David Hogg likes to talk a big game. Earlier this week, he stumbled on something that actually made a little sense, something I could completely agree with him on. It was the idea that the media shouldn’t be turning mass shooters into celebrities by plastering their names on every television in the country.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before he was back to his anti-gun zealotry. Now, though, he’s graduated to political extortion.

It started with these, that we noted in the above-linked story.

.@Publix is a #NRASellOut

In Parkland we will have a die in the Friday (the 25th) before memorial day weekend. Starting at 4pm for 12 min inside our 2 Publix stores. Just go an lie down starting at 4. Feel free to die in with us at as many other @Publix as possible. — David Hogg (@davidhogg111) May 23, 2018

We must hold these businesses accountable just like our politicians. — David Hogg (@davidhogg111) May 23, 2018

These are, of course, just what we’ve come to expect from Hogg. However, now he’s upping the ante by going trying extortion as a tactic.

I call on @Publix to donate double the money they gave to Putman to the Stoneman Douglas Victims fund, $1,000,000. And never support an A rated NRA politician again. — David Hogg (@davidhogg111) May 24, 2018

In other words, pay us or else.

The problem here is simple. David Hogg has gotten a taste of power and, like the old saying goes, power corrupts. Now, granted, Hogg started off down a dark path by trying to destroy people’s civil liberties, but he’s young. The young are often so idealistic that they don’t really think through things. He may well have believed that all the things he’s proposed would make the world better.

Yet now he’s trying to intimidate a corporation into donating a significant sum of money to a cause he supports.

That’s extortion.

Oh, Hogg and his followers can easily justify it. After all, everything is justifiable if you don’t really have hard and fast principles.

It was one thing when Hogg was calling for boycotts. While that was laughable too, at least it was consistent not just with free speech but the law as a whole.

What he’s doing now is arguably a crime. It certainly would be if you changed the context. If you told someone to pay out a million bucks or face potential damage to your business, you’d get arrested…

…unless you’re a political advocate, apparently.

Granted, I don’t want to see Hogg locked up. But I do want him to get the message that there are lines that even he doesn’t get to cross. Threatening businesses because they support a particular candidate unless they pay a lot of money is way on the other side of those lines.

But the adults around Hogg don’t seem to care. They, like Hogg, are so enmeshed in the idea that the ends justify the means that they don’t see this for what it is, a shakedown. It’s the kind of thing they’d never tolerate if directed at one of their own.

Imagine, for a moment, that Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams had a campaign contributor who was told to either pay $1,000,000 to the NRA or else they’d be the subject of massive protests all because of their support of Abrams. Can you picture the outrage, the shock?

I sure can.

But Hogg has tasted power, and he’s being more and more corrupted by it, and despite his youth, the supposed adults are taking their cues from him. To make matters worse, success only breeds more of this kind of behavior.

If Hogg wants to be vilified, he should keep this up. And I don’t mean vilified by gun-rights advocates, either. I’m talking about the rest of the population.

The question is, will the rest of the Parkland Kids follow suit?