Making the messenger the message: The left's new tactic to avoid scrutiny

Until impeachment hearings became the flavor of the day, earlier in the week you couldn't avoid Greta Thunberg even if you wanted to.

The 16-year-old Swedish girl became the left's latest new hero when she gave a speech on the "impending climate crisis" (quotes intentional) at the United Nations. She sounded the usual Chicken Little sky-is-falling alarms about how we are all doomed unless we go back to an 18th Century way of life, and kill all the evil old people -- especially the white male power structure -- who are intentionally trying to kill her and all the young people because they're greedy and uncaring.

She is the perfect person for the global warming freak-outers to put on display as their mouthpiece. You can't dare challenge her, because if you do, you're attacking an autistic child. It doesn't matter that her ideas are nuttier than the proverbial squirrel droppings. We're big, bad bullies because we dare to disagree with her.

Seems like the left has found the perfect way to marry the message and the messenger. Send sympathetic personalities, preferably young people, front and center to spread their gospel and then attack the motives of their critics and accuse them of bullying children.

Although Thunberg is the most recent example of this, she is by no means the first. She's following in the footsteps of David Hogg, the Florida student whose school was the site of a mass shooting, who became a gun control advocate after that tragedy.

No one disputes that Hogg grieves over the loss of his schoolmates, that he was impacted tremendously by what happened, and that no one wants to ever see that event repeated. But many of us disagree with the solutions he's put forth. And when we say that, we're labeled as insensitive and uncaring adults with no compassion for a kid's grief.

Funny how that didn't work for Kyle Kashuv, isn't it? Kashuv was equally impacted by the Parkland massacre, yet he didn't become a vocal anti-Second Amendment advocate. He championed sensible, constitutional changes to ensure school safety while preserving a vital God-given right enshrined in the Constitution. But since Kashuv's narrative doesn't mesh with the left's priorities, he became fair game for criticism.

And this whole "you shouldn't be critical of children" narrative? It's also funny how that went out the window when Nick Sandmann and his fellow Covington Catholic students were unfairly and untruthfully maligned for something they didn't do. Liberals wasted no time calling Sandmann a racist and a bully merely because one photograph, captured at a moment in time when a certain look appeared on his face for the fraction of a second it took for the camera shutter to open and close. And even when the subsequent facts proved the young northern Kentucky kids did absolutely nothing wrong, the falsehoods continued, even from some of the nation's biggest media outlets.

When the difference between the reactions to Thunberg and Sandmann is pointed out, the left shrieks, "false equivalency." Oh really? How so? Was Sandmann criticized merely because he's white, male, and Catholic? Yes, he was. Is Thunberg being criticized for being young, female, and autistic? Nope.

Maybe there is a false equivalency there, but not the way liberals would like to proclaim.

Expect more of this to continue. Anytime liberalism needs to make a public point, be it climate change or gun control or whatever, expect a sympathetic young spokesperson to be paraded in front of the cameras, and then anyone who criticizes their message will be accused of hating the messenger.

In the meantime, conservatives must continue to make their points known, even if we take heat for it. We have to challenge the left's policy proposals to preserve our republic and our way of life.