The Tragedy of a Stolen Childhood

One of the purposes of Biblical teaching is to teach wisdom.  Wisdom can be acquired through learning from other's mistakes, or learning through one's own mistakes.  The second method is not recommended because we seldom live long enough to become wise on our own.

Unfortunately for us, the so called "youth culture" of today, which is promoted because one can make money and have fame from the idiocy of the young person's drive to gain status with the opposite sex.  If the young person can be manipulated into believing that if certain products are purchased, or as the Left uses it, certain ideas are espoused, it will give one status, then the adults who are making the products or promoting the ideas can gain money and power.

Back before dinosaurs roamed the earth, in the 1950s and the 1960s, there was great fear that life on earth would be wiped out by nuclear war.  (That was before we were going to freeze to death due to global cooling.)  I hate to admit it, but I was caught up in the hysteria.  Great scientists had devised something called the Doomsday Clock. The link is to Wikipedia, which gives a somewhat inaccurate description. The Doomsday Clock was only about the probability of nuclear war, and was set at the 11th hour to constantly remind everyone that we were only a push button away from nuclear doom. It hung over us children like a sword of Damocles.   We had regular practice for air raids, which of course we knew even then would not save us.  And we too felt that we could not enjoy life for fear it would be cut short. Why have children? It almost seemed irresponsible, immoral even to do so.

Fortunately, our parents, having lived through a horrible world war, were more sanguine about the future. Today, when people ask me how am I doing, I say "So far so good."  The saying represents the fact that right at this moment I am healthy, and have everything I need. In another moment I may not, but the important thing is to stay in the here and now. The past is the past, and one should learn from it, but not dwell on it. It is like a cancelled check. The future is a promissory note that may not come true. All you have is the moment. Make the best of what you have in that moment. 

Today, the Left is trying to sell the world on the idea that CO2 is the great danger.  That carbon dioxide is warming the earth, that the world will burn up, and the human race will go extinct.  Some people predict that the only animal to survive will be the cockroach.  Having experienced the Left's alarmism before, I say "Balderdash!"

Dennis Prager says it better in a post at Townhall.com entitled If You Can't Sell Your Hysteria To Adults, Try Kids. Of course, the great tragedy is that the Left has convinced teenagers to believe that they are somehow wise enough to tell adults what to do. And then we have a 16 year old Swedish school girl who has the audacity to do it in front of the whole world! Will she be embarrassed when 12 years later she still has to go through a harsh Swedish winter? I wonder?

The entire American left -- the mainstream media, the environmentalist movement and Democratic politicians in particular -- are celebrating the involvement of teenagers and even younger children in protesting the world's "inaction" with regard to global warming.

...snip...

Apparently, however, the left-wing hysteria about global warming leading to the virtual extinction of life on Earth has not moved enough adults. Many adults who do not deny that the Earth is getting warmer -- such as Danish writer and environmentalist thinker Bjorn Lomborg -- do deny that the threat is "existential" and do believe that the left's solutions, such as the Green New Deal, will damage the world far more than will carbon emissions. Proof that the left is hysterical is its unwillingness to promote nuclear power -- a completely clean, non-fossil fuel-based source of power. It provides France with 70 percent of its energy. Anyone who really believes life on Earth is endangered would grasp at the nuclear power lifeboat. That they do not proves what many of us have believed from the beginning: The "existential threat" scenario is another left-wing falsehood used to whip up hysteria that will lead to the left's control of the economy and society.

And that takes us back to the children: If you can't sell your hysteria to adults, try kids. And that is what the left has done. After all, no one is as malleable or as easily indoctrinated as children.

Consider this: If the left didn't tell them the world is going to end, they wouldn't worry about it. They'd be enjoying their young lives, maybe even learning to appreciate that they live in the freest country at the most prosperous time in human history. Instead, thanks to leftists (who are children in adult bodies), they live in their grip of "existential eco-anxiety."

David Harsanyi, writing at The Federalist notes in at article enitiled The Tragedy of Greta Thunberg that:

Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg lives in the healthiest, wealthiest, safest, and most peaceful era humans have ever known. She is one of the luckiest people ever to have lived.

In a just world, Thunberg would be at the United Nations thanking capitalist countries for bequeathing her this remarkable inheritance. Instead, she, like millions of other indoctrinated kids her age, act as if they live in a uniquely broken world on the precipice of disaster. This is a tragedy.

Yes, it is a tragedy. Even more tragic though is that so called world leaders, of presumably great accomplishments, deign to listen to a 16 year old who has no expertise, has not done anything of importance, has not done any research...why is she there? But of course we know. The Left has poured this hogwash into her little skull full of mush and now she can regurgitate what has been force fed her to perfection, with just the right amount of heart felt righteous anger. But her anger is misplaced. She should be railing at the alarmists who have stolen her childhood.

Please read both articles.