No Michelle, They're Not Knuckleheads

No Michelle, They're Not Knuckleheads

Michelle Obama is a very busy lady. When she's not hard at work reminding us about our misplaced priorities, (“All this for a damn flag”), or usurping parent's authority to decide what to feed their children, she's hanging out in Aspen or Hawaii with her Hollywood friends, hosting galas in the White House, or directing her personal staff of over 20 aides, chefs, hairdressers, and vacation coordinators.

With all that going on, she still found the time, on Feb 20, to appear on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where, doing her best Marie Antoinette, she declared that it was “more important than ever for young people to sign up for Obamacare” (using the quaint euphemism “Affordable Care Act”).

She said:

“A lot of young people think they're invincible. But the truth is young people are knuckleheads. They're the ones who are cooking for the first time and slice their finger open. They're dancing on the bar stool.”

America owes its very existence to the contributions of young people. Here's a very short list of examples:

The average age of American soldiers in every major conflict since the Revolution has ranged between 19-22 years of age. In WWII alone, 418,000 Americans died in battle. The average age of those killed was between 20-23.

The youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence was Thomas Lynch at age 26. He was commissioned a Company Commander in the South Carolina regiment in 1775, and was elected a Delegate to the Continental Congress shortly after.

Jack Lucas earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in the Feb 1945 assault on Iwo Jima. He was 17 years old. The youngest recipient of the Medal of Honor in history was Willie Johnston, during the Civil War. He was 13.

The average age at which most young people become an MD, PhD or lawyer is anywhere from 26 to 30+ years. To reach that goal requires a young person to make a lifelong commitment at about the age of 18.

Perhaps Michelle, who was once a lawyer until she surrendered her license (for undisclosed reasons), recalls making such a commitment to study law at about that same age.

Young people are the future of this nation. They fight America's wars, and they raise America's children. They have the energy and the drive to pursue long term goals, and they're not afraid to dream. If their idealism leads them to embrace utopian notions put forth by people like the Obamas, their understanding of what is at stake and of their right to direct their own future will lead them to ultimately reject those notions. They have the most to gain, and the most to lose in the outcome. The future of America belongs to them, and they're not knuckleheads.

And why do they dance on bar stools? For the same two very human reasons they will decline to be forced into the servitude that hides in the dark heart of Obama's statism. One: It's a spontaneous way to celebrate because they're smart enough to understand the irreplaceable gift of Freedom. And two: mostly they dance on bar stools for the same reason the rest of us did when we were young: because they can.

Ronald Reagan said this to the graduates at Notre Dame University in 1981:
“We need you. We need your youth, your strength, and your idealism, to help us make right that which is wrong”.
Ronald Reagan also said:

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”.

He believed in America's youth. I think he saw the Obama's coming.