OPINION:
The left-leaners and anti-gun zealots of America have been busy gushing over students who recently storm-walked out of school in protest of the Second Amendment and NRA and President Donald Trump and violence and such, painting these kids as near-martyrs in their sacrificial ceding of class for street rallies.
But the cynic-slash-realist has to wonder: Were these protests truly heart-felt shows of political dissent — or simply excuses to cut class? Come on now, be honest. And think to your own high school days and boredom in school.
Honestly, if school were a Monopoly game, National School Walkout day could very well have been the class equivalent of the Get Out of Jail free card.
It’s hard to see these organized protests as little more than propaganda pushes from the well-funded and well-connected of the left. After all, it’s the left’s particular pet slogan to never let a crisis go to waste.
After all, too, it’s the likes of George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey who’ve poured tens of thousands of dollars into the kids’ anti-gun campaign. And after all, once again, it’s the Women’s March Youth Empower group, a self-described national “collective of teenage activists” who organized the event — putting to rest any notions that these protests and marches were impromptu expressions of the grief-stricken.
Moreover, the children are all uniformly in line with what they want — more gun control, which curiously, coincidentally, happens to be the hotly contested cause of the decades for the Adult World of the left.
One can’t help but be cynical.
The “#Enough National School Walkout FAQ” page insists the march, which went forth on March 14, was organized and overseen entirely by the youth. It also explains that “we are living in an age where young people like us do not feel safe in our schools,” and that they walk for “ALL people who have experienced gun violence, including systemic forms of gun violence that disproportionately impact teens in Black and Brown communities.”
That’s a mouthful — a politically charged mouthful, yes? Pretty mature thinking for, what, 17-year-olds whose traditional lifestyles would put them juggling prom plans with college applications?
Read on.
“It is important that when we refer to gun violence, we do not overlook the impact of police brutality and militarized policing, or see police in schools as a solution,” the site continued. “We also recognize the United States has exported gun violence through imperialist foreign policy to destabilize other nations. We raise our voices for action against all these forms of gun violence.”
Imperialist foreign policy? Destabilizing other nations?
Good Lord, that sounds like something from the mouths of Hezbollah, or theAyatollah of Iran. Bluntly: Do you know many high schoolers who talk of the need to protest America’s imperialist foreign policy?
Certainly not thousands. Certainly not the thousands and thousands around the nation who participated in National School Walkout day.
No, for them, for the majority, the walk from class probably wasn’t so much a march against guns, a rally against violence — a protest against U.S. imperialism — as it was a chance to cut class.
And it’s too bad because given the principles of the march put forward by the organizers on their website, if anyone could use some more class-time and course instruction, particularly on U.S. history, the Constitution and the Founding Fathers’ rationale for the Second Amendment, it’s these school-cutting students.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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