This newspaper article from England illuminates a sparse timeline of the final 21 minutes of two boy’s lives. This completely avoidable tragedy, contrasted with a story from my own youth, shines a bright light on the dark reality of socialism. Kieran Coupe, age 7, and Guy Davies, age 6, spent the last 21 minutes of their lives lost, terrified, and dodging traffic on a highway in Cheshire England. Cause of death? The socialistic nanny state of Great Britain.

The two boys lived in a nearby neighborhood with woods that abutted the freeway. They got lost and ended up coming out of the woods near the freeway. They decided to cross the freeway. At 7:01pm the first reports came into 999 (their version of 911) about the boys crossing the freeway. Motorists swerved and pulled over as soon as they could, they called 999. They were told by the 999 operators not to help the boys, that it was too dangerous. They went on their way. Calls came in from motorists for the next twenty minutes. No one stopped to help. The police were on the way. At 7:22 apparently unable to cross the median, the boys decided to cross back again. They didn’t make it.

Pensioner Bernard Heaton told how he saw the pair scramble onto the central reservation as he headed towards Chester in his Nissan Pathfinder. Mr Heaton said: ‘The car in front of me pulled aside to reveal a silver scooter in the road, thirty to forty feet ahead. ‘I took evasive action, braked and swerved to avoid the scooter and a young child emerging from the central reservation to retrieve it.

‘I was shocked and in my mirror caught sight of the lad’s face. I used my hands-free kit to phone 999. ‘I offered to stop but the police said said two units has been dispatched and it was too dangerous for me to try to help. ‘I wonder now if I could have made all the difference by stopping to help them.’ 

Socialism is sold peicemeal as the responsible thing to do for your neighbor; provide their health care, provide them food, provide them clothing and shelter. The reality is that socialism cannot increase responsibility because it abjucates responsibility to the government. It is a virtuous nation we are told that provides for basic rights, such as health care. The reality is that a government cannot exercise virtue on behalf of its citizens. Virtue is always and only a freely exercised individual response to a situation. Socialism forcefully sucks the virtue out of individuals and replaces it with resentment, apathy, dependence, and moral relativism.

How many cars went by the 6 and 7 year old terrified boys because they had abdicated their personal responsibility, their ability to exercise heroic virtue to the government. To them the risk of an accident on the freeway caused by stopping their own cars was a  morally equivilent counterbalance to their responsibility to help the boys. The government confirmed their belief.

The government wasn’t quite able to get their on time.

PC Jordan said: ‘I raced to the scene at 120mph and arrived just seconds after the collision. ’I saw two bodies. One on the central lane and one on the hard shoulder. It was immediately clear that the boy in lane two was dead. ‘I headed to the other boy and turned him over but it was obvious from his horrendous injuries that he was also dead.

A number of motorists were out of their cars and screaming hysterically.

It was much too dangerous to stop their cars to help these boys, but apparently the motorists were able to safely get out of their cars and scream hysterically after the pair had been run down.

The contrasting story from my youth is the act of a friend of my dad’s named John. John was pulling out onto a two-lane highway behind a tractor driven by a boy of 14 or 15. As the boy pulled out, John watched in horror as a driver in the opposite lane pulled out to pass at the same time. Without hesitation John floored his truck into the oncoming car and likely saved the boys life. He quickly weighed the near certain death of the boy on the fully exposed tractor, against his and the other driver’s chances of injury from a side impact collision. The boy lived. John and the other driver had minor injuries.

For their not to be at least one “John” in the crowd of dozens or hundreds of drivers that passed by those boys during those 21 minutes when they could have been saved, indicates a corrupt group mentality. I say that this corrupt mentaility was caused by England’s socialism, big government, nanny state, whatever name you want to give it.  

Fighting the tide of socialism is to fight a false premise and a false promise. We can no longer just state plainly that this is socialistic and expect a majority to understand why that is bad. In our schools, our media, even some of our churches, the rosy picture is painted by snake oil salesmen and their prodigy.

Perhaps it helps to tell the naïve what we may become in a socialist world. We become the antithesis of the good neighbor we thought we were becoming. We become all of those drivers who watched Kerian and Guy in their rear view mirrors while calling 999, assured they had fulfilled their responsibility.

God bless their souls.