There's a short video showing a British instructor explaining to an Afghan woman why she should appreciate an early 20th-century artist who turned a urinal into conceptual art. The scene epitomizes the failure of Western cultural imperialism.

It also reminded me that the left is engaged in a high-stakes conflict that it is winning: its all-out war on American children.

After Texas lawmakers recently passed a bill prohibiting abortion after a baby's heartbeat is detected, the phrase "American Taliban" trended across Twitter. It's hard to understand how the people who don't want babies dismembered in the womb would be seen as the backward theocrats while the people who would legalize abortion up until birth would be seen as caring and compassionate.

This development shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who understands that abortion — the intentional taking of innocent human life — is one of the left's most deeply held values. The Democratic Party paints itself as a pro-woman and pro-child coalition concerned for the marginalized and oppressed. Its legislative and cultural priorities reveal a very dark alternate reality. The truth is that the left hates women and children.

Like the immoral woman described in Proverbs, the lips of Nancy Pelosi's party drip honey and its speech is smoother than oil. It all sounds tempting until you realize it's a worldview that leads to death.

Abortion is the most obvious front of the left's war on children. There were over 600,000 abortions performed in 2018, according to the CDC. Democrats are quick to point out that most of the women having abortions are low-income and many are ethnic minorities. Both points are true. Apparently the party that decries the twin evils of capitalism and racism has no problem with fewer babies being born if they are poor and black. The party that boldly proclaims "black lives matter" while on a perpetual heat-seeking mission for any institution that honors bigots from the past has no issue with Margaret Sanger's racist views or the legacy of eugenics still seen in our nation's largest abortion provider. Planned Parenthood traces its roots back to Sanger's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1917. To this day, about half of all black babies in New York City are killed in the womb before they draw their first breaths.

The left seethes with apoplectic rage whenever it feels abortion is being threatened, but it also has plans for the children who actually are born. Its first goal is to get the babies out of the arms of their mothers. They see women who stay home with their children as a step back in feminism's long march to turn women — in terms of priorities and temperament — into men who can give birth. Even though the research demonstrates the benefits of mothers staying home to care for their young children — something most Americans support — the left acts as if a woman has more value to her employer than to her own family. Part of the left's motivation is the knowledge that recruiting the next generation into its culture war requires thousands of hours of basic training.

That instruction starts in day care and moves to the school for some children as young as three. Once there, many kids are bombarded by teachers who have swapped a focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic for racial narcissism, activism, and protesting. Los Angeles teachers' union President Cecily Myart-Cruz recently admitted this when she claimed that it was fine if students didn't learn multiplication last year because now they know the words "insurrection" and "coup," as well as the difference between a riot and a protest. She is not alone. The Chicago Teachers Union claimed, "The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny." The education establishment in this country has been hijacked by partisan advocates who could not care less whether our children are literate and numerate as long as they come out every election to vote for Democrats once they turn 18. They have no problem openly admitting that critical theory is more important to them than critical thinking. What's the result? Our children are not learning. There was a time when American children learned Latin in high school. Now most need remedial English in college.

American children face attacks on all sides, from their personhood in utero to their minds in the classroom. The last ten years have been marked by growing intensity on the gender identity battlefront. Democrats are completely on board with the notion that people — including school-aged children — can pick their gender. They would never encourage an anorexic teenage girl to get gastric bypass surgery, but when it comes to other intense feelings of conflict between mind and body, they promote the radical alteration of the body. What most people probably don't know is that John Money, the man who introduced the term "gender identity," was a psychologist who was involved in the sex reassignment of a child named David Reimer in the 1960s. Money forced Reimer, who was raised as a girl, to perform sex acts with his twin brother while he photographed them. Both brothers committed suicide in their 30s.

The left hates your children. Democrats don't believe pre-born babies have inherent worth. They have no problem undermining parental authority if it means getting the opportunity to shape the minds and morals of the next generation of voters. Decades of research show children have the best outcomes when they are raised by their married biological parents. Yet it is easier to get an elected Democrat to promote pornography and sex work than to publicly affirm the role of marriage and the nuclear family in producing positive social outcomes.

Liberal ideology couldn't make Afghan women accept bathroom art as normal because the people in that country actually believe in something more important than superficial notions of identity. That may come as a surprise to American elites whose views are a mile wide and an inch deep. The quickness with which the Afghan government folded to the Taliban demonstrated that a small group of highly committed people can drive off a well-funded enemy who lacks the courage of its convictions. It's time for parents in this country to use their own weapons — prayer, petition, public pressure — to fight for what they hold most dear.