By Adam Nash

November 12, 2020

Stereotypically, complaining about the naivety of youth is reserved for members of more senior generations. Being seventeen, I am expected to scoff at these ‘elderly’ people and reply with a ‘You’re just too old to understand!’. When it comes to politics, however, I am with grandpa.

Naïve young people have become slaves to propaganda, lies and deceit. Anyone daring to think even slightly outside the box is too often bullied, pressured to conform to society and ‘watch their privilege’. But who on earth is responsible for this? Who has been turning our children into conformist robots?

The answer is simple; leftists.

You may think I’m exaggerating when I say that young people no longer think for themselves, but I promise you I’m not lying. I sit through the classes. I watch the news. I scroll through social media. All I see is one opinion. I seldom see any young people challenge these leftist ideas, let alone come up with alternative opinions. It’s gotten so bad that anytime that I express an opinion on social media, I receive a flood of hate comments and half-funny zingers from people whose political ideology suggests they’d be happier in Venezuela or Cuba than the West. Whilst somewhat peculiar and almost always cringeworthy, the ‘woke police’ does its job and keeps everyone’s thoughts in line. Few question them and even fewer tell them that they’re just downright wrong. But why is this?

They say that you don’t fully appreciate something until it’s gone. I don’t know of anyone who walks around praising oxygen, yet if oxygen were to disappear I suspect that it might be at the forefront of more than a few people’s minds. Liberty is effectively the oxygen of Western society. People enjoy liberty. They enjoy complaining about the government, telling politicians to ‘take a hike’ and demanding lower taxes. Yet, young people are beginning to use liberty for a more sinister purpose- to destroy itself.

You cannot be free if the government is huge. That is a fact. Saying the opposite is the intellectual equivalent to saying that the moon is made out of cheese. If the state watching over you is more powerful, controls more systems and companies and has more rules, you will be less free. This is one of the main reasons that I am vehemently opposed to leftism. A ‘nanny’ state which constantly interferes in its citizens lives is not a free state. Yet, more and more young people are moving towards the radical left. Diversity quotas, the tearing down of ‘offensive’ statues and pledges to raise taxes are just precursors of what’s to come if we don’t do something about the millions of young people being lead to leftism like lambs to the slaughter.

Another reason that liberty isn’t valued much by the youth of today is that they’ve never had to fight for it. Since they won it in the Revolutionary War, patriots have had their liberty challenged in numerous conflicts and standoffs. The war of 1812, The Civil War, World War One, World War Two and the Cold War are just some examples of the struggles that generation after generation of Americans have gone through to preserve the principles upon which America was built. Yet, if you were born after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 (and especially after 9/11 in 2001), there have never been any real threats to your freedom. You have never felt compelled to stand up for your country because you have not seen any reason to do so. This is problematic; it was Ronald Reagan who stated that ‘freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction’. If young people can’t be bothered to defend their country, that leaves gaps for opportunistic leftists, communists, fascists, Islamists, and anyone else who hates democracy to infiltrate and destroy America.

Another problem is that schools no longer teach people how to think; they teach people what to think. Teachers don’t give their students facts; they give them opinions and pieces of propaganda. I cannot speak for American schools (I am British) but if schools in the US are anything like they are here, the Republic really is in trouble.

Just the other week, for example, our English teacher tried telling us that it had been shown that the President of the United States spoke at the level of an eight-year-old. That’s strange, because I doubt that many eight-year-olds give speeches about the economy, the military or foreign policy. Yet do people believe it? Of course they do; young people naturally trust their teachers. Teachers here have also openly advocated there being more than two genders, open borders, the false idea that President Trump is ‘racist’ and a whole load of other ridiculous leftist notions. Oh, and now you can get suspended for not wearing a mask. This mental conditioning of young people has to stop. It’s gotten so bad here that being conservative has very much become a taboo. Young people have fallen victim to lies and falsehoods from similar types of elitists whom the founding fathers of the United States and their brethren fought for freedom almost 250 years ago.

Social media doesn’t help either. Never before has fake news and leftist propaganda had such a wide-reaching platform. Quite literally anyone can post quite literally anything, and it can be seen by millions of people. This has its advantages, of course. Conservatives such as myself are able to openly challenge leftism and encourage people to think for themselves. Unfortunately, big tech doesn’t play fair, and an alarming number of conservatives are being censored by the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Furthermore, young people are finding it increasingly difficult to be different.

As I mentioned earlier, I cannot post about conservatism or President Trump without receiving a slew of hate-filled comments and e-mail. Instead of thinking for themselves and questioning the information on the posts they are viewing, more and more people are buying into the cult of Black Lives Matter and the myth of intersectionality.

Things must change. To any young people reading this, please think for yourselves. I don’t care whether I agree with the conclusions you reach; I just care that the ideas are your own; Not the ideas of big tech companies, or media companies, or your teachers, or your parents, or anyone else.

To anyone reading this who is not part of my generation, it is time to fight for the future. Be outspoken, have conversations, change minds. Don’t feel shy or awkward when expressing your political opinions. After all, it is only through constructive debate that society can be improved, and its divisions healed.

If you care about your country, your values, and your fellow citizens, you must try and wake up those who have been (and are being) brainwashed by toxic ideologies.