Defend Children, Families, and Innocence

If one did not know better, the conclusion could be drawn that leftist Democrats in the United States – and leftists around the world – are enjoying a flirtation not just with Marxism, which devolves into Stalinism and Maoism, but with Plato’s idea that “children belong to the State.”

In Canada, a member of the clergy who is distressed at children being misled, mutilated in the name of gender equality – which was a crime when done in Africa – and subject to sexually deviant drag shows and perversion, is arrested, dragged off in cuffs for protecting children.

In the United States, children are coopted by public school teachers who decide what to share with parents, and often share little or nothing – as they persuade kindergarten boys they are girls, girls they are boys, and seek hormone and surgical transmutation of these innocents souls.

Parents who object to this, and to any actions subjecting their children to sexual, racial, and political indoctrination, are called advocates of violence, told they have no rights, are “domestic terrorists” by the FBI – still operating a task force used against parents vocal at school boards.

All this adds up to a strange throwback – and bizarre idea – promoted both by those who believe in atheistic communism, and who believe in the idea that the State owns children. The idea may sound absurd, as it implies that the word “their” may soon be outlawed, describing relations between parent and child, but it has roots.

In roughly 385 BC – “Before Christ” – a man named Plato decided to write about his vision of a perfect society, noting in one of his books – The Republic – that the “family” should give way, and should also give away their children, to an entity known as “the State.”

Notably, we are now not supposed to used “BC” to describe time’s passage, the divider before Christ’s appearance and afterwards – but are told by the “woke” world to use “BCE,” for “Before Common Era.” But that is another beef for another day. Plato’s Republic was written in 385 BC, or Before Christ.

In that volume, which the left seems to have rediscovered, he argues for total State control over a great deal, including children. In Book 5, he “abolishes the family” and insists children belong to the State, and are “held in common” for the betterment of all.

Plato – in a theme picked up by Marx, Engels, the Soviets and Communist Chinese – thinks children can be taken from families, educated by the State. Of course, in China, they are aborted by the millions – especially girls, used as repositories for “organ harvesting,” and “educated” by the State.

In Plato’s imaginary republic “the child belongs to the state and its education is the responsibility of the state,” which becomes uniform, suppresses individuality, is compulsory – and is both “cultural and physical.” That is all in Book 7.

So, what is happening today in modern North America? A lot of perversion, distortion of traditional Western – and global – emphasis on the family as the repository of moral, intellectual, cultural, and physical values.

Put succinctly, the left does not care one iota about the family, has twisted and redefined it, and most importantly has demanded – now with coercion from the State – that children, specifically for purposes of indoctrination or education, from their gender to moral (or immoral) fiber, is a prerogative of the State.

If all this sounds too bizarre for contemplation, let alone polite conversation, just recall that there is few things new under the sun, and much of what is anti-democratic, anti-republican, anti-family, anti-moral, and antithetical to America … has been written about and thought about in a prior time.

No society that respects the individual, individual and family rights, the family’s role as the central unit of civilization, parenting, or power of value transmission from generation to generation through loving parent and grandparents – has EVER sought to take children from their parents, or from the traditional influences of the family, let alone for State mind and body control.

But we are there. And in case you thought this is impossible, just reread Plato, Marx, histories of the Soviet Union and Maoist China – or look at how Communist China today dictates family size, coerces abortions and organ harvesting, and punishes those of faith or with any inclination toward individuality.

Forty years after Ronald Reagan’s famous “Evil Empire” speech, let it be said boldly and plainly. Evil has always existed, existed in the form of the Soviet Union, exists in the form of Communist China’s oppression, mind and body control over individuals and families, and could grow here.

Our obligation is to understand that even writers like Plato were wrong about some things, as were Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. We live in a world where spiritual warfare is real, and will remain real. If we value children, innocence, and families, we must … defend them.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.