After an extended period involving student walkouts, protesting of gun violence and gathering in support of stricter gun laws, the Parkland students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School returned to class this week with a new set of restrictions.

Broward County Sheriff’s deputies are now stationed on campus daily

Florida Highway Patrol troopers will monitor gates from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

All students and staff are required to wear lanyards with their photo IDs at all times

Students must pass through 4 monitored gates before classes start and then one entry point after the bell rings

Sports bags and musical cases are checked when entering and must be left with a teacher or coach before the start of school

Classrooms must be locked at all times

Many students found these changes as being too restrictive with some of them stating that it “feels like being punished” and “feels like jail.” Being under constant surveillance and having to lug around unfashionable, clear backpacks may mean more security but it comes at the expense of less privacy.

The 14-year-old sister of 17-year-old preeminent Parkland protester, David Hogg, took to Twitter to complain about the changes.

It should go without saying that a child’s opinion isn’t typically considered when it concerns political issues, especially when dealing with individual rights, and for obvious reasons. Young people tend to rely more on feelings than on reason, often rendering them unable to see the forest for the trees. Important and impactful life experiences, like getting a job and paying taxes, having a family, and/or starting a business, grant larger perspectives and allow an individual the capability to better decipher fantasy from reality. Activist teenagers, regardless of their political leanings, have experienced little of this (While the progressive kid activists are in the spotlight at the moment, there have been kids conservatives have trotted out and exploited for political gain also.).

This doesn’t mean that life experience alone makes for rational, well-reasoned people. In fact, many of the survivors of the school shooting claim to be experts on mass shootings because they happened to experience one. This is akin to an average Joe bank customer experiencing a bank heist and going on the news talking about how he knows “exactly” what he’s talking about. Sure, he may know exactly how he feels or exactly how he recalls his experience, but this doesn’t grant him some extra knowledge about reality that automatically gives his argument more weight. The difference in this case is that there may be more of a reason the average Joe bank customer may have more credibility than an average teenager. He’s more likely than a 14 or 17-year-old to have a greater perspective as a whole and, with many more responsibilities in having a career, family, and so on, there is much more going on in his life that should compel him to be more reason-minded than emotion-minded.

Of course, this is considered “ageism,” a new buzzword for age discrimination; however, these activist kids have little to lose personally by protesting and, despite stepping into the public arena of debate with the big boys and girls, are being protected by the media and other self-important types because of their age.

Some survivors of the shooting in Parkland have lashed out at their critics. Cameron Kasky passionately told Bill Maher on his show Politically Incorrect, “They’re trying to say we don’t know what we’re talking about… We are the experts. We know exactly what we are talking about. How dare you?” Being that Kasky’s frustrated mannerisms were aimed at the host, Maher jokingly said, “I’m Friend. Friend.”

Naturally, kids raised by state institutions divorced from any principles other than ones focused on violence-based government solutions and devoid of teaching personal responsibility tend to find meaning by being involved in movements and organizations that offer to provide something meaningful to fight for, almost always advocating for more government. These activist organizations, many of which “miraculously” spring up with tons funding and political support, like March For Our Lives and Black Lives Matter offer the ability to be a part of something bigger with a creed and group identity to blend into, ultimately relying on collective emotional frustrations used to bully and manipulate. Rather than forming and defending reasoned arguments or instead of having speaking engagements that allow for the crossfire of different opinions, these activist organizations use large numbers of people to shut down dissenting opinion by being loud, obnoxious and/or violent. Anyone who has followed the attempts of Jordan Peterson, Milo Yiannopoulos, Ben Shapiro or Ann Coulter to speak publicly can attest to this.

A quote by Thomas Sowell: “I think we’re raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional. We have kids in elementary school who are being urged to take stands on political issues, to write letters to congressmen and presidents about nuclear energy. They’re not a decade old, and they’re being thrown these kinds of questions that can absorb the lifetime of a very brilliant and learned man. And they’re being taught that it’s important to have views, and they’re not being taught that it’s important to know what you’re talking about. It’s important to hear the opposite viewpoint, and more important to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different, and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. They disregard that. They hear something, they hear some rhetoric, and they run with it.”

Unfortunately for many of these kids who may be well-intentioned, whether a part of activist organizations or not, they don’t yet understand the long-term effects of pushing for more government control. Then again, how can they when at a very young age they are conscripted into attending schools in which they are taught by teachers employed by education bureaucracies their parents are forced to fund? In the end, it’s a push for more violent enforcement of new laws, and if gun confiscation becomes a serious focal point for progressive politicans, it will be a much bloodier civil struggle than the one affecting free speech.

Going to class and coming to the realization that instead of getting what they want (the rights of others being restricted), they come to discover their own privacy is being restricted to the point of feeling like a punishment or even jail time. Now, they must have identification showing at all times, check in and take longer to get to class, are surrounded by more police (and guns), have their personal belongings searched, and use smelly plastic see-through backpacks all in an effort to become safer. If public schools didn’t seem like prisons already, these measures will make it more obvious, and a yearning for more private and home schooling may become more of a reality.

One of the best things for these students to understand quickly is that petitioning politicians and bureaucrats to trade liberties for more security will only mean less access to privacy and security.

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