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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
I wanted to sing it instead.
The kids who agree with the liberals are “talking sense” and should be listened to more than old fogeys who cite things like statistics, the constitution, or facts to counter “the feels”.
The kids who disagree with the liberals, by say going to the March for Life, have been brainwashed by their tyrannical theocrat parents or some anti-woman Christian/hate group.
Because… reasons?
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WTF?
If you can’t win with the voters you have, arrange for new voters.
Consistency is not one of their burdens.
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I’m confused by this section. The 26th has been ratified already. Perhaps ‘reexamine’ rather than ‘ratify?’
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If we make exceptions for 18-20 yr olds in the military, I’d be okay with this.
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Maybe we should raise the draft age to 21 as well, just to be consistent. As we don’t use the draft anyway, I don’t think that would affect the quality of our national defense (although if @bossmongo thinks otherwise, I’ll defer to his judgment).
Read Starship Troopers, that’s the exact voting plan they have : )
Someone should tell that to the ones in this thread saying we should limit the franchise.
Also, thanks to those people for proving the anti-Voter ID crowd right. It’s kind of hard to make the case against the “voter suppression” argument when people are openly saying that we have too many voters!
In the legal field, some of the most far-reaching decisions of the last 20 years have been the Supreme Court’s decisions striking down the juvenile death penalty and, subsequently, limiting juvenile “lifer” penalties. In Miller v Alabama, 567 US 460 (2012), the Court summarized its reasons for eliminating the juvenile death penalty and for severely restricting application of juvenile “lifer” penalties:
Just as these findings led the Supreme Court to determine that it was unconstitutional to expose juveniles to the death penalty or to life in prison without parole – even in clear cases of first-degree murder – so they apply to the serious issue of whether juveniles have the maturity and mental development to allow them to exercise the franchise. It never ceases to amaze me that the same side of the political spectrum that can urge the former proposition (“juveniles are too undeveloped mentally to be held responsible for their actions in taking someone’s life”) are perfectly at ease with urging the latter proposition (“juveniles feel so strongly about gun control (and other issues dear to the progressives’ hearts) that we must allow them to express their ‘truths’ in the voting booth!”).
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After hearing Hilary and Michelle Obama talking about the women’s vote in ’16, it’s apparent that this phenomenon applies to women as well as to kids.
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Bizarrely the left seems to foster an unspoken conviction that only adult men are fully autonomous.
The left always argues for “fairness”. Age 18 is fair considering the draft age is 18. At 18, however, the general population might not be wise or experienced enough to vote responsibly. Fairness could be served by raising both draft and voting age to 21. 18-year-olds could still be allowed to join the military on a volunteer basis.
I think we could all point to some people who would be more informed and responsible voters at 18, or even 16, than many in their 30s – so fair is hard to achieve.
The government complicates things further and unnecessarily with Social Security, taxes, and “health care” age limits.
In past generations, young persons took on adult responsibilities at an earlier age, yet it seemed wise to those past generations to give those young adults a few years of bearing responsibilities before granting them the right to vote.
The voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971, largely on the argument that “if you’re old enough to die for your country, you’re old enough to vote.” A mere two years later, the draft was ended.
Had Nixon gone ahead and ended the draft earlier, as he had indicated he wanted to, perhaps we would have been spared the 26th Amendment.
Keeping campaign promises could be quite consequential.
Actually, the Mises Institute is going to do something like this. The only thing is they can’t use the common vernacular like “masters degree” and stuff like that.
Pfft. We have a hard enough time getting 18-25 year olds out to vote. Let alone 16+.
Of course given the obvious snow flakiness of college students these days, I wonder if there IS any age below 40 that we can trust to vote?
No ‘child’ eligible to be on his|her|zir|ze parent(s) health insurance should be allowed to vote. Repeal the 26th. Raise the voting age to 27!
Yup. Either way, let’s make this a thing.
UF, so I understand your point correctly, you are saying since the Left has adopted the language that any discussion on this is tantamount to ‘voter disenfranchisement’ or ‘voter suppression’, we should prove our voter rights bona fides by … agreeing with them?
Let’s let them vote on gun control, but we can’t have them deciding what to eat for lunch.
I don’t know about others, but I didn’t let my kids tell me the rules of the house on the big things. I would let them have a choice of what to eat, but when my son wanted to drive a car at 12, I said no.
If you mean agreeing to lowering the voting age, then, no, I don’t mean that at all. I am for the status quo. What I have a problem here with are the ones saying we should raise the voting age to 21 or later, or saying welfare recipients should be ineligible. The point is that changing the status quo because one side or the other isn’t winning consistently enough is wrong no matter which side is doing it, and that if we want to credibly argue that voter ID advocates are not trying to suppress votes, it’s not helpful to have people openly discussing who should be disenfranchised.
You are, of course, right, but any change is likely to favor someone. The voter ID advocates are pursuing a minimum standard recognized in the international community for the conduct of fair elections. It is the absence of voter ID that disenfrachises the qualified voter, by allowing illegal voters to nullify his vote.
The status quo WAS 21 in our (or at least my) lifetime. It was changed after 30 years of pressure by the Left for the reasons you are legitimately concerned about.
I don’t disagree at all, so let’s go back to the original age of 21.
If they changed the voting age, I have no doubt that the high schools would be polling places. You wouldn’t have to get the kids “out” to vote, it would just be part of the school day. And I’m sure the teachers wouldn’t dream of trying to influence the teens on how to vote.
As mentioned in the original 2016 post, they would bus them to the polls. GOTV will be a way for kids to get extra credit, justified as a lesson in civics. After being indoctrinated by their mostly lefty teachers, along with the default liberal/progressive tilt of most youths, we all know how it will end.
You are right: I would not dream to influence any teen outside my own family, and even then, only by discussion.
Not all teachers are Leftist Progressives.
Granted, not enough, but there are many teachers who would share my stance.
Sort of. Active duty personnel couldn’t vote.
It’s ScIeNcE!
WC, I wasn’t prepared to defend the science claim about young brains…I think there may actually be research to suggest that young brains have a growth curve.
I’m too tired to figure out if this is the correct thread, but here is a source for the walkout protest template:
https://www.womensmarch.com/empower/