The Saturday evening before Easter, a mob of 500 teenagers menaced, punched, and assaulted shoppers and diners strolling through Chicago’s tony Magnificent Mile district; around the same time, 10 juveniles attacked a group of women boarding a Chicago Transit Authority train. Both crimes—called “wilding” in street jargon—were planned weeks before via social media. In other large urban areas like New York, Philadelphia and New Orleans, these “flash mob” melees are happening with increasing frequency.
Where’s the outrage?
Steubenville, Ohio’s claims to fame are its long-empty steel mills and hometown Rat Packer Dean Martin. Now it is known for something much more sinister. Last summer, a 16-year-old girl became incapacitated by alcohol and drugs at a neighborhood party. Two high-school football players raped the unconscious girl for six hours, dragging her house to house, filming the savagery along the way.
After the two were convicted last month, CNN’s Candy Crowley and Poppy Harlow were distraught. Not for the victim, mind you, but for the rapists, with Harlow saying that it was “incredibly difficult” to watch these young men “who had such promising futures, star football players, very good students.” CNN’s legal analyst Paul Callan agreed wholeheartedly: “The most severe thing with these young men is being labeled as registered sex offenders…that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.”
What’s wrong with this picture?
Children put a human face on our value system. That being the case, the reality of teen mobs assaulting strangers in shopping malls and the boy next door morphing into a violent sociopath should shock us to our core. Yet we hear nary a word of dismay from our President and other opinion leaders.
On the face of it, you would think the left would be leading the charge. After all, liberals have done a fabulous job marketing themselves as people who care: for women, the elderly and most of all, our young. Using government largesse, progressives shill for more Food Stamps (feed the kids); higher teacher salaries (educate the kids); copious welfare and unemployment benefits (house the kids).
Lift the progressive lobby’s veneer of compassion, however, and its dark underbelly surfaces—and let me tell you, it isn’t helping kids.
In American today, more than 40 percent of babies, (75 percent for African-American infants) are born to unwed moms. Up to half of urban students drop out of high school despite the fact that U.S. education spending is markedly higher than in Korea, Japan and most European countries with vastly superior performance. Greater than one in 10 school-age children is diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Popular culture aimed at youth, from reality TV to violence-laced rap music, celebrates unrestrained hedonism which has led, as in Steubenville, to devastating consequences.
Meanwhile, barely a yawn of unease from the libertines. The reason for their indifference is actually pretty simple: when right and wrong become conditional, virtually any behavior is acceptable.
The progressive elite have become more concerned about appearing tolerant than instilling values and supporting policies that would actually benefit the well-being of American children. Morning-after pills for 11-year-olds; protecting the rights of online sex-predators; web sites dedicated to “spring break hook-ups;” parents hosting underage binge- drinking parties; homes with no dad, no mom.
No problem. Better to be cool than judgmental—as long as you care.
Inner city schools are failing, yet liberals and teachers unions vehemently oppose school choice, disingenuously blaming their abysmal track record on funding issues. While fatherless families are the norm in low-income communities, grievance brokers squawk about a fictional “war on women” rather than the real-life war on children.
Our kids are crying for help and all the left offers is moral relativism disguised as moral superiority. It won’t work; it hasn’t worked. Facts be damned—liberals are cockier than ever assuming that they, not parents, can do a better job molding young hearts and minds.
Currently, MSNBC is running a promotion called “Lean Forward” narrated by host Melissa Harris-Perry. “We haven’t had a very collective notion of ‘these are our children,'” she says in the ad. “So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that ‘kids belong to their parents,’ or ‘kids belong to their families,’ and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.” Surprise, surprise—she also manages to squeeze in a pitch for more public school funding.
Uh, I don’t think marching our kids over to the left’s version of the Hitler youth is what we need. After all, for the past half century progressive policies have enabled Detroiters to achieve a whopping 53 percent literacy rate. Do we want more of this?
Apparently MSNBC does. Bordering on abuse, another one of the network’s hosts exploits her four-year-old daughter to promote same-sex marriage. Krystal Ball, in a short video called “Political Playground,” (you can’t make this stuff up), coaches her tot to respond to “Can you marry a girl” with “…Only in New York. Girls can marry girls and boys can marry boys.”
Truth be told, many good people have become passive bystanders while America’s young are wandering through a wilderness of fuzzy ethics, inferior education and out-and-out propaganda. Enough. Caring is not about indulgence and exploitation—and it’s up to the real adults in the room to do say so before we hand our children to Harris-Perry and her collectivist brethren.
flyoverculture.com 