For All That Is Holy, What Are We Protecting Our Children From?

There is a perverse reason our kids are dying in school, yet the moral panic is perversely misplaced.

Rep. Andy Ogles poses for a Christmas card with his wife and children.

NASHVILLE (March 27) – Three adults and three children were confirmed dead Monday at the Covenant School, a private Christian academy, where a masked female former student entered the building toting books.

A spokesperson for the Metro Nashville Police Department said a white female suspect, 28, of Nashville, was believed to have exploited an unlocked side entrance while brandishing two copies of All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson and one copy each of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and Beloved by Toni Morrison. None of these titles is shelved in the school’s own library, which eschews content it deems harmful to children.

“The police department response was swift,” the spokesman said. “Officers entered the first story of the school and began clearing it.”

Before police ever reached the intruder, however, the suspect was fatally wounded in a hail of bullets from armed faculty and administrators, and three 5th-grade members of the Safety Patrol.

“Thank the Lord the kids were strapped,” said a faculty member who asked not to be identified. “How many more of our pupils would have been groomed for the gay agenda or brainwashed into shame for being white?”

Afterward, search teams combed the campus for evidence of other explosive material amid rumors that a second reader had penetrated the perimeter with The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. No second suspect or cache was found.

Meanwhile, details from the investigation began to trickle in. According to authorities, the  28-year-old book suspect was wearing an N95 mask. An autopsy by the city’s Office of the Medical Examiner will determine whether she had been vaccinated. In her vehicle, police reportedly found a virtual library of what an onlooker called “dangerous, objectionable material.”

Political leaders from Tennessee and around the country expressed their shock. Andy Ogles, the Republican congressman for the district that includes Nashville, praised first responders.

“The men and women are heroes, unlike the jackbooted Marxist so-called ‘officers’ who assaulted freedom-loving Patriots on January 6 at the U.S. Capitol,” he said. “Our brave police risked everything to protect our children from subversive literature and America-hating propaganda.

“Y’all have seen my Christmas card, with our family posing in our foyer fondling assault weapons. I urge you to reexamine that picture to see if you can spot a book. Don’t bother. You cain’t because there ain’t.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Republican proponent of both school vouchers and the parental-rights movement behind the widespread banning of books from school libraries, cited Monday’s tragedy as “the smoking gun of the real threat to children.”

“I’m told there were many other books in the suspect’s vehicle,” Blackburn said. “And a disgusting, pornographic reproduction of Michelangelo’s David. That sort of filth. I don’t want to play the blame game, but in my opinion, after the previous 14 school massacres, there weren’t enough thoughts and prayers offered. The only way to stop bad guys with printed matter is good guys with scripture. And, obviously, assault weapons.”

Elsewhere, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) declined to “exploit tragedy for cheap political points.”

“At times like this,” he said, “the folks in the media and on the Democrat side of the aisle, like to point fingers. I’m not gonna do that. But I put the question to you: George Soros — where does he fit in all of this? And can he prove his whereabouts on Monday? Now maybe he was in synagogue, or meeting with Alvin Bragg, and I can respect that, but perhaps the media or a special prosecutor will want to ask him some hard questions.”