We live in an affluent age. And, oddly enough, it has its challenges. I stumbled through a post about that at an earlier time here on these pages. One of those challenges is remembering that man has always had trying times – and always will have. Our greatest and most defining moments rarely come in comfort and ease but in struggle and crisis. It is then that we reveal what is most important to us, what sacrifices are to be made, and what for. Those sacrifices are things important to us given up for what has proven to be more important to our values at a time of crisis. What could be more defining?

It was said by some that when the Romans finally drove the nail into the coffin of the Carthaginians at the end of the third Punic War in 146 B.C., they not only destroyed Carthage but plowed salt into their fields to destroy even the soil that had fed them. I tend to take that tale with a “grain of salt” since Rome not only were taking over control of the trade routes of the Mediterranean but the fertile production of the Carthaginians’ north African territories as well.

Naturally, trade and commerce lay at the cause of the three wars which turned the Mediterranean into a Roman Sea and led to the Roman Republic becoming the Roman Empire. But one of the excuses used by Roman historians for their hatred of the Carthaginians was the practice of child sacrifice, something intended to brand them as deserving of the harshest treatment. And there is certainly evidence that this was the case. Carthage, being a Phoenician colony claimed a Canaanite heritage and there have been mass graves of children found around Carthage and Carthaginian settlements.

There are some modern-day historians who discount the claims, or find them un-conclusive or believe the practice might have been rare. Child sacrifice certainly wasn’t new to the world, then or later. Throughout history people have offered up what should be the most precious of their belongings, their children, during times when crisis came in the form of war, drought, famine, or disease. I don’t intend to drag us through all of the gruesome examples from just about every age of the past. These offerings were, for the most part, made to appease “gods” with the basest of human emotions.

There is something I would hope that each would grasp before we continue on with what is certainly an uneasy topic. Each child was willingly sacrificed in the hope of benefiting an adult serving their own imagined interest. The children, their suffering, their worth, their future, did not matter. All of those were sacrificed for the immediate impulse of self-focused adults. Some might even call this a signature of a sick society.

There are some among us who would say that our children are God’s promise for tomorrow. They are the gift that ensures we have a future, even after our life has passed. They are our chance to speak to the ages through what we leave with them.

As we look back across the span of history at the societies which commonly practiced child sacrifice, we generally label them as pagan. What type of ideology or religion could require such an expenditure of human life, especially of those innocent ones with so much yet to live? Is that practice done for the hopeful safety or comfort of adults even sane? How delusional do these people have to be to give their children over to either empty promises or deadly gestures of loyalty or belief?

Since the Supreme Court invented a constitutional right out of thin air in 1973, there have been an estimated 61 million abortions. At present, it is said we average about 1 million a year. Today, this “right” is cemented in as one of the most sacred “rites” of the left not just here but across the globe. It is considered rather unsophisticated among most “elites” to not accept this “right to choose” or at least to voice some acceptable nuance or qualifying condition when thinking of some limits on its practice.

In recent times, it has become trendy to imagine that a previously scientific absolute such as biological sex could actually be quite fluid depending on the whim of social pressure. It has since become not enough for grown and presumably mature adults to act on this delusion. Now, children can find themselves in the middle of physically damaging surgery and drug treatment when taken in by the whim of an adult or some misguided social instinct for acceptance. They are left with the scars and failures to sort out over a lifetime because of the self-indulgence and cowardice of both individual adults and the society as a whole.

The single most stabilizing factor for a child and their future is the security of the functional nuclear family. The destruction of this vital unit is the avowed goal of most branches of the modern-day left. Many are overt about it, at least until it is pointed out publicly. Black Lives Matter had it written into their organization’s stated purpose until called on it. Of course, the founders were trained Marxists and destruction of the nuclear family is central to that plan for society.

But the family has been under attack using more gradual means for some time. The welfare state has taken a dramatic toll in the West. The decline of intact nuclear family units has a direct, measurable effect on almost every social ill that has a name and some that don’t. The definition of marriage itself has been allowed to be twisted to the point that it has little real-world meaning at all. The society itself pays a heavy price for its own foolishness but mostly the first victims to suffer that price are the children who have little hand in it.

In ancient Sparta, the children of citizens were the instruments of the state. The males were to be the warriors who supplied the force required to keep the more numerous helots in their slave-like status and protect against foreign powers. The females were to supply the sons needed for this. Those children who were too sickly to grow into these roles were left to die in the elements. The sons were taken from the home before our kids can get through junior high school to begin their military training. Their family was the state. It was in this atmosphere that mothers could watch their sons go to war and wish only that they return either in victory or “carried on their shield”.

In Sparta, education did not serve the individual, his growth, his understanding, his spiritual development. It served to create conformity. It served to create obedience. Purpose did not go beyond the goals of the state and its elites.

Before the 1980s, the top spot for educational achievement among the “developed” nations of the world was usually held by either the United States or Australia. But the educational system of the West had been under attack for some time by “innovators” of the left steering it away from traditional classical methods. The end of the Carter administration saw the creation of the Department of Education and a giant step toward federalizing American education. Today, the United States is ranked out of the top ten in every discipline and places as far back as 32th in some basic skills.

Mostly recently, we have basically restructured our children’s existence around a disease that has a fatality rate of less than 1% for most of the population and far below that for children. But under the gist of protecting society as a whole those children have been isolated at a critical developmental stage of their lives, made to wear masks that had doubtful use under most studies at the beginning and have since been shown to have little if any effect since and now are under threat of mandate to inject experimental drugs. Why? If the excuse is to protect the society as a whole, it needs to be remembered the children are the very least likely to be affected negatively by the disease.

Since these “measures” became common, the ill effects range from the lack of developing language skills simply from masks covering the mouth all the way to a suicide rate among young girls that has skyrocketed.

On our southern border, the trade in young children and their abuse is a human tragedy that should leave one at a loss for words. In a world that steps back in horror at slavery of centuries ago but gives only lip service to the suffering of millions today, one of the surest ways to perpetuate the abuse of thousands upon thousands of children is to open up international borders so that drugs, criminals and human cargo can flow freely. Who benefits from this? Who has decided that these young, defenseless lives are capital to be spent for profit and power?

There are other ways in which our children have had a terrible price forced upon them by the adult world which is supposed to protect, nurture and grow them to an independent and productive maturity. But there should be plenty here to ponder and consider without going on.

I will again speculate that if any of these were done openly in the name of a religion, the practice would be called pagan and evil, undeserving of the mantle of religion. But what if it is done simply to support an ideology?

What does that say about those who claim that ideology?

Perhaps more important, what does that say about the others (perhaps the majority??) who allow these sacrifices to continue?

Who is to pay for the direction and the future of a society? Is a worldview that requires our children to be given up for it really going to nurture and protect you? Does it even respect you?

These evils are not new to the world and they will not vanish any time soon. But the measure of any generation may well be if they saw them for what they were and responded with clarity and determination. The prices paid just in the last few years are heavy. If we tolerate them any longer or sink back in frustrated inaction will speak loud and clear about us in the ages to come. It might well tell them we did not just value our own Liberty too little but our own children even less.