KEY POINTS:
Predictably, the convictions for the inhuman torture and murder of little Nia Glassie have generated the usual outrage, breast-beating, anger, criticism and demands for something to be done.
It is sound and fury, signifying nothing. Because child abuse, sometimes fatal, is here to stay. And the same goes for violence against women.
We have brought it on ourselves. We have bowed to the blandishments of liberalism, immorality, materialism and hedonism and have set aside most of the moral and legal strictures which for centuries formed the mortar which held societies together and kept them from self-destruction.
For nearly 50 years, we have presided over the gradual unravelling of the fabric of our nation through the breakdown of the traditional family unit upon which community cohesion has always depended.
And we have allowed the wondrous differences between men and women to become so blurred that we no longer know whether we're Arthur or Martha.
So now we are beginning to pay the price. No matter what we try to do, the price will get ever steeper in misery, pain, terror and despair for the victims, and frustration, anger and shame for the nation.
The best we can hope for is that Government agencies, voluntary and self-help groups and others in the "helping professions" can save one or two children or women from harm along the way and, if they're lucky, minutely stem the tide.
They will treat symptoms, rarely with success, but the fundamental causes, which are now so firmly embedded in our way of life that they are irremovable, will continue to fester and erupt and spew out their poison.
I have said it before and I say it again: The number one cause of abuse against women and children is abortion.
Listen to the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Never mind that she was a Catholic nun; her views are held by scores of thousands of New Zealanders, and their logic is inescapable.
"... the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion," she said, "because it is a war against the child - a direct killing of the innocent child - murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?
"... The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships.
"It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts - a child - as a competitor, an intrusion and an inconvenience. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want ... It is a very great poverty to decide that a child must die that you might live as you wish."
It was never intended that the law should provide open-slather abortion, but it was framed with at least one loophole so big that the pro-abortion protagonists were through it in a flash.
The second major cause of violence against women and children is the belief held by too many women that they should not just be equal to men but, in all but physical appurtenances, are the same.
This is an illusion: men and women are different physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It astounds me that in this age in which knowledge of the makeup of the human being is greater than at any time in history, we will not concede that men and women are genetically programmed for differing roles.
The assumption by so many women of the roles traditionally exclusive to men has left many men in confusion, frustration and anxiety, and more are lashing out because they feel their maleness is under threat.
I find that inordinately sad. You can call me a sexist until you run out of breath, but I believe that God left creating woman until last because he wanted to make sure he got it right. The result was the creation of the most perfect and wonderful creature in the world.
There are other reasons for the violence that riddles our society - multiculturalism, greed generating poverty and a growing deprived underclass, television and the internet, for instance. They, too, present insoluble problems.
So we will continue to reap what we have sown. Be assured that the harvest will be bountiful.
