“In vain are schools, academies, and universities instituted if loose principles and licentious habits are impressed upon children in their earliest years.”  —John Adams (1778)

Recently, I published good news about higher education — some colleges and universities are endeavoring to restore campus civility.

As the fall academic semester gets underway, some schools are attempting to contain the small cadres of adolescents who are responsible for most campus incivility.

How? By endeavoring to instill values in students that, in most cases, parents failed to imbue. And that is a heavy lift.

Too many young people arrive for their freshman year without a solid mooring of values, and consequently are malleable. They can be shaped into whatever form that comports with the dominant campus cultural influence.

It is difficult enough for students with solid faith and values roots to withstand the campus peer culture, but those without strong roots are at high risk.

A longtime friend, Brian Beckley, has devoted his career to mentoring high school students so they can pursue their purpose with wisdom, character, and courage once in college.

He focuses on fortifying their values so they can join others who stand for what is good and right on college campuses, rather than falling into the leftist abyss.

I asked Brian for his perspective on why students are susceptible.

Western civilization is often defined by its accomplishments. Democracy, individual rights, religious liberty, and scientific advancement are all commonly associated with the West.

But simply listing these achievements misses the more important question:

What actually makes Western civilization different?

The answer cannot simply be that the West has been morally superior to every civilization that came before it. Western history includes slavery, war, persecution, and countless other injustices.

But none of these things are uniquely Western either. Nearly every major civilization throughout human history has experienced slavery and other forms of oppression.

What distinguishes the West is not the absence of injustice, but the development of principles that allow injustice to be recognized and challenged.

If you’re a Baby Boomer and a socially-conservative Christian, and you don’t understand young men nowadays, I’m writing for you.

I also have something to ask of you at the end of this essay.

It recently came to my attention that some of you don’t understand why a large number of young men have become shut-ins, often addicts, without career or romantic prospects.

The term used for this now is “NEET.”

That is, they are Not in Education, Employment or Training. Men described as NEETS are those who were once simply called slackers, basement-dwellers, and so on.

I’d like to explain how this happened. 

First, a little about me

I’m a young man, somewhere between a Millennial and a Gen Z. I’m Christian, had good grades in school, worked hard, and finished college.

I was raised well, too. I don’t want everything handed to me, and I don’t like those who do. You’d think that would help me in life.

It doesn’t.

Thirteen years ago, a 29-year-old government contractor named Ed Snowden gave a reporter proof that the U.S. government was secretly collecting the phone records of millions of ordinary Americans.

Snowden considered himself an American patriot.

His parents both worked for the government, and he proudly traced his American ancestry all the way back to the Mayflower.

He had a solid salary, a serious girlfriend, and a house in Hawaii.

But on June 6, 2013, he flew to Hong Kong with a stack of classified files, sat down with journalists, and tried to explain to them why he was blowing up his whole life.

He said he didn't want to live in a world where everything you say and everyone you talk to and every expression of love or friendship gets recorded.

The world right now is in a bit of a precarious energy pinch. There is lots of what we need available. Getting it delivered is currently the biggest problem.

If oil isn't moving at its usual volume through the Strait of Hormuz, it has to be rerouted in a different direction, and it just so happens that every other default transit 'chokepoint' is having issues at the same time.

...But 16.7 million barrels a day don't vanish off the map…They get rerouted, and rerouting oil means shoving it through some other narrow place that was already busy. Brent was around $91.62 on Wednesday and WTI at $85.56, and a fair slice of that is just the cost of the detour.

So the more useful question right now isn't what's happening in Hormuz. It's what's happening everywhere else. There are five other chokepoints that matter, and every one of them is currently doing something. They're below in rough order of how likely they are to ruin somebody's quarter, starting with the one that already is.