The other cost of your freedom.

“If you don’t want your kids playing violent video games, finding porn on the Internet, or hearing profanity on television, then just do a better job of controlling what they watch.”

For decades now, our society’s refrain on moral-cultural questions that might affect children has been that parents are the true guardians of the home. That part I agree with. The part that’s dead wrong is the idea that they are the only guardians, usually paired with a nonsense premise that it’s just as possible to parent effectively in a decadent society as in a vibrant one.

As a parent, I’ve learned how stupid this really is. I’m a vigilant parent, and I find myself often feeling like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke trying to protect my homeland. And if I feel often overmatched by the threats from this toxic society, how many of those threats rush in unopposed in to the lives of children with average or below-average parents?

There’s something profoundly dishonest about a culture which lets itself rot in the name of personal freedom, tells parents to hole up inside their homes if they don’t like the smell, and then blames those parents for not effectively protecting their kids from the zombies clawing at every door and window.

The right of children to a civilization that isn’t trying to defile them is no less real a human right than their freedom to go outside and breathe fresh air. And just imagine how foolish someone would look for saying, “Well, if you don’t want your kids breathing air pollution, then just don’t let them play outside.”