The “Kirkiversary” celebrations at schools and online, where young people gleefully mocked the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the pro-Palestinian protests in New York on 9/11, highlighted the fact that young Americans are increasingly woke and desensitized to evil.
BREAKING: A New York firefighter directly confronts a group of Nazis and Pro-Palestinians who teamed up to protest the 9/11 memorial. “Go back to f*cking Palestine.” https://t.co/bsb0Kq6SqH
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) September 11, 2026
Yes, we can blame politicians who lie and mass migration that changed demographics and teachers who propagandized young people. We can blame the radical social media influencers and the vile celebrities. But ultimately, we also have to recognize that many of America’s parents failed to raise their children. Even many conservative parents I know allowed screens and schools and celebrities to raise their kids. There was no passing down of history or values or culture. Then one day, these conservative Christian parents were shocked to find just how radical their children were. They expected their children to be individuals of integrity without any of the at-home training.
Farmington, Utah Students filmed themselves reenacting and dancing to Charlie Kirk's ass*ssination The video has since been deleted but I have a copy What’s going on at @DavisSchools ?? https://t.co/GUn3M63zL4
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 11, 2026
I was recently present for a talk that my parish priest made to parents of catechism students, where he told them that as corrupt as social media companies are, they cannot bear all the blame for the awful content the children see online. The priest excoriated parents who give phones to their very young children, fail to monitor their kids’ viewership, and never restrict teens’ screen time. He told them that they, not Facebook, are raising their children, and that complaining about Facebook is partly a cop-out for their own reluctance to put in the extremely hard work of parenting in an age of technology and nanny state programs.
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Of course, parenting is tremendously hard. It is the most difficult task that most people will take on, and no one can guarantee success. But it is precisely the modern American reluctance to put in hard work consistently over years, and an over-reliance on government and experts, that has created a young generation of leftist crazies.
From the boomers onward, too many parents and then grandparents did not educate their children, or filter what media they consumed, or reject harmful fashion (and social media) trends. My siblings and I are all conservatives and practicing Catholics because we grew up with parents and grandparents and mentors who taught us history and literature and politics and family trees from the time we were very little. There was a generational passing on of cultural values, faith, and civic literacy. It wasn’t until college that I realized how rare this experience was.
Again, there is no fail-safe method of parenting, nor is there ever any parent who makes every decision perfectly. But the laziness, wokeness, and lack of empathy for the suffering that we see in young people today is not due only to corrupt institutions. American parents spent years handing the education, moral conditioning, and entertainment of their kids entirely to politicians, teachers, and pop stars. Turns out that was a recipe for disaster.
