If you want proof that our system is broken, you need only look at today’s hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, where children who aren’t old enough to vote testified against the nominee. The great sages of the Democratic Party are kids who know little-to-nothing about the role of the Supreme Court, as their testimonies demonstrated today.

First up was Parkland shooting survivor Aalayah Eastmond. “I am very concerned since learning Brett Kavanaugh’s views on guns, and how he would strike down any assault weapons ban,” she explained — an opinion no doubt informed by her close reading of his opinions on the matter as well as her knowledge of precedents on the Second Amendment. (Or were they informed by her activist handlers on the left.) She also took the time to call out “Second Amendment extremist groups” and “other domestic terrorists.”

“Like many of my brothers and sisters of color, I am not comforted by deputies with handguns, let alone assault rifles,” she opined, which leads one to wonder whether Miss Eastmond and her media coaches have really thought through what would happen in, say, Chicago, if we disarmed the police.

Eastmond was followed by two children with chronic health problems, both of whom have apparently been led to believe that if Kavanaugh is confirmed, they will be banned from seeking treatment for their conditions and forced to breathe dirty air. Hunter Lechance, a 15-year-old asthma sufferer, warned that if Kavanaugh is confirmed it would mean “more air pollution, more asthma attacks, and more premature deaths for the millions of Americans unfortunate enough to be afflicted with asthma like me.”

Jackson Corbin, a 13-year-old afflicted with Noonan Syndrome, begged senators not to “destroy protections for pre-existing conditions” that would leave him and others like him “without care or without the ability to afford our care – all because of who we are.”

Unborn victims of Roe v. Wade were not available to testify at the hearings.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) followed their testimony with fear-mongering a solemn warning to the children that they’re up against powerful and terrifying “forces” in the Republican Party who want dirty air and dirty water and who aren’t afraid to parade phony scientists before the Senate to make sure people die from pollution. He also fingered the NRA, a shadowy organization that, in Whitehouse’s opinion, is running a shadow government within the United States. Or something.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) followed up by asking Eastmond what p0licies she would like to see enacted — again, highlighting how far off-track these hearings have gone. Rather than focusing on Kavanaugh’s judicial philosophy and his legal opinions, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have chosen to focus on legislative issues that are the purvue of Congress — not the Supreme Court. They’ve paraded their personal legislative hobby horses before the cameras, suggesting that it’s the role of a Supreme Court justice to craft legislation from the bench.

These children have every right to share their stories on their own terms and even have the right to petition the government to address their concerns. Their stories are heartbreaking and these kids need our prayers and our compassion.

But that doesn’t mean we should listen to them, at least as far as the Supreme Court confirmation process is concerned.

They’re children, after all, and their feeling and experiences should not determine who gets confirmed to the highest court in the land. But feelings and experiences are all the progressive left have at this point. The American people continue to reject the socialist-progressive model of government they’re selling, so they rely on children, using them as props and rhetorical human shields to stir up emotions and evoke fear in the hearts of their constituents.

Aristotle, of course, famously said, “The law is reason free from passion,” but for the modern left, there is no separation. “Passion,” “emotions,” and “experiences” — even those of children — are valued over and above reason, jurisprudence, and even the law in some cases.

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This article was updated to include a reference to children harmed by Roe v. Wade and the related tweet.