The debate over the events that finally pushed 23-year old Cho Seung-Hui over the edge will likely rage on for months, if not years. Clearly there were signs of emotional disturbance, disregarded ‘out of privacy concerns’ and other banal attempts at justification. What is likely to take less time to figure out, and what will get even less mention by the main stream media (i.e., liberal media), is the emotional and sociological conditioning he received since entering this country at the age of eight.

Cho’s family has made no public statements. Their reasoning, combined with their culture is one that can certainly be understood. The actions of their son have caused them a remorse none of us can imagine, save a very few unfortunate people who have, themselves, shared this experience due to the violent actions of a loved one. By all accounts, they were good parents, with a strong sense of morality and a good work ethic.

In some ways, Cho should have grown up with a greater appreciation for what this country has to offer—considering the conditions that exist in his native South Korea—than his American classmates. Cho should have been emboldened with his prospects for the future; so close to being realized, only weeks away from graduating from one of this nation’s finest universities.

Instead of being exposed to the fact that there will always be someone with more than you (unless you’re Bill Gates), that the world isn’t always fair, and that you learn to move on when things don’t go your way, this young man found himself smothered in a cocoon of distortion, misperception and resentment.

The rants Cho expressed in the now infamous ‘multi-media manifesto’ decried the American political system, economic injustice, oppression of the ‘have-nots’, and on and on. How does the son of hard-working, law-abiding, legal immigrants develop such a hatred of the country his parents fought and sacrificed to bring him to?

Indoctrination.

When day-after-day, month-after-month and year-after-year we are bombarded 24/7/365 with how wrong this country is for doing ‘X’; how wrong this country is for not doing ‘Y’; and how the leaders of this country should not be trusted, for no reason other than they sit on the right side of the aisle, those with troubled minds will seek refuge and impunity in those words.

When James Madison and others wrote the Bill of Rights, there was certainly an expectation that, while perceived injustice was certainly fair game, such would be presented in a manner intended to inspire change, rather than to incite violence. The civility of the eighteenth century, sadly, has long since passed us by. Today, ‘Freedom of the Press’ has become the knee-jerk defense to publishing and broadcasting the most preposterous of theories, speculations and innuendo by merely sticking the phrase, ‘it is being reported that’ and ‘some have said’ in front of the allegation.

These distinctions are lost on people like Cho. The mentally ill have the propensity to dismiss nuance. Under a constant siege of ‘American Injustice’ from the press, combined with the law of unintended consequence, those like Cho feel such a weight of persecution as to feel forced to break free in one way or another. For many, it’s suicide. Suicide rates have gone up dramatically, particularly in Cho’s age group (12-24). Violent crime has risen among this demographic as well. You cannot tell someone that they are being ignored, abused, or taken advantage of by ‘the system’—even when they are not—over an extended period of time, and then—as the media does (over and over again)—feign shock and amazement when someone harboring these feelings of persecution finally implodes because of them. The only real value in broadcasting Cho’s ranting tirade came from understanding what was going on inside his mind and the expectation of from where those feelings originated.

Think the worst, print or broadcast the worst, demand investigations, assassinate characters, and then—when the allegation is found to be baseless, when the facts do not bear out the accusation, and people’s lives and reputations have been needlessly destroyed—hide behind “the public’s right to know”. That is the mantra of the main stream media. Even worse, when you expose the government’s efforts to protect it’s citizenry from mass murder, or even all out war—as the New York Times did with their ‘exposes’ on both telephone surveillance and tracking money laundering back to Al Qaeda—you can’t help but wonder whether the Philadelphia Conference wouldn’t have re-thought the First Amendment. If a time traveler could take a copy of the New York Times back to Madison, I can’t help but wonder if he wouldn’t have shouted across the room, “Yo, Alexander Hamilton; hold up on that first item”.

The most disappointing aspect of today’s “I need my own Watergate” style of journalism is that these issues are not reported out of some sense of moral outrage. It’s about personal aggrandizement, television ratings, newspaper circulation, and the almighty advertising dollar. And then, to add insult to tragedy, we will now get treated to a litany of stories on how inadequate the mental health services are in this country.

I’m not naïve enough to believe the main stream media will ever tell both sides of every story. I’m not even foolish enough to hold out hope they will ever return to separating fact from opinion. But is it too much to hope for that, one day, they will stop emphasizing the negative to such a degree that they make people insane enough to kill?