On a chilly February day, ordinary kids would rather stay inside and watch cartoons than go outside and do good deeds. We should all be grateful 7-year-old Benton Stevens is no ordinary kid.
Incensed by Congress’s refusal to do its job and fund the construction of a border wall, Stevens started selling hot chocolate in his Austin, Texas, neighborhood with a red-white-and-blue sign declaring "Proceeds Help Trump Build the Wall." This civically engaged citizen got the bright idea after watching President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address and wrestling with what it means to have a country that isn’t properly protected.
"I just wanted to help Trump build the wall so that our country could be safe," he calmly but resolutely explained.
No matter how clear and noble Stevens’s reasoning was, angry liberals pounced. A passerby called him "little Hitler," a move he surely came to regret, as Stevens's mother highlighted it as the moment the boy's resolve became unstoppable. (It should come as no surprise that the historically illiterate libs don’t realize that Adolf Hitler actually put himself on the map by not respecting borders.)
Stevens raised thousands selling hot chocolate and then joined forces with 2018 Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year Charlie Kirk by entering a blockbuster partnership with Turning Point USA. In the summer, the stand expanded to lemonade (including Liberty Lemonade and Patriot Pink varieties), and Stevens’s work continues apace.
"I’m not going to stop the stand until the wall is built," he stoically told us all back in February. Few knew how true those words would turn out to be, but we never doubted. For independent thinking and a commitment to national security, Benton Stevens is a 2019 Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year.
