general cultural phenomenon. In the late 60s and early 70s an awful lot of countries had an awful lot of violent so-called organisations. The Italians had the Red Brigades, the Germans the Baader Mienhof, and the US had the Weathermen and afterwards, why not, as controversial as it may be, the Middle-East have Al-Qaeda.
I'm putting forward that this "Discontent in Civilisation", as Freud would have put it, is part and parcel of contemporary society; as something which is deeply ingrained historically into our social formations. Something that we can't avoid and which will haunt the periphery of our territory for any foreseeable future.
Violence, whether peripheral or central, is very much a part of our civilisation; let's not deny that.