Culture Challenge of the Week: The Left’s assault on our children

Kool-Aid. It conjures up contradictory images. On the one hand, it brings to mind thirsty gulps, drink-stained lips, and happy children. On the other, it suggests the shadow of the Jonestown massacre, where a cult leader killed his followers, including children, by spiking their sugary drinks with poison. It tasted good going down but led to inevitable death.

These days, too many of our children are drinking spiked Kool-Aid. And it’s being served to them by unwitting educators, dysfunctional celebrities, government leaders, and the whole of pop culture.

What’s in the Kool-Aid? The sweet flavor of unrestrained sexual pleasure (consequences? what consequences?), the languid taste of easy government money (“They better not cut my benefits – or grants – or services”) and the invigorating rush of ‘personal autonomy’ (“I can make my own decisions. Who needs parents–or God?”).

And our children are swallowing in gulps, as they listen attentively to classroom lessons that denigrate capitalism, watch “family” shows that feature gender-bending characters, and listen to iPods that spew filthy words and perverted images. Undiscriminating, they slurp down the cultural flavors. But dire consequences lie just ahead for our children, unless we act now.

I just finished a hard-hitting new book, called Don’t Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left’s Assault on our Families, Faith, and Freedom, that’s a must-read for all parents who love their children. Written by the witty and insightful Mary Beth Hicks, a Washington Times columnist and mother of four, the book delivers a devastating critique of our culture – and some solid ideas about how to turn things around.

A compelling and fast-moving book, Don’t Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid sounds the alarm about the liberals’ aggressive assault on morals, the free market, and the family – a campaign that’s steamrolling ahead under the Obama Administration. The Left is driving hard to redefine what it means to be a human person – to normalize behavior, such as homosexuality, promiscuity, abortion, that damages society as much as it injures the soul, psyche, and body of the person engaging in it.

In her book, Hicks lays out a dismaying – shocking, really – array of examples that show how the Left is “shaping our kids into a generation completely ignorant of the principles that have made America the extraordinary nation it is.” In their “pursuit of the liberal utopia,” the liberal ‘Kool-Aid’ distributors are “toppling the three-legged stool on which our nation rests: religion, the traditional family, and free market capitalism.”

Like Kool-Aid that spoils the appetite for wholesome food, the Left’s agenda “inculcates our children with the beliefs, attitudes, and opinions that will predispose them to a socialist America.” Worse, the Left serves a poisonous substitute: an “alternative core belief system” of “secular progressive collectivism – with all its attendant moral relativism and political correctness.”

Parents – indeed, all of us who care about children – need to put a stop to this. And nothing short of a “recalibration” of each child’s “moral compass” will solve the problem.

How to Save Your Family: Read Don’t Let Your Kids Drink the Kool-Aid

Her book’s goal, says Hicks, is first, “to convince you that Leftists in positions of power and influence over our children are seriously undermining the values and virtues essential to our national character and to American citizenship.”

But second, it’s a call to action for each one of us to “offer more of what is right,” by paying greater attention to our children’s moral development instead of focusing, in a short-sighted way, on grades, achievements, and social skills. Developing moral character is hard – hard work for parents and children alike. But it’s a task we dare not neglect.

Hicks provides the concrete suggestions and impassioned encouragement that parents need: we are the ones who can – and must – instill virtue in our children. Our work begins by protecting our children from unhealthy and corrupting influences. And it succeeds when we – parents, grandparents, and like-minded families – teach our children to believe in God, work hard to develop strong character, and proudly profess heartfelt patriotism and commitment to our exceptional American freedoms.