What We Can Learn From Dianne Feinstein

Suffer the little children, but don't take political advice from them.

Was it Dianne Feinstein’s finest moment?  Quite possibly.  Writing in National Review, Zach Kessel remembers a confrontation between the Senator and teenage environmental protesters:

In February 2019, climate-advocacy group the Sunrise Movement — one of the most annoying activist organizations in existence — sicced a group of doe-eyed children on Feinstein, apparently expecting its juvenile proxies’ youthful exuberance and plucky charm to win the senator over to its side on support for the Green New Deal.

What it got instead was a master-class in public service. Instead of coddling the kids like many Democrats do, promising them they can have anything their hearts desire of public policy with nary a trade-off, Feinstein told them the truth.

“There’s reasons why I can’t, ’cause there’s no way to pay for it,” the California senator told the children, who clearly had never considered the argument that feasibility of legislation matters. “I don’t agree with what the resolution says,” she added. Feinstein went on to inform the kids, who seemed to have been put up to this in a shameful display of the progressive inclination to use American youth as political tools, that you actually need a majority of lawmakers to vote for a bill in order for it to reach the president’s desk. She didn’t mention this, but the president at the time was Donald Trump, who obviously would’ve vetoed a Green New Deal in any form. 

Perhaps the best moment of the exchange came when one of the teens who barged into her office tried to impress upon Feinstein her obligation to do the bidding of those who voted her into office. After asking the girl’s age and learning she was 16 years old, Feinstein replied, “Well, you didn’t vote for me.” 

In a political landscape that often places a premium on the opinions of children who are generally misinformed by the activist groups seeking to use them as pawns, Feinstein did her job. She explained how the legislative process works, held firm, and refused to treat the kids as the special little snowflakes — who deserve undue influence on lawmaking — other progressive politicians say they are. Whatever our disagreements with the late senator may have been, at least she took her job seriously enough to be honest with the teens and tweens about their demands.

Kessel is right as far as he goes, but it’s worth thinking about why leftist groups use underage kids as their stalking-horses, shock troops, and human shields so often.

One reason is the “culture of youth,” with dates back to around the time I was born.  The notion – alien to human civilization for almost its entirety – was that younger people know more, are more insightful, and deserve more attention than older people. 

The problem with this argument is that it is absurd.  (There’s a reason why it’s alien to pretty much all previous human civilization, and it’s not because previous human civilization didn’t know what it was doing).  Well, that’s one problem.  Another problem is that it is manipulative and dishonest.  And it’s sufficiently damaging for the young people involved that it borders on abuse.

First, the manipulative and dishonest part.  Kids are cute; people instinctively (literally) like them.  Associating them with your ideology is intended to produce a halo effect.  (Even the Nazis did this.) 

But people’s natural feelings toward adorable kids, like their feelings for puppies, baby goats, etc., have nothing to do with policy.  Relying on something like that is practically an admission that your views lack substance.

Likewise, the fact that kids believe your views means nothing.  Kids believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and superheroes.  The very essence of kidhood is the inability to reliably make rational choices.  We recognize this with laws setting the age of consent for sex, a drinking age, and a voting age, as Sen. Feinstein pointed out. 

The really manipulative part, though, lies in sending kids to express your views, then calling it abusive if people point out that the views they’re expressing are stupid.  (We got this all the time with children’s crusaders like David Hogg and Greta Thunberg until they became too old for it to work, at which time their stars began to set.) 

If your ideas need to be expressed by people that others aren’t allowed to criticize, that’s a solid indicator that your ideas can’t withstand criticism, because they’re stupid.

It’s also abusive to put kids through this.  Telling kids that they’re needed to save the world may fit Harry Potter / Percy Jackson childhood fantasies – but putting that pressure on them in the real world is enormously stressful.  Turning kids to crusaders tends to end badly – see, e.g., the original Children’s Crusade – and is likely to be emotionally draining and damaging for them at the very least.  Kids shouldn’t take responsibility for the world. That’s adults’ job.  Encouraging them to do so for political ends is abusive and wrong.

Nonetheless political groups do this all the time, and usually don’t get a lot of pushback.  I think it’s time for that to end.

Every time there’s a children’s crusade on behalf of whatever the issue du jour, it’s important to point this out.  The adults involved shouldn’t be able to hide behind pint-sized human shields.  They should be called out and shamed.  And the kids should be politely informed of why they aren’t the constituents of our political system yet.

Dianne Feinstein showed the way.  It’s up to the rest of us to follow her example.