McMILLAN: Leave our kids alone!

Children are under the care of their parents. Full Stop. Any opinion contrary to that needs to be met with the same level of suspicion as finding someone trying to sneak into your house at 1 AM.Certain principles are worth offending others over and Western Canadians need to learn how to possess their rights and freedoms apart from when the government gifts them to us. (As they like to see it.) No, this is not a call to arms or anything other than a call to personal responsibility.Premier Danielle Smith drew some very clear lines in the sand Thursday. We celebrate that and she attempted to do so with empathy. Smith is being pummeled as a result. To be fair, there are those who think it was not sufficiently hardline, but then there are those without common principles; they are offended because their ethics are guided by emotions.How has our society come to the point where parental rights is a contentious issue? Has anyone ever tried to argue the concept “it takes a village” with a Grizzly bear separated from her cubs? It is self-explanatory, self-evident and incredibly simple — a concept so universal it’s like God made it so.The criticisms of Smith’s decision from the left are nothing new. They have nothing backing them other than emotion and self-righteous made-up moral theory. They are upset and offended, so therefore there must be an offence. That is it, that is far as it goes. They cannot plead the Charter due to Section 7, they cannot plead the norms of nature, they lost all chances at reason when they claimed some men can give birth and God knows how much they hate Him, so that is not an option either.Confused because you were expecting a pep talk on how we need the government to step in, do more and save parents from the tyranny of woke teachers? President Ronald Reagan said it best in his 1981 Inaugural Address: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”The Alberta Teacher’s Association is not your friend here either, because they view themselves as co-parents. What else are they if they think they need to protect children from their parents and it is a crime against humanity if they are inhibited from full access to your children? If the math does not make sense right now, that is because one branch of government is at war with the premier over who has the right to raise, influence and protect your children.You cannot enter this debate without surrendering your God-given rights at the door. That is why I homeschool my children and have removed my children from the equation entirely.If this sounds like I have run off the track, have you taken the time to think through the steps necessary to be at this place? At the start of every school year, teachers are celebrated for their duty, care and commitment to the children. Churches will ask the teachers to rise and the congregants are supposed to applaud them. Social media lights up with self-congratulatory posts from teachers reminding us about how hard the job they chose is and we are supposed to show our gratitude.This is group-think celebrating the group thinkers who teach children to hate the oil industry that employs their dad and to practice counting by counting genders. Too harsh? I am at university with many students who are fully funded by oil and gas money who hate oil, capitalism and white males. How did that happen and who let it happen?Premier Smith gave our rights back to us and we should celebrate that, but it should never have been a question in the first place. Who does the government work for? Who do our MLA’s represent? This is where the work of David Parker from Take Back Alberta has been so important.Regardless, we are still emerging from the shadow of the pandemic and the horror of how fragile our freedoms are. For too long we have slept and become complacent in the West. But, no more. It is time for the parents in Western Canada to wake up, laugh at the plans of the opposition and fulfil our God-given roles at home, at work, at church on Sunday and whereever else we may be. Ryan McMillan is a fourth-year journalism student at Mount Royal University. Twitter @Ryan.i.McMillan

McMILLAN: Leave our kids alone!

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