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Hate Saying “I Told You So,” But…
In light of America’s youth getting a field trip pass to skip school and protest the Second Amendment and the NRA, we get this gem from The New York Times: “Unfortunately, when it comes to electing lawmakers whose decisions about gun control and other issues affect their lives, these high schoolers lack any real power. This needs to change: The federal voting age in the United States should be lowered from 18 to 16.“
Almost two years ago I predicted this would be the Left’s next war on common sense in the post Let Children Vote!
For most young adults the heart speaks louder than boring, pesky realities like fiscal responsibility and history repeatedly demonstrating failed big government solutions.
The emotional voter fits the left’s demographic outreach like a dovetail joint. After decades of ingratiating themselves in the power structure of higher education and promoting leftist causes in primary school (ie: global warming) they are eager to now cement their hold on children at an ever earlier age.
The efforts by the left are purposeful. They intend to destabilize elections, decrease the impact of conservatives across state and federal governments. They know that 8-10 million children can easily be organized in schools as a captive audience and transported to polls en masse in GOTV efforts.
Progressives understand that once they own the children, they own the future.
The mainstream media are now supporting extreme Leftist groups who are working to lower the voting age so those who weren’t even zygotes on 9/11/01 can cancel your vote.
The Washington Post analyzed The Surprising Consequence of Lowering the Voting Age where, based on the title, I hoped for some sanity. Nope. After an entire treatise on the benefits of children voting (spoiler: their parents may then also vote more), the very last line in the very last paragraph suggested one caveat: “Research from Norway, on the other hand, concludes that young voters are less mature in how they make those decisions.”
Have no doubt. The Left hates to lose and is working overtime to get power back in both state and federal offices. After decades of pushing their Marxist agenda, they realize their message of open borders, higher taxes, and extremist cultural issues don’t sit well with most voters.
To achieve the change of management they desire so they can get back to growing an unbridled centralized government largely owned by progressive special interests, they need to expand the voting pool, preferably with minds they can control.
They intend to do this by providing voter registration to anyone with a drivers license (illegal immigrants apply) and now to children who have no concept of economic systems, have never owned a business or made payroll, seen what FICA even is, have never owned a home nor have any skin in the game.
But children do have plenty of “feels,” so who better to vote for restricting both civil and religious liberties and the constitutional rights of those they disagree with.
Children, only a few years post sprouting puberty, have no place in a voting booth as their only reference to serious political issues is an embryonic understanding of the world filtered through emotional arguments presented by pop culture, unhinged activists, and leftist teachers.
The voting age was once 21 and after the Left pushed the issue for 30 years, it was lowered to 18 in 1971 under the 26th Amendment. The Left wants to ratify the 26th. After seeing the cultural rot of the past 50 years, especially in formerly red states like California, I agree it’s time to ratify the 26th Amendment — by making the voting age 21 again.
Published in General
Having so much government to seize via the voting booth is insane. Seizing society’s resources for what?
Yet…
We’re told constantly that the brain is still developing until 25 or more, so we need to cut these “babies” slack and not make them work too hard, like pay for their own health care.
That buying alcohol is too serious, so you better be at least 21, or better yet, dead to buy it.
That touching a gun is ‘way too much responsibility, so we’d better keep them out of the hands of “impressionable” youth.
Hell, states are making it impossible to drive until you’re at least 18.
But, hey, things have been going swimmingly since allowing college kids to vote (a sore point for me because I turned 18 20 days too late to vote against Dukakis). Let’s let high schoolers vote! What could possibly go wrong?
Agreed! I’d make it 26, though. As soon as you’re no longer young enough to be on your parents’ insurance, you can vote.
What happened to “I’d like to help you, son, but you’re too young to vote?”
Think about all the stupid stuff they talked about in the Podesta emails. This is how we allocate society’s resources.
I agree. Unless you join the actual military. Old enough to die for your country, you can vote, drive, rent a car without a penalty, and drink.
So Michelle Obama doesn’t trust them to buy a nutritional lunch but we should allow them to vote? Makes perfect liberal sense.
Lol. Do YOU trust them to buy a nutritional lunch?
To reorganize society with the goal with the goal of the extinction of private property and industrial capital from individual and class ownership, redistributing them to the “community for the general benefit.”
I was with you until here. If you’re old enough to be drafted, you’re old enough to have a say in whether a draft happens.
Working with Bill this weekend. Awesome guy.
I’ve been pushing the Flat Tax since reading Steve Forbes decades ago.
Great video. Thanks, RRJ!
And that was after going to the U-nited Nayshuns.
Yup! I heard someone else make this point. Let’s have a standard age across the board. 21 works for me, which also means kids can get their own damn insurance.
Bill Whittle is very gifted at saying what needs to be said in a better way.
This was in the original post. “In 2016 less than 2% of 18-year-olds serve in the military.”
So, let’s compromise. You served? Show up with your military ID and you can vote.
The other 98% can wait until their college bong-resin has cleared.
The Koch Brothers have to start some libertarian community colleges. Let the Mises Institute, Jordon Peterson, Camille Paglia and Dennis Prager pick out all the books. Screw the accreditation; just charge less for it. Job signaling from college is overpriced and otherwise dead for most people anyway.
It’s more Lefty incrementalism. They were the ones behind lowering the voting age to 18, which is sheer lunacy. They knew what they were doing, though, since everyone knows young people use their emotions more than their brains, plus it’s real easy to vote fore liberal policies when you don’t own property or pay big taxes yet. I say raise the age for voting and drinking back to 21 unless they’re military.
And as a parent (and as a person who used to be a 16-year-old), I even find it horrifying that they let 16-year-olds drive a car.
The things we did in with my high school buddy’s Dad’s Corvette. I’m lucky to be alive today.
They needed research for this?! Anybody who has observed – or been – a teenager knows that teenagers do not make mature decisions.
Eh. Any way to include an independence clause in there?
Even observation is superfluous, it’s true by definition: “young” means “immature.” Different words, same meaning.
How about: you can vote once you either join the military or earn enough income to pay income tax.
Thank goodness, and let’s keep it that way.
At 16, according to common lore, it will be 8-10 more years before their brain is fully formed, and they can be truly accountable for their decisions.
LOVE.
Didn’t Scotland lower the voting age to 16 thinking the little yahoos would vote for Brexit?
Yes. They should either be a real adult or have skin in the game. Owning property and paying taxes changes a person’s voting perspective, and the liberals know it.
I don’t know, Dave. I’m not entirely certain I believe that you hate saying I-told-you-so. ;-)
I think I was 16 once.
Pics or it didn’t happen.
My first job was at 14 – I fibbed a lot for 2 years, going job to job until social security caught up to the Taco Shack or Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour type jobs I had. Once I was 16 I held my jobs a little longer. But even then I paid taxes.
Don’t think I would want my teen-self voting. I was a relatively smart but still very stupid.