Whether anybody likes it or not, or wants to believe it or not, or even cares to hear about it or not, the strange case of Kara Borden and David Ludwig from Lancaster County Pennsylvania are living proof of the theory of evolution. They, and especially Kara, are proof that, once you strip mankind down to his basic self, strip him from his pretenses of superiority, from his social pretensions, from the parental and/or societal influences by which they learn, by rote, by repetition, how to be civilized-how to be human-mankind is at his core nothing but an animal. The most highly advanced by far, true, but still animal to the core.
The idea of home schooling, in the case of these two, paved the way for their animal instincts to be brought to the fore. Say what you will about public schools, with all their drawbakcs, they do provide an atmosphere that can be conducive to social adjustment. Homeschooling in most cases is strongly lacking in this regard, and the homeschool environment in which Kara and David became involved does not seem to have been an exception. In time, they became attracted, sexually, physical, emotionally, to each other, drawn to each other, became sexually active with each other, and finally fell in love with each other. They became inextricably bound together, pretty much married to each other, in a very real sense.
While all this was going on around their parents, who pretty much seem to have napped during the whole affair, a recipe for tragedy was being created. This was augmented by the seemingly free wheeling lifestyle of the Ludwig family. How else can you describe a family who seems to have allowed a teenage son open access to more than fifty firearms of various kinds, including various types of pistols and rifles. This seems to have been the culture he was raised in, and he even, along with a friend, recorded his adventures in some form of bizzarre ritual which has been described as a kind of night patrol, where he stalked various residences, planning and mapping out strategies for the conducting of home invasions and robberries.
With Kara, he exchanged photograps, nude and/or semi-nude photographs and constant e-mail communications. How long this was going on I am unsure, but evidently something happenned that finally caused the Borden family to realize that their little angel, who they doubtless thought to protect from the big bad world through homeschooling, had become far more learned than they had imagined, only in ways they ceretainly would never have approved of.
They then commanded an end to the relationship betweent he fourteen year old Kara and the eighteen year old David, and the resulting argument cost both parents their lives. It is still unclear just exactly what the level of involvement Kara had with her parents murder, but after David shot both her parents dead, it is now pretty well established that she left with him willingly. After all, they were each others whole world, their reason for being. They were all each other really had. They were one.
Kara especially had bound herself to this man she loved, her mate, for all time.In her own mind, her parents had betrayed her. They had attempted to destroy her world, the one they themselves had fostered and encouraged for years. There was no question as to whom her loyalty belonged.
Now the only thing that remains to be determined, besides the level of her involvement beforehand, is the degree of accountability to whcih she should be held. In my opinion, she should be held in juvenile detention until she is eighteen, undergo extensive and comprehensive therapy, and her incarceration shouldcontinue in a halfway house setting until the age of 21 to 25, depending on the degree of her adjustment and progress.
David Ludwigs story is a different one. I feel that he should receive 20 years to life. In other words, he should not be released from prison until a full twenty years have passed, after which he should remain on parole for the remainder of his natural life, assumming he makes parole. He might well never leave prison. At the age of eighteen, he might be too far gone by now to be rehabilitated.
Some might feel this is too lenient, especialy for a girl who may have actually been involved in the pre-meditated murder of her parents, and indeed if that turns out to be the case, then perhaps a harsher sentence might be called for. It is horrible though, and an indictment of our society today, not so much that children of this age might face such harsh punishment for such crimes as these, but that they become deevolved downward to the state that they become capable of such actions as these in the first place.
But then again, like I said, when you get right down to it, we are all just animals anyway, and once the pretense of anything otherwise is stripped away, we are after all creatures of instinct. Teenagers, especially those at the age of puberty, are certainly all the more so.
