Little did I know, when I moved to Robbinsdale, Minnesota, that I was relocating to a seedbed of treason. But so it appears. Not one but two jihadist casualties overseas have been identified as former students at Robbinsdale Cooper High School. And it gets closer than that, as I’ll explain.

First, a little orientation. Robbinsdale Cooper High School is not in fact located in Robbinsdale. The historical reasons are convoluted (I don’t actually know them), but enough to say that the school district includes several inner ring suburbs. In any case, it’s close to me.

More than that, early reports (the information seems to have been redacted now; perhaps it was in error) stated that the latest casualty, Douglas McAuthor (sic) McCain, dead in Syria, lived on Oregon Avenue in New Hope.

Before I bought my house, I lived in an apartment building on Oregon Avenue in New Hope. New Hope isn’t that big. Oregon Avenue isn’t that long. We were neighbors. I very likely rubbed shoulders with him at some point.

Even so, I find it hard to generate a lot of sympathy for the young man. He was born in America, and New Hope isn’t a ghetto. He had ample opportunities to respond to the gospel. Instead he joined a death cult to murder infidels and rape women.

Still, after some consideration, I can think of a couple reasons to pity him.

First of all, he had the misfortune to be educated by the American public school system. I have no personal experience with Robbinsdale Cooper High School (except for helping to pay for it), but I’m confident he was taught in the same way as most American public school students. He would have been informed that there’s one big problem in the world – America. All the world’s troubles – political, economical, environmental – all come back to the Great Satan that is America. If he had a smidgen of decency or idealism, he might easily have been convinced that the best way to make the world a better place would be to destroy America.

Secondly, he had the misfortune to be born a boy in the late 20th Century. As such he would have been scolded and punished for acting like a boy, unfavorably compared to girls, and told he had no necessary place in a society where a family with a father is purely optional.

Why wouldn’t he be attracted to an ideology that glorifies manhood and honors the things that a man can do?

We have prepared a scourge for our own backs in the boys we’re raising. Douglas McAuthor McCain is just one of the first.