Words Won't Do

This is a day of pit-of-the-stomach news, of feeling personally violated by TV images of a quiet campus suddenly struck by horror, of watching the aftermath of incomprehensible savagery in a world of laptops, cell phones--and semi-automatic weapons.

For the rest of the day and those to come, there will be a flood of words about the killer's identity and motives, campus security, gun control, violence in modern life, etc. etc. etc. Some of them may be comforting, like what people say at a wake, but in the end we will be left with simply more proof, as if we needed any, of how fragile our civilization is.

The only way to honor those victims is to keep doing everything we can to hold it together. Respectful silence would be a start.