Children ask “why,” even before they have command of language. Behind their curiosity is a very human attribute—the presumption of an underlying meaning or intent. There have always been creation stories that explained the nature of our world and why it exists. For millennia, religious leaders answered that question. For the last 500 years, scientists have joined the chorus. But neither gods nor the laws of nature can fully explain why we humans do what we do. For we create our own history, our own governments, and our own laws. We define “right” and “wrong.” We are responsible and, therefore, liable for our actions. But those actions often defy logic or offer questionable benefit. For example, why do we form governments unresponsive to our needs? Why do we allow senseless violence in our midst? And why do we sometimes seem less capable of providing our children with the institutions and communities that would secure their future and demonstrate our love and care? We raise them to have better prospects than our own. But do we secure their safety and the promise of those prospects? It should be no surprise then that our children might want a better future than their parents had sufficient lifespan or wisdom to determine? They will naturally resist a future they did not choose or create for themselves. They will want change.
Our children ask “why” because they want to understand how it all works and how they fit into the fabric of human life and into the world they will occupy. What are the standards of behavior? What goals are allowed? What can be explored? And how is everyone held accountable for his/her decisions and actions? If you analyze the basis for each of these questions, you will arrive at the same place: the precarious balance between free will and a moral consciousness. But the awakening of a moral conscience may very well challenge existing apathy towards long-held beliefs and norms. With fresh eyes, the young will readily recognize contradictions between values and actions. They will exercise their power of free will with a righteous fervor. Nearly every generation of Americans have done so. They protest. They will demand change.
One of the Florida high schoolers asked why the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” seem not to apply to the gun laws in America. He asked why our political leaders seem incapable of common sense gun laws designed to protect their constituents. This teenager was exercising his awakening moral consciousness and asking why these leaders could not or would not exercise their free will to support the moral basis for our free society. Why is Jefferson’s clarion call no longer heard? Perhaps, when civic service becomes subject to self-interest, when acquiring campaign funding becomes more important for reelection than demonstrating character and trustworthiness, when Party loyalty outweighs the good of the country, when well-healed donors determine the legislative agenda rather than the will of the electorate, when gun-lobbyists can dictate gun laws that favor gun sales over safety, then the moral consciousness of children will find fault and revolt. They may well expose not only the moral vacuity of our political leaders but the consequent corruption of our American system and betrayal of its founding principles. The fresh eyes of our children can see the contradiction. And they demand change.
Over two years ago, I wrote a blog entitled “American Revolution, 2016.” It proposed how we might turn back the effects of Citizens United by replacing “dark” money and large donor networks with public campaign funding. It also proposed a possible mechanism to focus campaigns on real issues rather than spin, scandal, and vacuous taglines. My purpose then was like the student protests over guns now. The right to own a gun is no less legal than the right to vote. But both rights must serve the general welfare as stipulated in our Constitution and exemplified in the Declaration of Independence’s definition of unalienable rights. Are these rights administered in a way that serves the general welfare? Our gun laws, for example, allow untrained and unqualified individuals to own guns, to purchase weapons of war that have no civilian application, and to store them unsafely and without inspection. By comparison, the legal structure of our electoral system permits gerrymandering, voter suppression, exaggerated influence of large campaign donors, subversive and divisive propaganda, and insufficient policing of existing campaign financing laws. Do you see how the failure to administer these rights properly are interrelated? A fast majority of voters may favor common sense gun laws that assure responsible ownership and safe use but find it impossible to vote their prescriptions for administering the Second Amendment.
Mass shootings in our schools have become commonplace. Do our children have to die before we recognize the corruption that has seeped into our political system? Our political will has been silenced at the voting booth. The majority vote no longer controls Congress or the White House. Special interests are attempting to control our government. The gun lobby is just one manifestation of a virulent cancer. To quote Benjamin Franklin, our founding fathers “created a Republic, if you can keep it.” We keep it by adhering to our moral compass, supporting our founding principles, and diligently rooting out corruption and subversive interests.
America requires each generation to rebalance the egalitarianism of its democracy with the self-driven interests of capitalism. Controlling the sale of guns in a manner that assures the safety of all our young school children could be the first step in a wider reform—a harbinger of a new era. In the sixties, a generation arose that repudiated an unjustified war, the rise of the military-industrial complex, racial discrimination, and blatant voting rights violations. Maybe we now are witnessing a new generation that begins by establishing equivalence in gender privilege and reasonable gun control laws but morphs into addressing the underlying corruption of power and money.
What this new generation is facing is much more than the gun lobby. That lobby is just one element in a recidivist political class. Remember the robber barons who usurped power at the height of the industrial revolution. Compare them to the billionaire campaign donors and the current White House family and cabinet secretaries. Remember the unregulated speculation in Wall Street before the Great Depression and the more recent Great Recession. Compare those periods with the current Administration’s desire to undo existing regulations designed to forestall another economic freefall. Remember when 16,000 Klu Klux Clan members marched through New York to a cheering crowd of onlookers. (Yes, it happened in the 1920s.) Compare that to the hundreds of torch-carrying Clan members who marched through Charleston—though to a much less receptive audience. Nevertheless, the President claimed that the opposing parties were equivalent, saying there were good people on both sides. Remember the divisiveness of McCarthyism and the citizen rebellion against a lying government’s Vietnam war policies. Compare the sixties to our current lack of trust in a bullying and lying President whose enumeration of lies, adolescent name-calling, and threats exceed his days in office. Remember when the South’s minority population used its economic and political clout to advance policies that ran counter to the promise of equality and freedom in the Declaration of Independence. Compare those positions to the current Republican Party support for an unequal distribution of wealth—as demonstrated in the recently passed tax plan—and its unravelling of government programs that support the health, economic opportunity, and education of Americans. That Party’s support for gun manufacturers, the National Rifle Association, and gun lobbyists is just the tip of an iceberg.
It is natural for the young to ask “why.” When the answers fail to persuade the moral conscience, it is equally natural for them to seek the truth and advocate for change. That advocacy is not just their right, but their responsibility. We cannot deny the young their future and, with respect to gun laws, their lives. They must demand change. But the change they now seek is just one link in a chain. As they pull on that chain, they will have to overcome the weight of many links sunk deep below the surface. They will need the wisdom of their elders who have pulled on that chain in the past. They will not be the first generation who have fought the weight of corruption and tried to reclaim our American ideals. If they succeed, their progeny will benefit. If they fail, they might be the last who have tried. Maybe you doubt these “if/then” propositions. You might question why we need change now. But if you consider the alternatives, then your question will be why not?