The pro-abortion graduation speech given by a Texas high school’s valedictorian manages to highlight just how toxic progressivism is and the awful feedback loop it reinforces.
The speech followed on the heel of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signing a “heartbeat bill” into law, banning abortions in the state after six weeks of gestation. Paxton Smith decided to jettison her approved commencement speech and take to the podium to speak about how important the right to kill unborn children is.
In doing so, she decided to take a moment that should have been shared by her classmates and their families and make it about herself. As someone who was lucky enough to be selected to give a graduation speech at my graduation, I did not decide to complain about, say, the strict gun control laws in our state of California. You are at the podium to represent everyone from your friends to the classmates you never got to know, not Planned Parenthood or the NRA.
But the speech itself is simply the result of the way progressive politics are fed to children to regurgitate back to the public. Smith’s assertions that protecting unborn children is a war on women or that her “hopes and dreams will no longer be relevant” without abortion are not hers alone. They are the talking points of the abortion industry and the Democratic politicians who support it, disseminated to high school children through their parents and teachers or through social media and the entertainment industry. Their message, that women are nothing without abortion, is grotesque.
And then there is the reinforcement of this fearmongering and selfishness in the form of media praise. CBS News called the speech an “impassioned plea.” USA Today’s headline led with the quote, “we cannot stay silent,” while the Guardian led with “it’s dehumanizing.” Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has pushed her own abhorrent view of abortion, praised the speech. Smith has become a progressive cult hero overnight.
In this, Smith is not special: Roping children into political battles and heaping praise on them for their ignorant screeds and partisan attacks is one of the worst tendencies of progressive politics. We’ve already seen it with Greta Thunberg on climate change and David Hogg and his fellow “March for Our Lives” classmates on gun control.
It’s a repulsive cycle, where every glowing media story about how a child has taken to parroting progressive talking points encourages more to try and follow that path and more parents to try and push them toward that path. All to reinforce the politics held by establishment media, higher education, the entertainment industry, and one of the two major political parties. It isn’t brave or beneficial: It’s the toxic politicization of children.
