(Washington, D.C.) Former Vice President Dan Quayle on Wednesday said the school shooting in Colorado underscores the need for some national “soul-searching” about our society.
“What happened in Colorado is sad, tragic and hard to understand,” Quayle said during an interview. “Perhaps we’ll never know what happened since (the two suspects) have taken their lives, but clearly there’s something wrong today. You look at all the wealth and prosperity and how everything’s humming along and then all of a sudden another one of these school shootings occurs. This is unfortunatley a pattern..and I think we need to do some soul-searching.”
The two young men suspected of conducting the school massacre are reported to have been fans of shock-rocker Marilyn Manson.
“There’s no regulation that can be passed, there’s no law that can regulate what the content is going to be on our television screen or what kind of movies are going to be produced because we do have freedom of speech which we do respect and we all believe in, however, that doesn’t mean there’s not corporate responsibility,” Quayle said.
While he was Vice President, Quayle sparked a national debate about the entertainment industry when he took on “Murphy Brown” for its positive portrayal of a single mother having a baby out-of-wedlock.
“People need to step back and say, ‘Why is this all going on?’ and look at all the violence and everything else that’s on television. It’s reported that by the time a child graduates from eighth grade, they will have witnessed 8,000 murders on television. Can’t we do with less? Those that produce these films…need to think about some young, emotional disturbed individual might take this to heart,” Quayle said.
In remarks prepared for a Wednesday evening speech to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Quayle lambasts the “Kyoto” international treaty which will enforce global environmental standards.
“What we have today is some extremism,” Quayle said during an interview beforehand. “One of the things I’m very concerned about is this Kyoto agreement which will create an international tribunal of regulators that could possibly have the authority to come in and shut down plants,” Quayle said.
Quayle said the United States has the best environmental laws in the world and the best way to spread good stewardship would be to export “our freemarket ideas because if countries grow and prosper, they take their environmental responsibilities much more seriously.”
Quayle said the treaty excludes “big-time polluters” like China. Quayle said he’ll discuss the issue on the campaign trail often to highlight Vice President Al Gore’s “extremism” on the issue.
“(Gore’s) approach to the environment is just more and more regulation,” Quayle said.