How The Cult of The Kid Is Making America Not Great

There were likely no or few kids on board EgyptAir Flight 804 that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea, on May 19. Had there been kids on board, we’d be hearing about it a LOT.

Of the 224 people on board the Russian metro jet airbus—it crashed in March—17 were children. I know this because each time TV anchors reported about the plane that went down in the Sinai desert, near El Arish (once way safer because under Israeli control); they counted the kids.

Is the death of a child more of a loss than the death of an adult? Apparently so. Adult lives matter less.

The hallmark of an infantile even immoral society is the deification of The Child. Not for nothing did the Communist slave societies place kids in control of their parents. This is how one inverts the moral order, also the aim of Communism’s leaders.

The feral kids took to killing their elders like the proverbial ducks to water. It’s all in “The Black Book of Communism: CRIMES, TERROR, REPRESSION,” published by Harvard University Press, written by the finest scholars to survive Communism. The BBOC should be compulsory reading for every Bernie Sanders supporter—for every American, once Bill O’Reilly “preps” the text for popular consumption.

Where the mini-Communists killed their Confucian-minded elders—they did so absent any remorse or angst. For kids are naturally feral and liberal. They want nothing more than more privileges, more license and lenience; fewer demands for obedience, chores and hard work. This every parent knows firsthand.

In “The Death of the Grown-Up,” author Diana West contended that “America’s arrested development is bringing down Western Civilization.” Certainly, a moral society must be a hierarchical society, one in which adults guide children until they’re capable of governing themselves.

But first, adults have to be adults. And they’re not.

Take the parent who declared, as a DRUDGE headline blared, that his “Eight-Year-Old Son’s iPad Addiction Is As Real As Alcoholism, Drug Abuse.”  The editorial so titled was published on a large website. In line with the prevailing anti-intellectual childishness, public writing has turned into public advocacy. Conjure and cultivate a malady, share it with the world, and—abracadabra!—you’re a hero. In any event, you don’t need to read this flaccid folderol to know the following:

* It’s the fault of the parent that little snot is addicted not to books or to outdoor ball games, but to gadgets.
* Who gave sonny boy the gadget? The parent did! Take the iPad away.
* Stop paying for your kids’ cell phones and assorted hand-held devices. (It costs a fortune!)

We survived without them. If the kid needs to contact crazy-in-love parent urgently, he or she can go to the principal’s office. It’ll give Kid an opportunity to practice a few civilizing skills you’ve refrained from imparting, lest manners mess with his élan:

Knock on the principal’s door. Enter when she says so (a school principal is never a guy these days). Address her as Ma’am or Mrs. Ask if you may call mom or dad. Say “please” and “thank you.” Alternatively, parent can tell progeny to wait on the corner to be fetched; just like he, the parent, used to do (we walked home, a few kilometers a day).

Oh, and if a stranger sidles up to Kid … I bet he knows that protocol better than the Ten Commandments.

Speaking of the Decalogue, notice the rise in the phenomenon of kids killing their parents, also the ultimate sin. The “trend” coincides with decades of parental and pedagogic progressivism. A lack of moral instruction of a traditional kind will do that.

After fielding many angry “Think About The Kids” missives on a Twitter thread, I thought I’d send parents (I’m one) packing with this bit of advice. Don’t prostrate your Adult Self before The Kids. Traditionalists value hierarchy. True-blue cultural traditionalism doesn’t deify Kids. It follows the great Florence King’s injunction that “children have no business expressing opinions on anything except, ‘Do you have enough room in the toes?'” (For goodness sake, doesn’t the frontal cortex in young adults take ages to fully develop?)

It’s bad enough that, “In America,” as Oscar Wilde observed, “the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.” Why must their parents foist their cherubs on innocent others? Part of being an adult is being able to interact with other adults absent The Kids.

The Chinese—with whom Donald Trump says we’re in a life-and-death struggle—are inclined to think a youth-obsessed society such as ours is a silly society. The standard inquiry, I am told, made by Taiwanese engineers about their American counterparts in hardware engineering is, “How many grey hairs and no-hairs are in the group?” Unlike their youth-worshiping American colleagues, the Chinese think the presence of “grey hairs and no-hairs” in the collaborating high-tech team bodes better for the project.

Of course, it’s not the child’s fault that the adults in his life have conditioned him to be their miserable, sniveling clone. The adults are to blame for molding kids in their image. That kids today are a shadow of their former selves is the fault of the grown-ups. (Saddest of all is that most kids are socialists, as their intellectual upbringing has been monopolized by progressive pedagogues, who’re driven by crass politics.)

My all-time favorite fictional kid has to be the kid in O. Henry’s (1862-1910) classic short story, “The Ransom of Red Chief.” Not only is “The Ransom of Red Chief” an American classic (written by a southerner, of course)—it hearkens back to a time when kids had character; kid character. Whatever happened to childish mischief, whatever happened to the Authentic Child? Basically, the kidnapped kid, “Red Chief,” is so imaginatively naughty—never evil or wicked—that his kidnappers end up paying his wealthy grandad to take him back.

Kids, reclaim your inner “Red Chief.” Return to being real children. Parents, give your kids permission to quit banging on about raising money for breast cancer or for the Shriners Hospitals for Children. It’s bloody unnatural, positively creepy. Besides, making kids beg for money is in bad form. Has no one read “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens?

While you’re at it, buy your little boy “The Dangerous Book For Boys.” Oh boy, are you in for a treat!

©ILANA Mercer
The Unz Review, Quarterly Review,
The Libertarian Alliance &  Constitution.com
May 26, 2016