What does it take for normal people to start slaughtering others? A commentary in the Jerusalem Post with the title “The Genocide Mechanism” showed how demonization could lead to genocide. The writer talked about “a very specific kind of demonization.” The example he used was Rwanda.

In 1994, the majority Hutu population was able to massacre some 800,000 Tutsis. The violence was unimaginable: neighbors slaughtering neighbors, mostly with machetes. The estimates are about 9,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered every day. How does something so awful happen?

The answer is demonization. The Hutus were taught that the Tutsis were “cockroaches and snakes. Tutsi women were portrayed as cunning seductresses who used beauty and sexual powers to conquer the Hutus.” There were also warnings on the radio that the Tutsis were about the attack them. So they needed to attack first to protect themselves.

Step one was to dehumanize the enemy with all sorts of false statements. Step two was to present a clear danger. Then you merely need to convince people that they need to act in their own self-defense. The commentary explains about how this type of demonization has been used by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority that describe Jews “as loathsome and dangerous animals.”

Could something like this happen in this country? We would hope not. But you do see some similarities. Look at how the Left portrays President Trump, Republican members of Congress, and even conservative speakers on college campus. They are the equivalent of Hitler. They are not worthy of any respect, and the represent a clear and present danger to various sectors of society. They want to put people in detainment camps or even march them off to gas chambers.

This is a reminder that hateful words and demonization can lead to horrific acts against other human beings.

Senator Ben Sasse writes in his book about, The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance. He recently took some material from the book and wrote about “What Happens When We Don’t Raise Kids to Become Adults.”

He tells the story of being tapped to become president of Midland University at the age of 37-years-old. The board of directors did so because Ben Sasse had the reputation as a “turnaround” guy who specialized in helping troubled companies become solvent. The university certainly needed his help. They were on the verge of missing payroll four months in a row. But he soon discovered that “finances might not have been the biggest problem at the school.”

One student, for example, staged a sit-in in the president’s office and announced he would not leave until the president resolved a scheduling problem for him. He was upset that the registrar wouldn’t be offering a particular course he needed the following semester. When Ben Sasse engaged the student in conversation, he proclaimed, “You need to figure this out. I pay tuition to go to this school, which means I pay your salary. So you work for me.”

The university conducted annual surveys about student experience on campus. It not only showed their lack of a work ethic but a lack of understanding of the difference between production and consumption. The activities they said they enjoyed most were sleeping in, skipping classes, and partying. A few mentioned canceled classes as the best part of their four years.

I hope that some of these examples seem crazy to you. Unfortunately, for many in this emerging generation, these attitudes seem about right. That is why Ben Sasse wants to reminds these young people that growing up involves maturity, hard work, and even delayed gratification. If not, we will have a country of perpetual kids.

In a speech at Hillsdale College, Andrew McCarthy told the story of leading the prosecution in 1993 of the terrorist cell that bombed the World Trade Center. At the time, other government officials told him that he “should read nothing into the fact that all the men in this terrorist cell were Muslims.” These officials explained that the terrorist actions weren’t representative of Islam, because it is religion that encourages peace.

The government also portrayed the leader of the terrorist cell (Omar Abdel Rahman) as a wanton killer and an unbalanced lunatic. Andrew McCarthy discovered he was anything but. He was a globally renowned scholar with a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from a major university in Egypt.

That presented a problem. Andrew McCarthy needed to know enough about Islamic interpretation to press the case. He hoped to find inconsistencies between what the Qur’an teaches and what the leader of the terrorist cell taught. What he found was alarming. Every time Omar Abdel Rahman quoted the Qur’an or other Islamic sources, he quoted them accurately.

“When he said the scriptures command Muslims to strike terror into the hearts of Islam’s enemies, the scriptures backed him up. When he said Allah enjoined all Muslims to wage war until Islamic law was established throughout the world, the scriptures backed him up.”

Andrew McCarthy discovered the flaw in the oft-repeated argument that Muslim terrorists are perverting the religion of Islam. They are accurately quotes verses from the Qur’an. That doesn’t mean that all Muslims will be terrorists. Many do not know of these passages or have been able to contextualize them. But it does illustrate why we cannot continually argue that radical Muslims who are calling for jihad are teaching something that is contrary to Islam.

The US Constitution reminds us that the responsibility for our government rests with “we the people.” In order for us to be effective, we need to know something about our government and our history. Citizens in countries ruled by dictators don’t need to know much since the major decisions are made for them. But we Americans should be educated and informed.

Unfortunately, we are not well educated and informed. A study done by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation discovered that only one in three (36%) Americans could actually pass the US citizenship test. And I might add that you only have to get 60 percent of the questions right in order to pass the test.

For example, a majority (57%) did not know how many justices serve on the Supreme Court. Nearly three-fourths (72%) could not accurately identify which states comprised the 13 colonies. And only a quarter (24%) even knew why the American colonists fought the British in the Revolutionary War.

Most disturbing was the fact that young people performed worst on the test. You might excuse an elderly person for forgetting some facts about government or history. But less than one in five (19%) under the age of 45 could pass this test.

In previous commentaries, I have proposed a solution that some states have considered. Require students to pass the citizenship test before they graduate from high school. Consider the fact that a naturalized citizen probably knows more about America’s history and structure of government than someone who was born in this country.

Young people in America cannot pass a citizenship test for one of two reasons: either they weren’t paying attention in class or they weren’t taught this material in the first place. Let’s require students to pass a citizenship test before graduation. We require it of people who want to be American citizens. Why not require it of students who are already citizens because they were born here?

Anna Ayers is an LGBT student at Ohio University who serves in the Student Senate. She reported receiving hateful notes including one that threatened her life.

The Student Senate president assumed that at least one of the notes must have been written by someone in the Senate who would know which desk belonged to Ayers. Because of the turmoil, the Student Senate postponed all scheduled events. Instead, the students listened to Ayers speak and express her anger, frustration, and disappointment. She called the person who did that weak, cowardly, and worthless. Also, the university changed the locks on the Student Senate doors and established new office hours.

Now before you get too angry about what happened to Ayers, you also need to know that she was arrested for making false claims. The Ohio University Police Department found that she placed the messages in the student Senate office (along with one at her residence) by herself prior to reporting them.

Sadly these false threats are becoming all too common on college campuses. Just a few months ago, my commentary was on the rash of fake hate crimes. There are websites dedicated to documenting these fake crimes. Many of them are perpetrated by black activists in order to convince us that racism is alive and well on campus. Others are done by Muslims, perhaps to gain sympathy for their religion and to promote the idea that Islamophobia can be found in America’s universities.

This latest fake story perhaps was done to promote the LGBT agenda or merely to draw attention to her and her sexual orientation. I applaud the school for arresting her and for the university to follow0 up with a story explaining that these were false claims. We need some deterrent in order to prevent future hoaxes like this.

A recent research paper concluded that first responders are more likely to die by suicide than in the line of duty. The Ruderman White Paper on Mental Health and Suicide of First Responders is a chilling look at the sobering statistics of the lives of men and women who protect us each day.

The paper explains that, “Police and firefighters, when compared to the general civilian population, are at heightened risk for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suicide.” We should remember that people in these professions “have front row seats to the horrendous aftermath of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, violent domestic disputes, traffic accidents, and more.” In fact, one study concluded that police officers witness 188 “critical incidents” during their career. No wonder their rates of PTSD and depression are as much as five times higher than the rates within the general population.

Another reason for suicide is the reality that so many first responders have prior military experience. That means they are piling onto their career more “incidents” after already having a previous career rife with trauma. They may be strong, brave, and resilient, but they are only human.

Another concern is the unwillingness for men and women in these professions to seek help. Often they want to avoid the shame and stigma that might come when they ask for counseling. And these same barriers often prevent families from talking openly about the suicide of a loved one.

One obvious solution is to break the silence that surrounds this issue of first responder mental health. That is why I wrote this commentary. We need to support our first responders and ask them to get help so they can continue to keep us safe.

Most Christians understand that the problems facing America are not going to be solved in Washington. But it is noteworthy when a sitting U.S. Senator says that, “Politics Can’t Solve Our Political Problems.”

That was the title of a commentary by Senator Ben Sasse. He believes that the tribalism in our nation has a deeper source and is tied to loneliness in America. We are relational beings and want to be in tribes. He observes that, “the traditional tribes that have sustained humans for millennia are simultaneously in collapse.” Those would be family, friendships, and communities of worship.

At the core of this is loneliness in America. It is not a new problem, a quarter century ago I wrote a book with the title Signs of Warning, Signs of Hope. One of the chapters dealt with a “crisis of loneliness.”

A book we often quote on our radio program is Bowling Alone written by Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam. We no longer are involved in community. We often move and have few friends. We have few shared projects and belong to fewer civic groups.

On the other hand, we don’t want to be left out. We don’t want to feel the “same isolation we felt at the edge of the cafeteria or as the last kid picked for kickball.” So we yearn for a group (often a political ideology) as the basis for our intimate connections. Our cable news tribes offer a common experience.

To reverse these trends we need to read his new book, Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal. In his commentary, he shares how he and his wife “put down roots” in a small community and became friends with people from every race and income bracket. We must find ways to replenish the social capital and reverse the tribal conflict in our culture.

After some of the political battles on Capitol Hill and after the political ads during the mid-term elections, I think most of us would like a return to civility. Hillary Clinton explains when civility might once again become part of the political process.

She told CNN, “You can’t be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for.” So she concluded that if the Democrats were “fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again.”

Michael Barone made two observations about her comments. First, you can be civil even if you are convinced the other party is not. Don’t say that you cannot be civil when what you mean is you don’t want to be civil. Second, her prescription for civility is essentially this: “Just let Democrats win the elections, and then Republican senators and their wives can eat dinner in restaurants without being forced out by jeering crowds.”

Michael Goodwin expressed alarm at Hillary Clinton’s comments and wondered why there wasn’t any significant outrage or response to her comments. “Clinton knows we’re already in the danger zone when it comes to the political temperature. Her comments, then, are as reckless as bringing a can of gasoline to a bonfire.”

One other anomaly is also worth mentioning. Not only is there little outrage about the comments by Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters, and others. There also seems to be a deliberate attempt to prevent anyone from using the word “mob” to describe the menacing actions by progressives. David French details the number of times just on CNN when guest commentators were told not to describe these actions as mob behavior.

Not only can we not expect civility any time soon, but we cannot even use appropriate words to describe incivility.