Parkland’s secular saints shouldn’t be immune to criticism

Oh America, what have you done to your kids? Consider David Hogg, the 17-year-old survivor of last month’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and now omnipresent media agitator for tighter gun-control laws in the US. That young Mr Hogg’s instant reaction to being criticised by a news anchor was to whip up a virtual mob to try to have her sacked is a terrifying testament to the new intolerance among America’s young. We are starting to see what the cult of self-esteem and the ideology of the Safe Space have wrought: a new generation that cannot handle criticism; which is positively allergic to divergent views; which thinks nothing of trying to wreck the lives of anyone who dares to disagree with them.

I can’t be the only person who, when he saw that recent cover of Time magazine featuring Mr Hogg and four of his fellow students cum opponents of gun culture under the headline ‘ENOUGH, thought to himself: ‘Yes, that is enough — enough of these kids and their juvenile self-righteousness.’