While individual headline events capture attention and galvanize opinion, there is a growing atmosphere of diminished value of human life and an unwitting acceptance of violence that surrounds us all.
U.S. teen reaction to tragic events in their midst and their actions to change this progression toward diminished human values and lost human potential should be respected, and even lauded.
They will soon inherit the reality around them, as the current generation in power and with responsibility to decide and determine the future will fade into the backdrop.
These young people would do well to see beyond headline events and to understand the context influencing those events. They would do well to pay equal attention to the thousands of their peers and friends lost to the opioid scourge, while drug companies prosper; to a culture of violence and alienation growing in their midst, while gaming and entertainment companies thrive; to the loss of many of their friends due to distracted or impaired driving, while they strive to remain technologically connected in real time.
They would do well to examine the disintegration of the family, and the resulting alienation of millions among them.
They would do well to look beyond our own horizon and pay attention to the recent and current atrocities upon citizens committed by established governments around the world. They would do well to understand all that has gone before them to guarantee their freedom to voice their concerns.
We are about to lose the last of a generation that faced a likely reality of worldwide tyranny if it didn’t act, a generation from which many set aside their individual rights to happiness and a comfortable future, and at roughly the age of today’s young activists went to far off battlefields filled with tragedy and valor to fight to preserve personal freedoms that most of the world through history has never enjoyed. Hundreds of thousands of those Americans didn’t return to enjoy those freedoms, many more returning to live scarred or impaired lives.
That enlightened and sacrificial young generation prolonged a unique gift of freedom for us all living now, and to any future generations that will continue to value it.
Our own current generation of young people seem uncertain of, or confused and complacent about, the foundations of American freedom. The brightest of them shout down on college campuses those who don’t share their world view, questioning the right for competing or alternative views to be given a voice.
In some of their arguments, they demonstrate a lack of understanding of the uniqueness, effectiveness and necessity of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights in assuring their liberty to pursue their own happiness and those of generations to follow.
Freedom is guaranteed to make all who enjoy it uncomfortable at times, but as those who have lived under tyranny would attest, it is far less uncomfortable than the alternatives.
To not understand the foundations guaranteeing our freedoms is to guarantee these freedoms will sooner or later be lost.
May this young generation understand, and act.
(William P. Dowst lives in Weare.)