Where Did We Go Wrong?

I will give you a hint: it did not start in college.

Grown-up America is watching in horror as college campuses devolve into a toxic stew of violent riots blended with cosmic dance raves tossed with a dash of pass-the-hash-pipe beatnik poser culture. We hear the words the children are saying, but nothing they say makes any sense. We read their slogans with abject horror, wondering if they realize they are spouting nonsense and shilling for brutal terror organizations that would just as soon behead them as look at them.

Their vast ignorance of history, culture, religion, geopolitics, and languages is cause enough for concern. Three aspects of their behavior, however, stand out as emblematic of the lost children across the nation.

Hubris

Can you imagine the level of narcissism it must require to believe that harassing your Jewish neighbor at Columbia, Berkeley, or Harvard is going to save a life in Gaza? What do these people expect to accomplish through their antics? I think we all know that no university will divest from Israel because of riots on campus. At best, they will offer the illusion of choice and power, of votes predestined to fail.

I think we also know that no one will eat one more bite of food in Rafah, the IDF will make no decisions based on anything these students say, no Palestinian prisoners will be released, and Iran will go right on funding terror across the planet.

An even more disturbing symptom of this hubris, however, is the pride and fearlessness with which riot leaders express their hatred for Jews. They are emboldened by a lack of consequences. They can overtly threaten to kill “Zionists,” by which we all know they mean Jews, and no one stops them from doing so.

(X@iamBrianBJ)

Now we know that Columbia riot leader Khymani James loudly yelled into a camera that “Zionists are Nazis, fascists, supporters of genocide. Why would we want them to live? I’m confused! … Zionists should not exist.” He/She/They believes we should “be grateful I am not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

He/She/They would be among the first to be thrown off a rooftop by Hamas.

The video of James’ statements was recorded not during the encampment, not for the purposes of the riots, but in January during a university Title IX investigation. Jewish students had reported James to the university for making online threats, and in the course of that investigation, he proudly declared his desire to act on those threats.

And what did Columbia do? Did anyone call the police? Did Columbia suspend or sanction James, send him to therapy, remove him from campus to protect Jewish students?

Of course not. It expelled James only after the videos leaked on social media. In short, he was expelled because he embarrassed the school, not because he posed the clear and present danger that he was and probably still is to Jews at Columbia and everywhere.

Why was this student still at Columbia for three more months after threatening to murder Jews during an interview with university Title IX investigators in January?!

It is no wonder the leaders of these riots are filled to the brim with unwarranted arrogance. They have been getting away with threatening literal murder for a while.

Delusion

We have all laughed at the parodies of the rioters making demands for “humanitarian aid” as they squatted in university buildings they elected to ransack and vandalize, re-decorating them in blood-libel graffiti. Individuals actively engaged in criminal activity actually expected the victims of their crimes to support their endeavors.

The sense of entitlement that accompanies making such incongruous, high-handed demands of the entity you are attacking indicates the presence of an unhealthy lack of self-awareness.

“Like, could people please have a glass of water?” the young woman told reporters outside Columbia Tuesday.Seth Harrison/The Journal News / USA TODAY NETWORK

It almost begs the question: Does a large percentage of these protestors have Borderline Personality Disorder? Their distorted sense of self, inability to see the world in anything other than dichotomous extremes, violent outbursts and blame of everyone but themselves for the situations which they actively created, and their apparent need to fill a void of internal emptiness with movements that hitherto meant nothing to them and about which they know nothing but what has been spoon-fed to fill their insatiable appetite for meaning - it all screams BPD.

How did our society create an entire generation of BPD sufferers seeking meaning in the most inappropriate of places and falling easy prey to external terrorist forces while abusing their classmates in their fog of entitlement? Was this the result of the pandemic? Of then high-schoolers being isolated at a crucial time in their social development? How did they lose the thread of reality in their social connectedness to the world?

It would be unfair to tar an entire generation in this manner, because plenty of young students avoided this apparent identity crisis: the fraternity brothers who protect the American flag from would-be desecrators; the Jewish students who staunchly stand for Israel and for themselves in the face of unprecedented abuse in our lifetime; the allies who have come out of the woodwork to stand by their neighbors.

Still, something unhealthy - something angry and empty - lives within a disturbingly high number of American youths that cannot be brushed aside as they take their places in the world.

Ignorance

Equally disturbing is how little our youth know. Ignorance is a key precursor to effective brainwashing. People who know their history, who are students of the world in which they live, are not as susceptible to zombification by nefarious, external forces. These students arrived in college primed to be coopted by Marxists, racists, Islamists, and all manner of hateful movements.

And the kicker is, they are too damned ignorant to even see it happening to them and too damned arrogant to care.

Videos of students repeating the mantras of their new Communist overlords in blind adherence demonstrate the susceptibility to subjugation bred by ignorance. We shudder at the emotionless, toneless drone of their call-and-response as they repeat commands to push Jewish students off common green spaces and keep them out of university buildings.

Students participate in a pro-Palestinian protest outside of the Columbia University campus on Nov. 15, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Martin Luther King, Jr. once warned us that, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Foreign agents are preying on the ignorance of our youth to create a zombified army of self-destructive fools crying loudly for their own overthrow and demise. The students do not want to learn. They are incapable of hearing alternative viewpoints or facts that contradict the brainwashing they greedily consume to fill that inner void. They prefer to “be a part of something” more than they wish to develop deeper understandings and question perceptions and dogma.

This insatiable need to belong results in incongruous unions of Islamists and trans students, of antisemites and Jewish progressives, of Hamas supporters and peaceniks. No logical, intelligent mind can comprehend these false alliances. They reek so heavily of self-destructiveness.

Perhaps more to the point, they speak of a gross level of ignorance and reluctance to fill the intellectual void with reasoned analysis and a variety of voices. Is that not one of the key purposes of a liberal arts education? Do we not send our children to college to develop the ability to independently reason based on absorbing vast amounts of knowledge?

Colleges are turning out unbaked adults incapable of performing the very tasks for which they enrolled. That ignorance and willingness to adopt whatever line will gain admission to the cause du jour bodes ill for our collective future.

What To Do?

Perhaps the best we can all do is to ensure that the rising youth still in our homes and under our care are educated and do develop a fully formed sense of community and self. That means ensuring strong education in their history, background, faith, and nation. That means providing them with the intellectual grounding and tools to think and speak for themselves. That means instilling a spine of steel in them, so they understand that, sometimes, fitting in with the cool crowd is not cool at all.

Rather, standing strong in the face of persecution, intolerance, ignorance, and lies may be one of the bravest and most empowering acts they can take to carve out a healthy identity for themselves and find a community that embraces and loves them for who they are without strings attached.

Parents - we are ground zero for turning the tide. If we take this responsibility seriously, we can ensure our children do not end up chanting slogans they do not understand and undermine their very own existence. Give your children the facts and the knowledge to know the world and their place in it, and you will give them freedom from this unholy movement.