Violence against Homeless

Molly Malone sent this article to me and its truly disturbing...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/19/homeless.attacks/index.html.

(its about middle-class teen boys beating up and killing homeless people and how this violence is on the rise)
A lot of things about this bother me - what kind of human being are you that you would so violently harm a person who is already down on their luck? What goes on in your brain that allows this behavior? That finds it acceptable? Where is your right and wrong reasoning here?

What kind of society are we raising that has these children do this? We speak of charity, most American colleges require some volunteer work before you can get accepted (and I bet if we looked at these kids records, they did do some charity work and that they were on the track to college, [isn't it interesting that those perptuating these crimes are not the poor on poor but those more fortunate onto those less]), yet there seems to be a dis-connect between these ideals and the reality.

Finally how do we combat mob mentality? Is there anything that can be done so a person doesn't get swept away? Mob mentality is one of the things above many others I fear. We have already seen examples of mob mentality following 9/11, with the rush to brand everything "patriotic," pointing fingers at anyone who remotely looked suspicious and jumping into war, no one thinking, no one stopping to say, "wait, a minute, is this right?" We only have to look to history to see thousands upon thousands of examples of what happens with mob mentality i.e. WWII and the death camps, Iranian revolution, even down to soccer match brawls.

My heart cries for these poor homeless people, the victims, and their families. These homeless usually have severe mental problems, they have nothing, they are at the absolute bottom rung of society...to harm them is sick to me, turns my stomach (it also makes me think, where was religion in these teens lives?). I pray that this man and all the other homeless who have been tormented by anyone is blessed in the hereafter, may God engulf them in His warmth and light for eternal serenity.

(As for the kids involved, I pray they find spirituality and devote the rest of their lives to helping those less fortunate, only then would I feel they have remotely re-paid for their sins.)