I saw some commie ninny praising the enlightened brilliance of child activists advocating for left-wing causes, and my eyes nearly rolled back far enough in my skull to leave me blind.  Only cultists and communists hang on to every utterance from the most inexperienced humans now alive and treat their incipient musings as evidence for refined wisdom.  It doesn't matter if it's Greta Thunberg proving she has no understanding of climate science or some poor, brainwashed tot conditioned to recite his/her/its "special" pronouns — when an adult goes gaga over a kid's political pronouncements, it's creepy, not compassionate. 

My beef isn't with our youngest generation; my fury lies with their tormentors.  Innocents are being used today, just as they have always been used throughout history, as sacrificial lambs for the unscrupulous to slaughter.  Oh, look, a child — who is neither old enough to possess a necessary base of knowledge for true reflection nor experienced enough to comprehend a world filled with deceit — the ideal sucker for leftists everywhere!  First to be pushed to the front lines of battle, first to have their futures stolen from underneath their feet, first to be manipulated by the wealthy and powerful who see them not as special — but as vulnerable and weak!

Dear children: When adults think you are too immature to own a firearm or live without financial dependence upon the government but believe you should nonetheless be voting in elections by the time you're sixteen, they value not your mental acuity, but rather your naïveté.  They're the conmen; you're their mark; and if they inappropriately insist on sexualizing their conversations with you, you're also their prey.  Run far away!

Totalitarians always use children to unleash evil because everyone else has been around long enough to know exactly how evil begins!  Psychopathic murderer Lenin infamously boasted, "Give me four years to teach the children, and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."  Psychopathic murderer Mao taught grade-schoolers to torture their teachers during the Cultural Revolution.  Psychopathic murderer Hitler had his innocent-looking yet devilishly dangerous Hitler Youth.  Africa's psychopathic warlords have for decades recruited and enslaved child soldiers for their armies.  Today, psychopathic Antifa targets adolescents to fill the ranks of its shock troops, not at all different from the get-'em-while-they're-young recruiting strategies of criminal gangs.  Whenever and wherever in history young people have been told that they are smarter and more deserving than the older generations living beside them, they have been manipulatively used as a cheap supply of cannon fodder, a means to instigate murder and mayhem, and an army of gullible dopes too unworldly to protest.

Youthful inexperience combined with unearned confidence, excess exuberance, or outright haughtiness makes it easy for tyrants to fill their ranks.  This stubborn and disheartening reality always reminds me of one of Philip Larkin's poetic masterpieces: "This is the first thing / I have understood: / Time is the echo of an axe / Within a wood."  Those who use innocents to fight their battles never have trouble crafting a new axe with which to cleave society in two.  Yesterday it was Mao and Stalin; today it is the Democrat party and the World Economic Forum.  Adults who put children on pedestals also put them in unmarked graves.

Oh, children, I pity what you endure today.  Your political leaders are scoundrels.  Your culture is sick.  Your schools are cesspools for indoctrination, where knowledge and critical thinking skills go to die.  You have been told that a changing climate will destroy the planet.  You have been told that COVID will kill your family.  You have been told that you will kill your grandparents for not wearing enough face masks or — Heaven forfend! — giving too long of a hug.  You have been told that boys and girls don't exist and that all of the obvious physical differences between the sexes are social fictions.  If you are white, you have been told you're an oppressor.  If you're black or brown, you've been told that you're oppressed.  If you're a boy, you've been warned about your "toxic" nature (which is counterintuitively still possible in a world pretending to be ruled by social constructs).  If you're a girl, you've been taught that you've never been valued enough.

The nub of it is that children have been told outrageous lies their whole lives from just about anybody in a position of authority outside their homes.  To the extent that their families have contradicted these lies with articulated truths, they have been forced to grow up learning two realities simultaneously: the one taught in the privacy of your own home and the one forced upon you by "educational" and other public institutions governing the outside world.  That is no easy trick for even a seasoned adult!  It is an enormously unfair burden to lay on any child just trying to figure the world out!

In another era, we would call this obvious psychological abuse.  Today's children just call it part of growing up.  

In the past, churches and community leaders could be counted upon to set good examples for all children.  Today, too many of betray their missions, responsibilities, and faiths.  In the past, Americans were taught that hard work and discipline would take them far; now they are taught that too much competition or preparation is a sign of "white supremacy."  In the past, Americans were encouraged to sustain their spiritual devotion to God; now they are taught that they are merely "hackable animals" without souls or the capacity for free will.  In the past, science was understood as an objective pursuit of knowledge whose journey could never be complete; now science is either politically "settled" and no longer permitted to be debated or presented as proof of "capitalist indoctrination," racism, or rooted sexist beliefs.  

Not long ago, most international corporations could be trusted to provide wholesome entertainment and moral content for children; now even brands once synonymous with protecting and promoting childhood innocence — such as Disney — go out of their way to sexualize kids!  Until recently, the number of people outside a family capable of influencing any child was relatively small; now TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have opened up a world of bad actors promoting eating disorders, transgenderism, suicide, and other self-harm.  Fifteen years ago, our society knew that young girls could be tomboys and young boys might go through a playacting "phase"; now medical "professionals," teachers, television shows, and even lost presidents encourage our very youngest to cut off body parts and embrace infertility at the first sign of a personality trait that might be claimed as "gay."

Before the spread of Christianity began two millennia ago, much of the world saw children as disposable "things," unworthy of consideration until reaching a certain age.  One of the immeasurable blessings derived directly from Christ's teachings is the recognition that we have a profound responsibility to protect and nurture the youngest and most vulnerable among us.  Today, that civilizational foundation is crumbling.  Whether it is governments' wholesale embrace of abortion on demand, the inexcusable sexualization of minors for adults' entertainment, or the endless barrage of lies children are force-fed every day, this world right now is failing them in every way.  

For decades, leftists have been screaming, "Save the children!" in order to get their way on any hot-button issue.  In reality, they've been burying the children right before our eyes.  For those who understand what's happening, the only Americans who can "save the children" from lasting harm are those willing to fight back against the deadly world leftists seek to create.

Image via Pxhere.