Before Robin Westman murdered two children and wounded many more at Minneapolis’ Annunciation Catholic School, Robin was Robert, a troubled teen whose mother worked for the parish.

Robert’s mother approved the change, but after Robert became Robin in 2020, the teen’s psychological problems obviously didn’t go away: They led, five years later, to carnage.

A serious discussion of transgenderism, mental illness and violence is long overdue.

Earlier this year, the “Zizians,” a cult notable for the transgenderism of its leader and many members, made headlines for its alleged involvement in a series of homicides, including the January slaying of US Border Patrol agent David Christopher Maland.

Violent symbolism has lately taken a prominent place in transgender discourse:

The June 19 issue of Oregon’s Eugene Weekly features a trans cover star cradling an AR-15-style rifle, with a blurb proclaiming “Some queer folks are armed and ready to bash back.”

In the state where Westman would later open fire on schoolchildren, Minnesota Lt.-Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a Democrat, has appeared in public wearing a shirt emblazoned with a knife and the legend, “Protect trans children.”

No one can say Westman didn’t receive enough protection. The trans killer’s victims were another matter.

Even liberals who generally support transgender protections should now consider whether blatant warning signs might get ignored in cases like Westman’s for fear that noticing them would be politically incorrect.

The left’s urge to defend anyone who claims to be transgender can lead to making excuses for disturbing behavior that may not have anything to do with gender dysphoria.

All children are deserving of protection, and that includes protecting them from adults who have a reckless drive to affirm any doubts a minor has about his or her identity. 

The dangerous situation kids face today has come about because too much abnormality and political radicalism has been accepted for the sake of being polite.

Shortly before Westman’s rampage, I encountered an illustration of this phenomenon.

A libertarian scholar at a college in a red state griped on Facebook about a Florida school district that terminated the contract of a teacher who used a student’s “preferred” name — that is, a name signaling a change in sex — in school.

This was a scholar I thought of as middle-of-the-road or slightly conservative, so I was shocked by the argument: It came down to the claim that calling a child by any name he or she wants to be known by should never be controversial — why, it’s just like using a nickname.

As if calling William “Billy” is the same as calling him “Barbara.”

Florida’s law is, in fact, quite liberal — it allows transgender-affirming names to be used in school as long as parents provide explicit permission for the change.

The Brevard County teacher flouted the law and seized a role only parents are supposed to have.

Minors are minors precisely because they cannot make the most important decisions for themselves: They have to be under an adult’s tutelage — mainly their parents’.

Yet even a red-state libertarian intellectual, who should have been against a public-school teacher’s usurping of parental rights under any scenario, believed these public employees should have more power over a child’s identity than parents — and need not be accountable to the law.

This is sick.

A teacher encouraging a child to adopt a new sex is at least as heavy an intrusion into the child’s development as a teacher urging a pupil to change religion.

It’s also an invitation to grooming, if a teacher can lead a minor down this path just by claiming the pupil took the step.

If liberals and libertarians want to keep the state out of a child’s religious formation, how can they say it’s OK for state employees to get involved in deciding a child’s sex?

The radicalism of the idea didn’t surprise me — I expect the far left to advocate such things.

But this Facebook post told me I had seriously underestimated the extent to which far-left ideas had seeped into everyday discourse.

What was even more striking was the way this academic tried to smuggle through the acceptance of an extreme idea — letting teachers re-gender minors on their own authority — under the cover of something as banal as calling anyone by a preferred nickname.

Every state in the Union needs laws like Florida’s: Parents can certainly make mistakes, but safeguarding their rights is the first step to safeguarding children.

And parents themselves should be watchful — not only for signs a teenager’s troubles run deeper than pronouns, but for signs adults are contributing to a psychological crisis.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review and editor-at-large of The American Conservative.