Hill: What's going on?

In 1970, Marvin Gaye wrote one of his signature hits, “What’s Going On?” in a fit of frustration at all the violence he saw around him and his country.

If he were still alive today, he would have to write a sequel to his great work.

In the past week, I have had several nonpartisan friends ask me in quiet, serious tones, “What’s going on with our country?” If I or any single individual had the answer, that would be one of the great things to happen in our country in recent decades.

Gaye had the right lyrics when he wrote the following:

Mother, mother

There’s too many of you crying

Brother, brother, brother

There’s far too many of you dying

You know we’ve got to find a way

To bring some loving here today, yeah

Father, father

We don’t need to escalate

You see, war is not the answer

For only love can conquer hate

You know we’ve got to find a way

To bring some loving here today, oh (Oh)

There are plenty of reasons to point to as to why we are in such a state of disarray today. I want to, however, cast a warning to not fall prey to opportunistic politicians or advocacy groups who promise the most simplistic of all solutions as being the panacea for curtailing the wanton gun violence we watch on the news every day.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk and the two attempted assassinations of President Donald Trump were the most visible since they were taped and run over and over on every news channel on Earth.

The Minnesota legislator and her husband who were killed were Democrats, so this is a bipartisan crisis we are facing, not just one side or the other. On top of all that, North Carolinians and the nation were horrified to witness the stabbing murder of Ukrainian emigre Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light rail train. It is hard to ascribe any sort of political disagreement in that case apart from the fact that the suspect, Decarlos Brown, had a long rap sheet and probably should not have been out roaming the streets of Charlotte in the first place.

Some politicians will boil all these down to one simple cause and offer one solution, such as total and strict gun control (which would not have done Zarutska any good). Others will advocate more strict enforcement of the death penalty, arguing it will dissuade would-be assassins from doing what they end up doing. Twenty-seven states, including North Carolina, still have the death penalty, although it has not been consistently enforced. Trump just rescinded the federal moratorium on capital punishment on Feb. 5, so it remains to be seen if it will start acting like a deterrent in the capital crimes it was meant to deter.

There are capital crimes being conducted every day in cities such as Chicago that need to be addressed as well. Perhaps Trump sending the National Guard into Washington, D.C., to quell crime might serve as a model for other crime-ridden cities, although we don’t want America to become a police-driven and managed country.

President John Adams said at the beginning of our republic that it would only survive if our citizens were ethical, religious, and could self-govern themselves and their actions on a daily, and perhaps minute-by-minute, basis.

Those are the goals we should seek to attain, and everyone has a part in that. We have been reaping the benefits of millions of not only soldiers and patriots who have fought to ensure our freedoms since 1774, but also the tens of millions of community leaders and organizations emphasizing core values, self-responsibility and discipline.

One other place to start would be the reinstitution of basic civics education in all schools, public and private.

Maybe we need a revival of such basic groups again in America, since many of those values have been eroded by years of neglect and because some leaders and groups have turned their focus away from traditional American values to pursue more narrow political interests.