He Wasn't Wrong Poem by David Welch

I remember Charlie from college,
a troublemaker par excellence,
not that Charlie intended to be,
it's just his views were often askance.
Take, for example, the time in class
we were discussing feminism,
the professor was glad her students
were all seeing things through her prism.
But then Charlie said, "You're looking past
the long-term effects of such thoughts,
marriage rates are down, so are birth rates,
divorce is so common it seems taught.
More single mothers mean messed up kids,
strange men in the house mean more abuse,
with no strong families to model off,
children grow up with a slanted view,
which makes it hard to form families,
which ensure that our culture survives,
are we sure modern feminism
Is a force for good in all our lives? "
The girls in the class loudly freaked out,
with the professor they piled on,
Charlie just shrugged at their vitriol.
"Your anger doesn't mean that I'm wrong."

Now this might have come off arrogant,
It seemed that way to me at the time,
I had not learned to appreciate
The use of a truly honest mind,
Not seen a man who valued the truth
More than woman, friendship, or real fame,
A person who could just go along,
As this next tale will help to explain:
It was another discussion,
About women joining the work force,
And how it was a great step forward,
That we should be encouraging more.
But Charlie raised his hand and spoke up,
"What is gonna happen to the kids?
Should we just entrust them to daycare,
Like our parents' generation did?
Mental illness has skyrocketed,
And it's become clear this plays a part,
The formative years are so vital
To a balanced mind and healthy heart.
A stay at home parent teaches them
That they are valued and loved so much
That someone will dedicate their life
To see them protected and raised up.
Why should they fight for a stranger's time,
What negative effects will that have?
Problems when young tend to follow us
To adulthood, and that would be bad.
Man or woman, stay at home parents
Help give us people health and strong."
They hounded him out, but he yelled back,
"Get upset, but you know I'm not wrong! "

This happened when we were undergrads,
but then in his graduate studies
when he was working towards a career
that was entwined with biology,
he was working with a group that sought
to raise up the national IQ,
and then Charlie, as he often did,
offered an ‘unapproved' point-of-view.
He said, "I think it won't come about,
since we always revert to the mean,
and IQ may be tied to ancestry,
for a century that has been seen:
A ninety IQ in Serbia,
but one hundred up in Great Britain,
Equatorial Guinea…sixty,
the high eighties if you're a Kenyan.
Even in countries where people mix
we continue to see the same trend,
and I think it's foolish to ignore
these facts when we're pursuing our ends.
Education has been tried for years,
and has had but minimal effect,
evolution has molded our brains,
should this not help us guide our next steps?
A person who knows their shortcomings
can seek out a way to go around,
a person who thinks they're smart when they're not
is only going to be ground down."
So his partners screamed bloody murder,
and then demanded that he be gone,
they yelled at him, "You're friggin' crazy! "
He said, "Maybe…but I am not wrong."

Yes, I remember Charlie from school,
since memory is all that's left now,
see Charlie was killed six months ago,
when out running errands in his town.
He got caught in an ANTIFA ‘protest, '
was shot when he tried to drive away,
4chan managed to find his killer,
he's in prison now, fearful of rape.
I guess the man got what he deserved,
but Charlie was right about one more thing,
no media cared about his death,
‘wrong narratives' need no reporting.
I didn't understand it back them,
but today, in my early thirties,
I'm staring to see that my old friend
was blessed and cursed by what he could see.
Feminism has hurt our families,
and parenting is the cornerstone,
we're not blank slates, we've all been dealt hands
that we must play, unique and our own.
I still hesitate to speak of it,
fearing hatred from the angry throng,
but how does one live hiding from truth?
It scares me that Charlie wasn't wrong.