Nawojczyk's seminar made me realize how fragile her life is in this violent society we live in. I had seen slides and photos of young men and children cut down by gunfire; some where missing their jaws and faces, others were simply folded up dead on the floor.

How precious life seems when you look up close at the dead.

I told my wife we have to take care of Jodi, that there are bad people in the world, bad things can and do happen. The news was grim this week from Hot Spring County, where 18-year-old Julie Heath was found murdered after a week-long manhunt.

One of the human monsters Nawojczyk had spoken of apparently got hold of her. People are talking about how they're afraid to walk out their door these days.

Amen.

"What kind of society have we created?" Nawojczyk repeated Tuesday night. It's one in which kids who aren't old enough to shave are toting foreign-made automatic weapons to school for self-defense. The motivation for murder in 1993 can be something as mundane as an expensive jacket, a particular brand of shoes, a cap or a color.

Nawojczyk told of one woman who said she took her son to K-Mart one day to buy him some school clothes. He son insisted he couldn't wear clothes off the rack from K-Mart --"they'll laugh me out of school." She ended up spending more than $300 for a cap, a jacket, and a pair of shoes.

That's American society for you at the end of the 20th century.

"I think it's time we start putting students in uniforms," Nawojczyk said -- another of his "politically incorrect" statements. But can you imagine the uproar if kids had to wear uniforms to school? Uniforms (which might amount only to ties and white shirts for boys, skirts and blouses for girls) might stifle individuality, self-esteem, creativity?

They might also keep kids alive. Little boys and girls are killing each other for shoelaces.

Above all else, gangs provide a culture for alienated youth in which they can find acceptance, brotherhood, power, money and respect. Nawojczyk says it's respect that these kids crave most. Respect goes to whomever has the most "juice," to whomever pulls off "the most courageous act of violence," according to one Crip member.

Like Nawojczyk said, kids used to find their role models in Beaver Cleaver and Opie Taylor. Now their role models are Beavis and Butthead, the Mario Brothers and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think in a lot of cases, kids are exposed to so much mindless, harmful violence because there's no better babysitter than "Terminator 2" and Super Nintendo.

It's easy to shut up a noisy child by sticking him or her in front of the TV and plugging in a game or a video or something -- anything as long as they shut up. Right? I mean, I have a child - I know. Why do anything constructive or positive?

Kids get infatuated with gangs because there's nothing else for them to believe in. They aren't finding respect or acceptance in church, on TV, and in many instances their own homes.

But, hey, can't blame everything on society and on TV. There's such a thing as freewill. They don't have to become Crips or Bloods or Black Gangster Disciples. They don't have to shoot people with AK-47s and deal crack cocaine.

But they are. By the thousands.

Society and parents in particular need to exercise a little of our own free will and love and protect our children before killers and cocaine dealers get hold of them.

It's frightening to think an entire generation is going to be lost to gang violence and drugs. But they are, unless America wakes up from its McDonaldland dream and does something to save them. As it is, we're doing the devil's work for him.