Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Too Young To Vote

30 Comments

Instapundit says that what’s happening at Yale and in Columbia shows that we need to raise the voting age.

[Monday-morning update]

Glenn has changed his mind. It’s not the under-25s that are the problem. It’s the over-25s.

[Bumped]

30 thoughts on “Too Young To Vote”

  1. Maybe take a page from Robert Heinlein and let members of the armed services vote at 18, but everyone else higher (Heinlein’s character proposed only people who served in the military get the franchise.)

    1. You mean, the guys who parade around wearing high-heeled shoes just because someone with a badge tells them to?

      I’m guessing they’re not the kind of soldiers Heinlein was thinking of…

      1. “The percentage you’re paying is too high priced
        While you’re living beyond all your means
        And the man in the suit has just bought a new car
        From the profit he’s made on your dreams
        But today you just read that the man was shot dead
        By a gun that didn’t make any noise
        But it wasn’t the bullet that laid him to rest, was
        The low spark of high-heeled boys” -Traffic, 1971

  2. IMHO, the pathetic behavior of some college students isn’t a sound reason to raise the voting age. It is, however, a very sound reason to solve the real problem; the radicalization of campuses by radical teachers.

    The problem is that students are being indoctrinated.

    The solution is simple common sense; keep politics (of any flavor) out of the classroom. Any teacher breaking that rule should be fired.

  3. Oh good luck with that, Arizona. Colleges and universities won’t change. Those guys have it made. Secure job, great pay, not much to do, golden parachutes.
    I was rereading LOtR the other day and thinking that, yeah, 33 years old might be a better metric. I don’t know any 21 year old that has more sense than my 3-yr-old horse. Of course, his dam gave him a good beating when he acted out, and so did other horses in the paddock. Hey, maybe there’s a lesson.

      1. You criticized the protesters by using that pithy little rhyme, and I’m criticizing Reynolds by using the same rhyme.

          1. Well, Rand, as you know, I said “Freedom for me, not for thee”, and, although you may not have noticed, the word “me” rhymes with the word “thee”. And perhaps you can’t recall, but you used the expression in the third to last sentence of this post:
            http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=62584

            I hope this answer was helpful. If you would like me to explain anything else, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

      1. C’mon Bob-1 did you understand the op-ed or was this just an opportunity for you to snark?

        I am all for snark but our friends to the left are rather shifty with their notions of adulthood. For example, you are not considered to be an adult until 26 when we are talking about health insurance but a female of any age is considered adult enough to get an abortion without the involvement of parents or police.

        Democrats have been advocating lowering the voting age because kids are easily manipulated so why can’t someone make a modest proposal of raising the voting age?

        1. Modest proposals are, as Wikipedia so nicely puts it, “straight-faced satire.” You’ll recall that the original one involved poor people selling their children for rich people to eat. Do you think Reynolds, like Swift, has no desire whatsoever for the proposal to be accepted?

          Say, Wodun, how old are you? You seem pretty sharp, and I’m just thinking out loud here, but people generally suffer a decline in intellectual alacrity as they age… …shouldn’t we cut off the right to vote at some suitably advanced old age?

          1. Well, with that logic, you know, that we shouldn’t have an age of adulthood, we should pass out condoms at age five.
            Booze in kindergarten? Why not? After all, not giving these kids the freedom to drink is tantamount to slavery!

          2. May be. The original post was about age as being an idiotic criterion for being able to vote. You continue to be unable to refute it. If anything, your foolishness supports my position.

          4. Yes, I viewed that as satire. A mocking of those who are sometimes considered adult and sometimes children based on what is best for Democrats and college administrators. But maybe that is because I read a lot of Instapundit and he didn’t write it well enough?

            I don’t mind snark, even though it wasn’t directed at me so maybe my not minding doesn’t count. I just wanted to be sure you understood the op-ed, thank you for responding.

          5. Wodun, maybe you’re right! But if it was satire, I don’t think it came across that way to a great many USA Today readers. I think it wasn’t funny enough, but whatever reason, it seemed to me that there were a lot of people who took it seriously.

          6. Wodun, maybe you’re right! But if it was satire, I don’t think it came across that way to a great many USA Today readers. I think it wasn’t funny enough, but whatever reason, it seemed to me that there were a lot of people who took it seriously.

            That is one of the games often played in satire. Try to get the chumps to fall for it. Real idiots fell for the original “Modest Proposal” as well.

          7. You are right Bob-1. I talked to a guy on Twitter about this. He was really upset with the op-ed. I tried to think of the best way to explain it to him and all I could come up with was, “Whoosh!”

  6. The no representation without taxation movement has some merit. Granting the vote to net recipients of tax money tends to be a problem. I’m guessing that these student radicals are mostly on government supported scholarships or student loans.

  7. The problem is trying to ‘fix’ this without realizing the fundamental truth… it does not belong to man to direct his own steps. It is not fixable. It could be improved, but that requires something in short supply… real adults.

    Rather than raise the voting age, the pressure is to lower it. They want 10 y.o. to vote!?

    I expect it to get worse, not more reasonable. CJ’s solution already exists on one side of the spectrum. Lefties: “Don’t offend me bro’ or we call in the thugs.”

    1. “Rather than raise the voting age, the pressure is to lower it. They want 10 y.o. to vote!?”

      As soon as they are able to scribble with a crayon. Of course, they might need a little help neatly filling out those bubbles though…

  8. I admit that at age 18 I voted democrat. I was still a senior in high school and I was excited to tell my teachers I had voted democrat.

    It took a couple of years to realize that they didn’t give a rat’s ass about any of us and only wanted our votes to keep getting their pay raises.

    I imagine that these students really think they’re doing the right thing. I hope they soon realize they are only the lumpen proletariat.

  9. Voters should have skin in the game. If the majority of your annual income is from gummint sources, section 8 housing, food stamps, SSI/welfare, etc, you don’t get to vote. And for that reason state transfer payments and cash equivalent benefits should be reported on 1099’s, not to be taxed, but to determine whether or not someone is actually paying more than half of their and their family’s support, for voting purposes.

    Having said that, bring on the Fair Tax.

  10. When I watch those putrid little snowflakes and their safe spaces and micro aggressions and all the rest of their insubstantial concerns, I find myself simply unable to know where to start in castigating them.

    To an adult, they are screaming about trivialities.

    But then reality hits like Paris macroagressions last night and that pretty much says it for me in stark, unmistakable terms.

    Except, of course, the little darlings will blame us for Paris.

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