Categories
ballot access education and schooling folly ideological culture media and media people Popular responsibility

Fiddling with the Franchise

In 2013, Tacoma Park, Maryland, became the first place in the U.S. to allow 16-​year-​olds to vote in local elections.* Now, Washington, D.C., Councilman Charles Allen, “inspired by the high-​schoolers who are campaigning for gun control and filled D.C. streets last month in a massive protest that mesmerized the country,” reports the Washington Post, wants to follow suit.

“It’s pretty hard for anyone to watch the events of the last couple of months,” claims Councilman Allen, “and not understand the pure power and maturity of incredibly young voices.”

Well, they do use adult words.

One has to wonder: would the “maturity” of these young adults equally amaze this politician, were they advocating opinions** with which he disagreed?

But wait a second … wasn’t one of the demands of the “March for Our Lives” to raise, not lower, the age when a person would be deemed mature enough to legally purchase a scary-​looking rifle?

Lowering the voting age seems odd, at best, with society lurching in the other direction — raising the age of adulthood for everything else. Decades ago, the legal age to purchase alcohol was 18 in some places; today it is 21 everywhere. In Virginia, one may still drive at 16, as I could back in the day … but now there are limits on other young people riding in the car unless the driver is 18.

More ominously, facilitation by many public schools of the recent student walkouts and marches present the strongest argument against lowering the voting age: So long as government schools act in a partisan manner, indoctrination and intimidation would be rampant. 

Who wants a captive audience of would-​be voters most? 

Unscrupulous ideologues.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Greenbelt and Hyattsville, Maryland, as well as Berkeley, California, have since joined Tacoma Park in allowing 16- and 17-​year-​olds to vote in local elections.

** Term limits, say. Or school vouchers. Or the rights of gestating humans.


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Categories
free trade & free markets

When Do We Become Adults?

What is being an adult all about?

Doesn’t maturity have to do with taking responsibility for your life, for your decisions?

Of course, it is often appropriate to ask for help, to underwrite dreams or salvage the shipwrecks of them when we screw up.

But even when seeking help, you do it like a grown-​up rather than, say, a whining child. You ask for the help. Politely. As opposed to assuming that other people just owe it to you, to heck with their own circumstances and priorities.

Yet government now subsidizes every big-​ticket project on our every wish list, hurling more money at us when we botch the job. It’s as if they’re paying us to be irresponsible.

No shock, then, when people do in fact act irresponsibly, buying homes or making loans they can’t really afford.

Ford, GM, and Chrysler — the Big Three of American automakers — now ask for a $50 billion low-​interest loan from the U.S. government. Why? So they can modernize their plants to make more efficient cars. What, just $50 billion?

What about me? I need to re-​shingle my roof.  Please, government, give me a million. Just take it from my neighbors, no problem.

You know, if Chrysler had been allowed to fail back in Iaccoca days, GM and Ford may have learned a lesson — grown up — and wouldn’t think to ask for handouts today. Or need to.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.