In a viral video from Dundee, Scotland, three schoolgirls stand on a hilltop. One clutches a knife and a hatchet, brandishing them toward an advancing man. Another shields a third girl in a pink sweatshirt, her voice breaking as she cries: “Don’t touch my sister, she’s twelve!”
It is a moment that distills civilizational decline. In that scream lies the sound of failure — the burden of defense shifted from the strong to the small, from institutions to children. Collapse rarely announces itself with flames and rubble; more often, it creeps in through abdication.
The state’s first response was not to confront the predator, but to charge the girl for holding a weapon to defend herself and her sister.
This is the inversion of justice that defines too much of Western life today: The fear of offending a racial and religious minority outweighs the fear of harming innocent civilians, including and especially young girls and women. “Tolerance” is stretched to excuse the intolerable, and girls are left to bear the costs of the public class’s cowardice. The impulse to confront evil has been hollowed out, replaced by the reflex to punish those who resist it or even name it.
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