The preamble to the United States Constitution states that the Constitution of the United States is "ordained and established" to "establish Justice, insure [ensure] domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence...".
To ''ensure domestic tranquility''. What does that mean? It means that it is the government's purpose, duty, and responsibility to make sure that people can live peacefully within the boundaries of the nation; that they will not be afflicted by riots, rebellions, or wanton criminal activity. The government exists ''to that end'', and insofar as it fails to achieve that end, it is a failure of the government.
Yesterday's murders at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University are direct evidence of just such a failure to ensure domestic tranquility. And while some talk about nationalities and psychologies and social pressures, the focus on the individual who did the shootings is a distraction and a misdirection from the basic failure in governance.
Ultimately, every breakdown in social order can be traced to a failure by the government to foresee and prevent the disorder. This is, of course, a difficult task, but it is exactly the one which is demanded of our governing officials. When they fail to perform it; when they do not execute laws conducive to domestic tranquility, or when they create laws that are damaging to domestic tranquility, it is the duty of the people to hold them accountable and to replace them with more competent officials who can foresee and prevent such disorders as happened yesterday.
The myth that such events are "isolated" or "couldn't have been foreseen" is one put about by officials who have been shirking their duty and do not wish to be held accountable. It plays to a natural cynicism, of course; but it also creates an attitude that nothing should be expected from government. This is an attitude we must combat. We must remind people that the government exists to serve them, and that they can and should demand everything of it that belongs to its constituted role.
We are told by certain unscrupulous, ignorant, and malicious persons that the task of government is to step aside and allow citizens to act as amateur soldiers, shooting whoever they deem to be a threat. Even if this notion were not, as it is, a dangerous fantasy inspired by sensationalistic movies and video games, it would remain a grotesque inversion of the proper roles of government and citizen. For the government to ''step aside'' in such a situation, to demand that ordinary citizens put their lives in danger by acting as ersatz commandos, is not government at all but the abdication of government. It is the surrender of our public places to gang warfare and the rule of the gun. If we can no longer expect the government to protect us, to enact laws that can prevent such occurrences as yesterday's murders, then there is no basis for loyalty to one's country, no basis for state organization at all, and we should revert to feudalism and an endless series of petty wars.
This is not, however, the answer. Feudalism was tried and abolished because it didn't work: because it abandoned the weakest of society to the predations of petty thugs, because far from ensuring domestic tranquility, it led to ceaseless social disorder and civil wars.
Our government is of a different type, born of the Enlightenment, rejecting the notion of "every man for himself". Our government is founded upon an explicit contract between the citizen and the governing officials; for a limited period, the citizenry cedes power to the government, and the government, in return, undertakes to ensure domestic tranquility. Events -- not at all isolated -- like yesterday's series of murders are evidence that the government has failed in its part of the contract. But abolishing government is not the answer: the answer is to get better government, better laws, and a forthright intention to deal with the flaws in our system of laws and regulations that allowed things to reach this point. To find people with the requisite courage, conviction, and genius to figure out how to foresee events like this, and prevent them before they take place. It is not impossible -- but the people need to ''expect'' it and to ''demand'' it.