They are nowhere. At the same time we, as a society, are feverishly working to punish younger and younger children for their transgressions as adults, to saddle children with the same legal responsibility as adults, our society is working feverishly to curtail their individual rights and freedoms. At the very same time that we are telling the young that they are smart enough and responsible enough to die for their crimes, we are telling them they are not smart or responsible enough to decide how to dress, what time to come home, what music to listen to or movies to watch, or to drive alone. We claim to do this for their protection, which we say they need. The hypocrisy of these contradictory opinions is obvious, the immorality, more so.
Children are so easy to scapegoat.
They have no voting rights, no lobbies, no financial power, no political clout. Where children are concerned, politicians can act with impunity. Children cannot vote them out of office, or visit consequences upon those who do not act in their best interest. Unlike almost any other group in our society, children are subject to sweeping media generalizations and negative propaganda. The acts of a single child, a child like yesterday's high school shooter, are presented as a bellwether for an entire generation.