The Church of Grievance

In the days and weeks after the awful massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School, a number of students put themselves forward, to the front of America’s ceaselessly reiterated debate about gun rights. That they would have an immediate — even urgent — prominence is predictable. But it is the predictable exception to American political debate, which is usually conducted under the pretense that all its participants — politicians, experts, journalists, and news addicts — belong to a cult of policy expertise. Victims have a unique and growing role in our...