The prophet Isaiah warned a wayward nation: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.” Right was condemned as wrong, and what darkened the soul was repackaged as enlightenment. Isaiah cautioned that rejecting God’s word would bring devastation. The warning still stands.

Two developments this past week expose the warning’s timeliness. For years, activists in media and government have advanced a gender ideology that tells even children they can choose an identity opposite of their biological reality. That confusion is not benign. In Minneapolis, a gunman opened fire during a school Mass at Annunciation Catholic Church, killing two children and injuring many others. Police identified the attacker as Robert Westman, who identified as transgender and, in notes posted before the attack, expressed regret and anger about “being trans” and deep confusion about identity.

This is not isolated. Recall the Covenant School massacre in Nashville, and now we have Minneapolis — both carried out by individuals who identified as transgender. The point is not to stigmatize anyone; it is to confront a reality our culture keeps trying to deny: ideas have consequences and masquerading a lie as the truth can be deadly. Yet rather than pause to reassess the narrative, legacy outlets scolded themselves for “misgendering.” NBC News even issued a correction after its initial report used what it called the wrong pronoun when referring to Westman as “he.” “She used female pronouns,” NBC sycophantically stated. This, despite law enforcement identifying the killer as male.

What a commentary on the press. Apologizing for mistakenly telling the truth reflects a deeper malady: trading evil for good and darkness for light. And when this deception is celebrated, children suffer. A civilization cannot protect what it refuses to name, and language becomes a veil for violence.

Still, the media is not the fountainhead of this confusion; they are its amplifiers. The deeper problem is philosophical. If truth is now established by feelings, then law must enforce the feelings. That brings us to last week’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. Virginia Senator Tim Kaine (D) berated a State Department nominee for affirming the American principle that our rights come from God, not government — calling that view “very, very troubling,” and likening it to the ideology of Iran’s theocracy. Think about that: the creed of the Declaration recast as dangerous and akin to the rule of the Ayatollahs.

Our Founders knew better. Thomas Jefferson wrote that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Alexander Hamilton insisted the “sacred rights of mankind” are “written, as with a sunbeam, by the hand of the Divinity itself” and cannot be erased by mortal power. Governments secure rights; they do not invent them. And when government presumes to redefine reality — whether human nature or human rights — it imperils the very people it claims to protect.

So here is the choice: return to first principles — truth over ideology, reality over rhetoric, the Creator over the state — or keep stumbling in the dark while calling it light. For the sake of our children and our country, choose the true light — and live by it.