photo: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons license. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/25483445521
There is something deeply ingrained in human culture that runs from our oldest legends: when in situations of panic or fear, people will turn to the most unlikely oracles.
As a student of literature, I suffered through several ballads and myths in which – pick one – the true king, the real murderer, or the lost prince were identified by “an infant at the breast.”
Annoying and illogical though this type of denouement was, in the context of historical tales, it was sort of understandable. After all, Romans used to look for clues on how to conduct warfare in the flight of birds or the entrails of various animals.
Minds who don't comprehend science ascribe great predictive importance to things like the reading of animal entrails. They also think that the unlettered and unformed, i.e. children and idiots, had a direct line to the gods.
I guess in that context I shouldn’t be surprised to see this article in the Washington Post:
That an article is written about the political snub inflicted on the speaker of the House by middle schoolers from a very liberal state is strange enough. The article itself is even more bizarre, studded with gems such as this:
Matthew Malespina, one of the students who stayed away, said in an interview Sunday that he chose not to be photographed with Ryan because he disagreed with the policies the speaker and his party are pushing on health care, among other things. He called Ryan “a man who puts his party before his country.”He said he and the others stood across the street while Ryan posed with their peers. Their act of civil disobedience was picked up by a local news website, the Village Green, and drew attention from larger media outlets.“I don’t like to take a picture with somebody that I can’t associate with,” Matthew, 13, told The Washington Post. “Let’s say somebody is not nice to me at school, for example. I wouldn’t take a picture with them, probably.”
Consider what the coverage of the same event would have been if the politician in question had been Obama. I mean, can you not see the headline “Half of the Class Is Racist”?
And yet, as adults know -– well, scientifically minded, rational adults, which apparently don’t exist in the editorial offices of the Washington post –- there is a reason that 13-year-olds don’t vote, and a reason in fact that setting the age of majority at 18, when many people have never had to work or deal with taxes and finances, is of dubious validity. Thirteen-year-olds are not yet fully grown. Their brains, their critical faculties, their life experience and their learning are, all of them, not fully formed. They simply lack the understanding and knowledge to form unbiased, individual opinions. Yes, we hear you. So do the journalists at the Washington Post. But that’s beside the point. While some 13-year-olds might be geniuses, and we know many60-year-old morons, when it comes to fully formed political opinions and understanding of current events, the way to bet is that the 60-year-old will have something better worth listening to than the 13-year-old.
Note that the young man quoted above speaks in generalities, and is, in fact, parroting the Washington Post editorials back at the journalist. Note that this sort of political weaponizing of children is an old trick of the left. For instance, in the USSR, children were often taught to turn their own parents in, in the service of the party. This was noted on Twitchy: "'Reminds me of Russia': 8th grade snowflakes spurn Paul Ryan during DC trip."
All of this harks back to the fact that Marxism is, if not a fully formed religion, at least a myth-based theory of society. As such, it encourages dogma over rationality, and like any such set of beliefs, it enshrines the untutored, the savage and the children as being the conduits of natural feelings and truth.
However, since most things in Marxism are circular, Marxist systems, including those endorsed by our left (many of whom are so ignorant as to not even be aware of their roots), encourage the indoctrination of children, and then take the words of the child as pure truth and untutored.
I guess when you’re trying to push the primacy of state, the group over the individual, the curtailment of private property, and other such principles that have led to a hundred million dead the world over, you have to control the inputs and then convince yourself they are utterly unbiased.
If it weren’t so sad, it would be something to laugh about. Because even the child can tell the king press is naked.
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