Peggy Noonan, a special assistant and speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, isn’t exactly my favorite pundit, but she’s right on in her OpinionJournal.com column today on the effect on children of our cultural propensity toward in-your-face violence.

Her strongest language is aimed at the callousness of the rich:

We are frightening our children to death, and I’ll tell you what makes me angriest. I am not sure the makers of our culture fully notice what they are doing, what impact their work is having, because the makers of our culture are affluent. Affluence buys protection. You can afford to make your children safe. You can afford the constant vigilance needed to protect your children from the culture you produce, from the magazine and the TV and the CD and the radio. … The lacking, the poor, the working and middle class–they have no protection. Their kids are on their own. And they’re scared.

Suffer the little children.

Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners magazine.