In a January 18 Washington Times op-ed, Robert Knight attacked the memorial service for the victims of the shootings in Tucson, Arizona, calling it the “first major campaign event of the 2012 presidential election” and asking, “When, for instance, have you been to a memorial service where cheers and yells punctuated the eulogy and where political campaign T-shirts were draped over seats or given out to mourners at the door?”

In fact, contrary to Knight's claim that the shirts provided at the service were “political campaign T-shirts,” PolitiFact noted that “officials at the University of Arizona said the White House had nothing to do with the name or the logo.”

Moreover, Knight attacked Obama for using the phrase “life partners” during the service, calling it a “calculated element” of Obama's speech and that "[i]n the not too distant past, a president would have paid homage to the victims' marriages without stretching for politically correct 'inclusion.'"

Knight further attacked Obama for his comments about 9-year-old victim Christina Taylor Green:

Finally, there's Mr. Obama's sweet eulogy to little Christina. Anyone not touched by his words must have a heart of stone. But Mr. Obama went a bit further:

“I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it. All of us, we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations."

Well, hold on. Children, God bless them, are not morally superior. In fact, they plot and hoard and steal and throw tantrums. It takes a lifetime to burnish away the layers of selfishness that plague us all. Psalm 53 reminds us that “there is none who does good, no, not one.” This idea that we can learn from innocent children is a liberal fallacy originating in Rousseau's myth of the noble savage.