Should we be listening to the children? Do they know something?

||| ORCASIONAL MUSINGS BY STEVE HENIGSON |||

“A million kids want to clean up the Earth. A million parents want them to start with their rooms.” —anonymous internet sarcasm

I vividly remember when I was a ‘teen-ager. I was sure that I knew exactly what the whole world was doing wrong, and that I knew how to fix it. I had just learned about Marxian Socialism, and I was absolutely certain, as only a kid can be, that “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need” was the complete antidote to grinding poverty, obscene wealth, class warfare, dirty politics, and Republican Presidents.

It took me years to finally understand the realities of economics. The first three jobs I held were pure nepotism, and one of them was even fun, so I learned absolutely nothing from any of them. Only when I was 19, and had to find employment on my own, did I discover that comfortable self-sufficiency would result solely from conscientious hard labor and thoughtful decision making. And Marxian Socialism? It didn’t last through that fourth job, in which some of us peons were union members, and some weren’t. In that case, union membership was a license to goof off, while the rest of us had to work hard or we’d be fired.

Economic philosophy, political activism, and revolutionary plotting have always been the realm of children with the leisure time to discuss these issues. Workers who have livings to earn don’t have time for that kind of thing. But when young people think that they’re striving toward real change, arguing endlessly about exactly how many Socialists can hold a demonstration on the head of a pin, mostly what they’re really doing is narcissistically calling attention to themselves.

Recently, the people in Washington State government who control such things were harangued by a high-school student about preventing children like herself from “vaping.” Her solution (which is now also our Governor’s) is to make it illegal to produce, stock, and sell flavored vapor-inhalation products, from anybody to anybody, in the entire state. Prohibition! Could this be a solution to the problem? Well, let’s see.

Let’s start by putting aside temporarily the fact that adults should be able to make their own decisions about what, and what not, to put into their own bodies. If I understand things correctly, it is already illegal for those under 21 years of age to buy, possess, or use vaping products. It is also illegal for businesses and individuals to sell, or even to give at no cost, vaping materials to minors. You might think that these provisions would suffice, to prevent high schoolers from vaping. But somehow, they’re getting hold of the stuff and they’re doing it.

Are adults making “straw purchases,” in order to provide favored minors with illegal goods? My guess is that this is probably the answer. But it begs a further question: Where are those vaping kids’ parents? Aren’t they aware that their children are ingesting nicotine? I have always thought that parents were supposed to be supervisors, setting limits and exerting social control. Are parents not doing their job? Does a little child have to lead them?

And is that metaphoric little child on the right track? Make a law and it’ll all be fixed? Really? Is someone who is already breaking one law going to be deterred by yet another? What’s to stop foolish adults from buying flavored vaping juices in Idaho, for instance, and bringing them to Washington’s ‘teen-agers? We don’t have customs inspection at the Idaho border. Well, not yet, anyway.

Kids are arrogant with their newly gained knowledge. They don’t yet know what they don’t know. In particular, they don’t yet understand that they lack the wisdom which comes only with experience. Like me with my Socialist, fix-everything dreams, they await the awakening which comes only from a dose of reality.