“This is the start of the spring and the blossoming of our democracy. So let’s take this to our local legislators, and let’s take this to midterm elections, because without the persistence — heat — without the persistence of voters and Americans everywhere, getting out to every election, democracy will not flourish. But it can, and it will. So, I say to those politicians that say change will not come, I say: We will not stop until every man, every woman, every child, and every American can live without fear of gun violence.”
That was Parkland surviving student David Hogg apparently calling for guns to be banned but very explicitly calling for voters to show up and vote in the Congressional midterms—for Democrats. In many ways, Hogg represents the future. A radical future that will come to pass if the American people sit by idly now and allow a band of teenagers to strip away their rights.
But maybe not. Days ago, Hogg denied he was calling for a gun ban: “I think that a lot of people that are out there that are fearing what we’re saying right now think that we’re going to try to take their guns and we’re not. The Never Again movement and March for our Lives is not trying to take your guns, we’re trying to take back our lives because just as much as you have a right to own a weapon, we have the right to liberty, we have the right to peace and we have the right to live.”
So, some sort of gun “control”? Maybe. Probably best not to find out. For this is the language of demagoguery. Radicalism. One that says one thing while moving to do precisely the opposite.
What is clear is that behind the push is an express partisan agenda. Hogg started his speech going after Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): “I’m gonna start off by putting this price tag right here as a reminder for you guys to know how much Marco Rubio took for every student’s life in Florida. One dollar and five cents.”
At Nationalschoolwalkout.us, where students can organize their own walkouts from school — another is planned for April 20 — the group vows, “we won’t tolerate any more inaction on this issue. And if cowardly politicians fail to act, young people will show them the consequences of letting so many Americans die by voting them out in November.” It’s being organized by Indivisible.org, where students can go to organize their own school walkouts. It has published a guide, “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda.”
The group’s website clearly states, “National School Walkout is movement powered and led by students across the country. Event registration and a map of events for the April 20th school walkouts are hosted in-kind by the Indivisible Project team.”
Hogg in his statements has called Congressional districting policies are racist and oppressing the poor. This is the language of the left. Indivisible has a clearly Democrat agenda of opposing tax cuts, opposing any deal with Trump on DACA, opposing the war in Yemen or any actions against Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and protecting Obamacare and expanding Medicaid.
These are Democrat organizing rallies. Centered on gun control but more broadly supporting a left-wing agenda and getting out the vote in the midterm elections. It attempts to nationalize these issues, but most Americans will likely find little in common with the Parkland teens’ radical prescription for this country. Behind this ambiguous call for democracy is a push to shred the Constitution of individual rights. They have the right to live, yes, and the rest of us have the right to protect ourselves from their radical agenda that will not stop at stripping Americans of the means to defend themselves.
