THE AGE OF THE CHILD Justice for Jermany Coleman

I am not neutral. When the choice is between protecting the adult tribe and protecting the child, I choose the child.

By Edward “EAoN Sovereign” Brown

Her name was Jermany Coleman.

She was fifteen months old.

She was also the daughter of my best friend Dedrion Coleman.

So before this becomes philosophy, politics, psychology, gender debate or another piece of internet content, understand something:

This was somebody’s baby.

On September 2, 2026, a Kalamazoo jury convicted Tiffany Briana Moore of felony murder, second degree murder and first degree child abuse in Jermany’s death. Jermany died after suffering multiple blunt force injuries while in Moore’s care. Moore is scheduled to be sentenced October 30. (WKZO)

I am grateful that justice finally answered.

But justice arrived after Jermany was gone.

And that forces a larger question upon all of us:

Who speaks for the child when adults become more interested in defending themselves?

My answer is simple.

I do.

And I am calling on you to do the same.

I AM TAKING A SIDE

We live in an era that is terrified of moral certainty.

Everything requires twelve disclaimers.

Everything becomes context.

Everything becomes my truth.

Not this.

An adult who intentionally murders a defenseless child has committed "F" rank human conduct, the bottom of the moral hierarchy.

Male or female.

Mother or father.

Rich or poor.

Black or white.

Left or right.

Religious or atheist.

I do not care what tribe you belong to.

If you intentionally destroy a child you were supposed to protect, you have forfeited the right to be trusted with the vulnerable.

You should be lawfully separated from children and from positions where you can repeat that harm.

That does not mean abandoning courts, evidence, mental health science or due process.

It means remembering what all those systems are ultimately supposed to protect:

LIFE.

MOORE WAS WRONG. THE KILLING OF THE CLANCY CHILDREN WAS WRONG.

And here I refuse the false choice.

I can acknowledge severe mental illness and still mourn the victims first.

Lindsay Clancy admitted killing her three children Cora, Dawson and Callan. Her defense argued that postpartum psychosis rendered her not criminally responsible. Prosecutors argued that despite serious mental health problems, she understood what she was doing.

Today, after seven days of deliberations, the jury remained deadlocked and the judge declared a mistrial. The legal question therefore remains unresolved. (Reuters)

I will not pretend that medical question is meaningless.

Postpartum psychosis is real.

Mental illness is real.

Psychiatric emergencies deserve immediate treatment.

And if illness substantially destroys someone's capacity to understand reality, the law should recognize that.

But hear the distinction:

Explanation can change culpability. It does not change the tragedy.

Three children are still dead.

That must remain morally visible.

Cora.

Dawson.

Callan.

And here in Kalamazoo:

Jermany.

Do not erase the children while arguing about the adult.

IF YOUR TRIBE MAKES YOU FORGET THE CHILD, YOUR TRIBE HAS BECOME AN IDOL

Looking at the Clancy case, I saw people identifying so intensely with the accused that the discussion sometimes seemed to shift away from the children entirely.

This disease is bigger than women.

Human beings protect their tribes.

Women sometimes protect women.

Men protect men.

Police protect police.

Politicians protect their parties.

Fans protect celebrities.

Religious institutions protect leaders.

Racial communities can protect their own.

Corporations protect corporations.

Everybody suddenly discovers nuance when the accused belongs to them.

So I propose another allegiance.

A tribe larger than gender.

Larger than party.

Larger than algorithm.

THE TRIBE OF THE CHILD.

If men and women insist upon fighting over who should rule the household while children suffer underneath them, then both sides have misunderstood the assignment.

The age of patriarchy versus matriarchy is exhausted. We must collectively take responsibility for what's born from the belly of the beast!

The Age of the Child begins now.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Not that children govern adults.

It means honoring the thoughts and opinions of the children as adults and finally understanding why we are governing at all.

The child is the future temporarily placed in our custody.

Think about that.

A baby cannot vote.

Cannot leave an abusive household.

Cannot retain counsel.

Cannot call a press conference.

Cannot understand psychiatric diagnoses.

Cannot fight an adult.

Cannot explain why somebody hurt them.

Children survive because adults voluntarily place restraints upon their own power.

That restraint has a name:

HONOR.

A father possesses physical strength and does not use it against his child.

A mother possesses authority and does not weaponize it against her child.

A caregiver receives somebody else's most precious human being and understands:

I am the wall now.

Whatever chaos exists inside me,

rage,

depression,

trauma,

fear,

psychosis,

addiction,

resentment,

the child does not become its sacrifice.

We seek help.

We surrender control if necessary.

We call family.

We call doctors.

We walk away.

We check ourselves into treatment.

We sacrifice pride.

We sacrifice comfort.

If necessary, we sacrifice everything.

Because the ancient duty of the guardian is simple:

If darkness is coming for the child, it reaches me first.

THAT IS THE PHARAOH PRINCIPLE

When I speak of this Moral Principle, I am not speaking about dominating other human beings.

I am speaking about ruling the kingdom inside yourself.

The first kingdom is consciousness.

Your anger has subjects.

Your appetite has armies.

Your trauma has ghosts.

Your ego wants a throne.

Your fear wants emergency powers.

Your impulses constantly propose legislation.

😂

And consciousness must decide who actually governs.

That is sovereignty.

Not merely doing whatever you want.

Sovereignty is the ability to command yourself when doing what is right becomes difficult.

The Pharaoh archetype stands at the gate of the kingdom and says:

Not through me.

Not my rage.

Not my trauma.

Not my addictions.

Not my excuses.

Not another generation.

That is the warrior.

That is the mother.

That is the father.

That is the guardian.

WE HAVE BEEN RAISING CHILDREN FOR THE PRESENT. WE SHOULD BE RAISING THEM FOR THE FUTURE.

This is where the argument becomes bigger than crime.

Because protecting children does not end with preventing violence.

A society can keep a child alive and still suffocate everything magnificent inside them.

Curiosity.

Sensitivity.

Creativity.

Wonder.

Imagination.

The instinct to ask:

Why?

Children look at reality and immediately begin rewriting it.

A cardboard box becomes a spaceship.

A stick becomes a sword.

A blanket becomes a kingdom.

Then adulthood teaches:

Be realistic.

And slowly the portals close.

But every major leap in civilization required somebody who refused to completely surrender that faculty.

Flight existed in imagination before aviation.

Moon travel existed in imagination before Apollo.

Artificial intelligence existed in stories before laboratories.

The impossible keeps becoming engineering.

Which is why I like separating the word poetically:

I-MAGI-NATION.

Not as literal etymology.

As philosophy.

The nation of the magician begins in imagination.

We become capable of creating what does not yet exist.

THAT IS THE REAL AMERICAN MYTH

America has committed enormous contradictions.

Slavery while declaring liberty.

Segregation beneath claims of equality.

Indigenous dispossession beside declarations of natural rights.

Poverty inside enormous abundance.

Political corruption beneath republican ideals.

We do not become patriotic by pretending those things never happened.

We become worthy of the ideal by confronting them.

Because America was never merely a place.

America was a proposition.

That ordinary people could possess rights no ruler invented.

That written law could bind power.

That citizens could replace governments without replacing civilization.

That immigrants and natives, descendants of slaves and descendants of settlers, people arriving through wildly different histories could participate in one unfinished political experiment.

America has often failed its own prophecy.

But listen carefully:

The prophecy was bigger than the prophets.

Men wrote that human beings were created equal while failing to apply the statement equally.

Then future generations picked up their words and said:

Good. We will finish the sentence.

Black Americans did it.

Women did it.

Workers did it.

Civil rights movements did it.

Generation after generation looked at America's declared ideals and forced the country to confront its contradictions.

That is not weakness.

That is American alchemy.

250 YEARS PREGNANT

As America reaches its 250th year, I see another image.

America has been pregnant with its own idea.

The American Dream entered the belly of the beast nearly two and a half centuries ago.

And inside that womb came:

slavery,

war,

industrialization,

migration,

depression,

civil rights,

nuclear power,

computing,

the internet,

biotechnology,

artificial intelligence.

And after all of it, the original experiment remains unfinished:

Can free people govern themselves well enough to remain free?

Maybe the America described in our highest ideals hasn't fully been born yet.

Maybe we mistook conception for completion.

Maybe generations before us were carrying something.

And maybe the child of America is being born now.

Not another empire.

Not another left.

Not another right.

Not matriarchy.

Not patriarchy.

Sovereignty.

Millions of self governing individuals capable of cooperation without surrendering conscience.

THE NEW AMERICAN SOVEREIGN

The American Sovereign is not someone who screams freedom while being enslaved by impulse.

He studies.

She studies.

We study.

History.

Law.

Money.

Technology.

Psychology.

Health.

Business.

Science.

Art.

Politics.

Then:

Study to show thyself approved.

Know what things are.

Understand how they became that way.

And then possess enough imagination to say:

They do not have to remain that way.

That is where adulthood and childhood reunite.

The adult contributes discipline.

The child contributes imagination.

The adult says:

I understand reality.

The child says:

But what if?

The Sovereign says:

LET'S BUILD IT.

THE SUPREME ALCHEMIST

That is the American I want awakened.

The supreme alchemist.

Not turning literal lead into gold.

Turning trauma into wisdom.

Poverty into productive capacity.

Anger into organization.

Knowledge into invention.

Grief into purpose.

Confusion into clarity.

Citizens into creators.

Lead into Gold.

We stop believing every system around us descended from heaven fully assembled.

Human beings designed these systems.

Human beings wrote these policies.

Human beings created these corporations.

Human beings designed these streets.

Human beings built these schools.

Human beings created markets.

Human beings wrote code.

Human beings created the laws that can lawfully be changed.

The people responsible were not another species.

They were humans no better endowed with imagination than us.

So when systems fail the population, free people study them and redesign them.

Not through chaos.

Through organized sovereign power:

voice.

pen.

vote.

court.

jury.

petition.

business.

technology.

assembly.

journalism.

art.

constitutional process.

community.

capital.

Creation.

We don't burn civilization down because something is broken.

We become better architects.

AND THIS RETURNS ME TO JERMANY

Because all of these ideas sound enormous until you remember what civilization is actually for.

Jermany was fifteen months old.

She did not need an ideology.

She needed adults worthy of her trust.

She should have gotten birthdays.

School pictures.

Songs.

Mistakes.

Inside jokes.

First loves.

Bad haircuts.

Discoveries.

Dreams.

A career.

Maybe children of her own.

Maybe inventions we would never know she could create.

That is the true horror when a child dies.

We don't only lose who they were.

We lose everyone they might have become.

An entire unwritten universe disappears.

And that gives us what I call:

JERMANY'S PRINCIPLE

Wherever power encounters innocence, power becomes responsible for what happens next.

Carry that into homes.

Schools.

Courts.

Hospitals.

Churches.

Government.

Technology.

Artificial intelligence.

Business.

Everywhere.

Power should make vulnerable people safer because it exists.

Otherwise it has failed its highest purpose.

MY DECREE

So here is where I stand.

I choose children over gender tribes.

I choose responsibility over excuses.

I choose mental health treatment before catastrophe.

I choose lawful accountability after harm.

I choose evidence over identification.

Quality over convenience.

Honor over praise.

Creation over consumption.

Wonder without naivety.

Strength without cruelty.

Sensitivity without weakness.

Stoic endurance without emotional death.

Freedom with discipline.

Power with responsibility.

Science with conscience.

Spirit with action.

And imagination with engineering.

I choose a society that protects the smallest sovereign until that sovereign becomes capable of protecting someone else.

THE FUTURE IS GOING TO BE BETTER THAN US

At least it should be.

Our descendants should understand things we don't.

Build things we cannot.

Heal diseases we fear.

Solve problems we failed to solve.

Travel farther.

Think deeper.

Create more beautifully.

And I am perfectly comfortable with that.

Because humanity is not supposed to be jealous of its children.

We are supposed to prepare them to surpass us.

That is the secret.

We are not the final civilization.

We are somebody's ancestors.

We are not the destination.

We are the bridge.

The future does not belong to us.

But for one extraordinary moment,

it has been placed in our hands.

AMERICA: AWAKEN.

Protect the child.

Master the self.

Study the system.

Correct the corruption.

Challenge unconstitutional power through lawful sovereign action.

Build businesses.

Invent technologies.

Heal families.

Transform neighborhoods.

Make art.

Protect innocence.

Teach discernment.

Recover wonder.

Reject the lie that reality must remain exactly as we inherited it.

Know things for what they are,

and possess the courage to create what they can become.

The sleeping giant does not awaken when Americans become angrier.

It awakens when Americans become capable.

Capable of thought.

Capable of discipline.

Capable of love.

Capable of sacrifice.

Capable of building.

Capable of protecting.

Capable of imagining.

Jermany Coleman deserved that America.

Cora Clancy deserved that America.

Dawson Clancy deserved that America.

Callan Clancy deserved that America.

We cannot give yesterday back to them.

But we can change what tomorrow receives from us.

So let this generation make its declaration:

NO MORE CHILDREN SACRIFICED TO THE UNMASTERED DARKNESS OF ADULTS.

Let us fight our demons before our children inherit them.

Let us heal our wounds before our children bleed from them.

Let us repair our institutions before our children are imprisoned by them.

Let us create a civilization whose greatness can be measured by one question:

How safe is it to be small here?

That is kingship.

That is queenship.

That is citizenship.

That is guardianship.

That is sovereignty.

That is love possessing power.

And that is the kingdom worthy of building.

From grief, to

purpose.

From confusion, to

wisdom.

From corruption, to

order.

From imagination, to

creation.

From lead, to

gold.

And from an unfinished American dream to

A CIVILIZATION WORTHY OF ITS CHILDREN.

THE AGE OF THE CHILD IS HERE.

Protect the child. Master the self. Create the future.

Rest in power, Jermany Coleman.

May what was taken from you become a command to the living.