My fifth-grade teacher once told his class something I'll never forget. "Common sense is not so common." I've been thinking of that in the aftermath of the Littleton tragedy. While we may not truly understand what drove Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to snap in the manner that they did, our collective response to this madness has demonstrated to me that Dorothy's friend the Scarecrow isn't the only one who needs a brain.

First of all, we have President Clinton urging us to solve our problems with "words, not violence" while simultaneously bombing Yugoslavia back to the stone age, making ordinary civilians-- Serb and Albanian-- pay for the crimes of Milosevic. Brilliant message to send our youth-- Do as I say, not as I do.

Meanwhile the gun-control groups (which ironically include our Bomber-in-chief) are clamoring for more laws as if that's going to make a damn bit of difference. Let me state here that I do not believe anybody should have easy, unfettered access to guns. I have no sympathy for Charlton Heston or the NRA. But it's also true that the Littleton lunatics had been building their private arsenal for a year and nobody even blinked. If this is how we enforce the gun laws already on the books, why does anyone think that more is somehow better?

Elsewhere on the hysteria front, the various braintrusts who run our schools are cracking down on any kid who wears a trenchcoat, plays video games, spends too much time on the Internet, or otherwise fail to conform to their cookie-cutter molds. To further rub salt on an open wound, parents fearful of losing control are seizing their kids' computers. All of this heavy-handedness can only serve to further ostracize kids who already feel lonely and alienated. Congratulations.

But surely the Christians can help us in our time of need. They preach that God is love, and that God ordained the family unit to stabilize society. Surely they can provide guidance.

Don't hold your breath. Most of them are as brain-numbed as most of us. That was pointed out to me last Saturday evening while I was flipping through radio stations on my way home from a day of hiking in northern New Jersey. The program was "Living on the Edge," a Christian teen call-in show that's an adjunct of Focus on the Family. The hosts had two of the Columbine students on, so I listened to hear what they had to say. In addition to the expected nausea about how "God is helping us through this tragedy," when he couldn't prevent it in the first place, they started painting this as another example of Christian "persecution" and "martyrdom," a theme Focus on the Family plays like Johnny-one-note on a kazoo.

It is a fact that at least one of the dead students, Cassie Bernall, was in a school Bible club. Just before she was killed, one of the two shooters asked if she believed in God, and she answered yes. According to her friends on the radio, "She could've saved her life by saying no, but she chose to stand boldly for Jesus Christ." Somehow I doubt that. These two were sociopaths. They didn't like anybody, and probably would've killed her anyway. In fact, they were most likely asking that question to mock her, to say, "Let's see your God get you out of this one." They wouldn't have needed confirmation of her religion, because, according to her friends, she made no secret of her faith.

If the Trenchcoat Mafia thought of Christians at all, they probably saw them as one more group that spurned them. Rejection by Christian groups does happen, and the proof of that was on that same radio show. Two teenagers called the program to say that although they could not condone the actions of Harris and Klebold, they could understand the alienation they felt, because they've experienced it themselves. They both spoke of feelings of depression and rage because they felt isolated from their families, their peers, and even their churches. You read that right. Their churches. One of the callers even spoke of going from church to church, looking for a youth group that would accept him and finding nothing.

Isn't this just wonderful? The people who are supposed to "love one another" and "be not conformed to the ways of this world" turn out to be just like everybody else-- unaccepting of anything that's different, or "doesn't fit in." For all the talk about "teaching tolerance" and "celebrating diversity" by Christians and nonbelievers alike, very few of us are comfortable with diversity unless we can confine it to a weekend cultural festival. Once diversity starts seeping into Real Life, that is, as they used to say, a horse of another color. That's why motorists are being pulled over for Driving While Black, Asians are being discouraged from attending college because there are "too many of them there already," and Goth teenagers are being treated like the scum of the Earth. And then we express shock and horror when a few of them start living up to our expectations.

Maybe while we're searching for those brains, we should be looking for a few hearts as well. And a small measure of courage wouldn't be a bad idea, either.