I’ve written before about how my wife and I raised seven children — one boy and six girls. An interesting thing happened with some of my children. When they turned 18, they got tired of me telling them what I thought they should be doing and declared that because they were 18, they were now adults who could make their own decisions. The first time I heard that proclamation, I laughed and asked what happened on their 18th birthday that transformed them into the type of person who no longer needed to listen to their parents. The response I got was, “I’m an adult now and I’m old enough to make my own decisions.”

My reaction to that statement was,

So because the laws of our country proclaim that you are now an adult, it means that you no longer need any guidance from your parents. Is that what you think? Do you believe that every person in America who turns 18 possesses the knowledge, experience, and wisdom they need to make the right decisions, without any guidance from their parents? What do you think happened on your 18th birthday? Do you think that on the morning of your birthday the heavens opened up and God lifted the roof off our house and then sent down a beam of light from Heaven that filled you with all the knowledge, wisdom, and experience that you would ever need? And after you received this great grace, did God guarantee that you would make all the right decisions for the rest of your life and that you would no longer need the guidance and wisdom of your parents? I wish that would have happened to me when I was 18. It would have saved me a lot of trouble and heartache.

Despite my attempts to convince my 18-year-old “adult” children that they would still benefit from their parents’ wisdom, they usually responded to my comments by saying, “Why don’t you trust me? If you really trusted me, you would allow me to make my own decisions without harassing me.”

Whenever the trust question came up, my response was, “Of course I trust you. I just don’t trust your behavior.”

As my children grew older, there was a point when I finally stopped butting into their lives. It was usually after they finished college and got a full-time job or got married. Today, I rarely butt into their lives except to periodically ask them if they are praying the rosary every day. They know that is my belief — which is based on the writings of St. Louis de Montfort, St. Alphonsus Liguori, and St. Bernard —  that any devout Catholic who prays a daily rosary receives from the Mother of God an additional level of protection from physical and spiritual harm.

I thought about my experience with my college-age children last week when I read an article about 23-year-old Stephanie Regan. Her dad, Robert Regan, is running for the Michigan state House of Representatives. Stephanie used her Twitter account to send out a tweet that said, “If you’re in Michigan and 18+ pls for the love of god do not vote for my dad for state rep. Tell everyone.”

Stephanie’s dad responded to his daughter’s tweet by posting a lengthy statement on Facebook. One of the things he said in his statement was, “I am happy that she feels confident enough in our relationship to express her opposing thoughts so publicly.” He later told a news reporter that he and his daughter had a difference of opinion on issues like Black Lives Matter and whether white privilege and systemic racism really existed in America. He told the reporter,

A lot of students when they go off to these liberal university campuses, like the University of Colorado, the University of Texas and Austin — and she went to the University of Colorado in Boulder — and you know, they just kind of get sucked into this Marxist, communist ideology and she and I just don’t see eye to eye when it comes to the whole socialism, communism, Marxist philosophy.

When asked what it was that prompted his daughter to tell people not to vote for him, Regan said, “her big thing has to do with the systemic racism that’s going on in the country.”

Last month, after the demonstrations and riots broke out, two young women that I’ve known since they were children posted messages on Facebook that linked to articles about the evils of white privilege. Both women graduated from college a few years ago. I’ve known these women and their parents for more than 30 years.

Their parents are conservative, hardworking, wealthy Christians who are dedicated to their families. In my opinion, the mistake that their parents made in raising their children was that they spoiled their children and never allowed them to struggle, and they paid for their children to attend private colleges where their daughters were poisoned by the professors and many of the other individuals they were exposed to during their college years.

After high school, I spent four years away from home at a state university, and then three additional years in law school. During those years, I saw what happened to young men and women who grew up in solid Christian homes. Many of them adopted the false and idealistic beliefs of their teachers, student organizers, and the authors of the textbooks that they were assigned to read.

One of the reasons that I wanted my children to be educated at home during their grade school and high school years was because of what I observed in the school system. When our children enrolled in college, my wife and I insisted that they continue to live at home for at least the first two years of college. It was our belief that most 18-year-old students are not yet ready to leave home to live on a college campus.

By keeping our children home for the first two years of college, they were able to adjust to the college culture, while continuing to benefit from the stability and influence of their parents and extended family. By the time they were juniors in college, they were much more capable of dealing with the pressure and influence of their teachers and fellow students.

So what’s really going on with the extreme radicals who are demonstrating and rioting in our streets? What are their ultimate goals?

Last week, the Pew research center released a report that showed the breakdown of the people who have been participating in the protests and riots: 17 percent are black, 46 percent are white, 22 percent are Hispanic, and 8 percent are Asian.

The 76 percent of non-black demonstrators genuinely believe that they are superior to us working stiffs. But make no mistake about it. They are not only fighting against what they believe is systemic racism. They are also fighting for the same causes that were promoted by their college professors — causes that are also fully supported by the media and Hollywood and sports celebrities. They were taught that they are on the winning side of the ultimate struggle that pits blacks against whites, females against males, illegal aliens against legal immigrants, and gays and transgenders against straight people.

They are waging a war against our capitalist economic system that was built upon freedom, the nuclear family, and Judeo-Christian values. Their goal is to replace our culture and the current system of government with a socialist system in which the government will dictate what the definition of a family is and will limit our ability to participate in a religion or group that does not align its beliefs with their socialist beliefs.

We’ve already gotten a taste of what a socialist government would look like with the recent coronavirus “pandemic,” which gave our mayors, city officials, and governors the “right” to force us to follow their orders. It’s scary how easily they were able to take control of our lives. They told us where we could go, where we could drive, where we could work, and who we were allowed to interact with. If we disobeyed their orders, we were threatened with legal action and social ostracism.

The war that has been launched against us by our educated elite is not about weeding out the bad cops from our police departments. It’s about tearing apart our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution and destroying our current system of government, so it can be replaced with a new oppressive system of government.

The leaders of the new socialist government will have the legal right to confiscate our money and property, so they can reward their voters with free college, free food, free rent, and a free universal basic monthly income. The current politicians that want to become the new leaders of a socialist government have no problem with rioters breaking into businesses and stealing products for their own use because the politicians plan on passing laws that will allow them to legally steal money and property from businesses and hard-working Americans.

We need to put a stop to this rebellion by crushing it. Then we need to provide parents of students who are in kindergarten through 12th grade with financial vouchers that can be used to enroll their children in schools of their choice. This would allow parents to select schools that focus on turning out graduates who are well-versed in traditional Judeo-Christian values, and who are respectful, disciplined, and proficient in reading, writing, math, history, and elective subjects that will prepare them for a future career.

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