There is a certain irony that the press for more government involvement on our lives, and especially in our economic lives, is coming from youths.

Note that I said "irony," not "surprise."

Youth is a time of two things: inexperience and idealism.  Both things that living is supposed to, and generally does, "cure."

"Once bitten, twice shy" goes the saying.  That painful truth has worked in humankind's favor for all eternity. "The school of hard knocks" is how it is sometimes referred to — especially by those who have attended classes there.

Yes, irony, indeed.

Youthful idealism was "cured" not by destroying it (although the said "school of hard knocks" has been known to do that), but by channeling it via the wisdom, not just of age, but of the age — and that in the form of tradition and, especially, religious teaching.

Bible stories such as that of Joseph's testing of his brothers before, not after, he looked out for their welfare are a sterling example of such.  It's the type of example and the type of "story" that once filled in youths' personal experience gaps until, and even after, their own life's experiences did.

Today, the typical response to the previous paragraph is likely "who was Joseph?"  (Maybe, Dear Reader, it was your own?)

Add to that deep hole in learning the protectiveness — the ever increasing shielding of youths from any and all hardship found in many homes and most school environs today — and the once hopefulness of youth is turned into hopelessness.  And a need for yet further shielding.

And a fleeing from ever "growing up."  That is at the heart of the increasing leftism of youth.

Once one no longer is open to learning from experience, one sees what we today are seeing happen in places like California.  Policies are put into place that have been over and over again tried and seen to fail.  When they fail again, yet more of the same is tried, and tried, and then tried again.  All this as the quality of life there deteriorates, leaving the unprepared to ask for yet more protection and more shielding from the unpleasantness that they have, through ignorance, brought upon themselves.

Today, society is, in the eyes of many, on the cusp of dissolution — not just in a theoretical sense, but in a real and practical one.

Our nation's debt is exploding just as its obligations to a vastly increasing number of "seniors" — i.e., retirees — is coming due.

Youths who under our system of Social Security were expected to pay this debt are in many cases themselves so indebted that they could well have the choice of refusing to pay it or see themselves go under.  This comes just as the political class has opened the borders (and now fights to keep them open), flooding the nation with people who are likely to be even more dependent than our own over-protected youths.

So, yes, there is an irony in all this — and an increasing division in our land.  It's between those who allow themselves to see what is happening and those who refuse to do so.  It's between those who wish to, and expect to, continue being "cared for" and those who are becoming less and less willing to endlessly care for them.

Meanwhile, the public show trial circus continues...welcomed by those who have found ways to profit by all the above.

Image credit: Phil Roeder via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.