The legal voting age since 1971 has been 18. Maybe that should be the maximum instead of the minimum, at least for a few election cycles.
I write that at age 48 after observing young people lately interact with the world created by supposedly responsible voting-age adults.
Exhibit A is the students at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who escaped from a mass killer while 17 of their classmates and educators didn’t. The killer, a clearly troubled 19-year-old, had purchased his military-style weapon almost as easily as he later purchased a drink at Subway after his rampage ended.
We adults refuse to do much about this. So the students are.
They’re taking action because adults won’t
Have you seen their media appearances? Here’s what Cameron Kasky told ABC News: “People keep asking us, what about the Stoneman Douglas shooting is going to be different because this has happened before, and change hasn’t come? This is it. People are saying that it’s not time to talk about gun control, and we can respect that. Here’s a time. March 24 in every single city, we are going to be marching together as students begging for our lives. This isn’t about the GOP. This isn’t about the Democrats. This is about the adults. We feel neglected, and at this point you’re either with us or against us.”
Anybody want to pat him and his classmates on the head and tell them to run along and play? Whether or not you agree with him, you don’t want to debate him – not right now, anyway.
It’s not just those students. A few weeks ago, I was a judge at the Arkansas Diamond Speech and Debate Tournament in Little Rock. The annual event attracts Christian homeschooled students from around the country. You would not believe how eloquent and skillful these young people were. One young man completely opened my eyes about how plastics are littering the world – and I ranked him third.
Lower the voting age to 16
Obviously, I wasn’t being serious in the first paragraph about banning adults from voting. But on this point, I am: Let’s lower the voting age to 16.
Sixteen-year-olds have as much of a vested interest in the country’s present as I do, and more of an interest in its future, considering they’ll statistically be here at least 32 years after I’m gone.
Because the Constitution does not allow them to vote, they depend on adults to make responsible choices on their behalf. But we are failing them.
There’s the aforementioned school shootings, a feature of American life that does not exist anywhere else in the developed world – not nearly to this extent, anyway.
That’s the issue with the most immediacy, but there are others. Among them is the $20.7 trillion national debt that we adults are bequeathing them, and that we ever increase. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects a budget deficit of $800 billion this year, which means we’ll spend almost $2.2 billion we do not have today, or $7.6 million in the next five minutes.
All of that is being added to the nation’s credit card bill – which we’ll then hand to the kids.
Here’s where you tell me that 16-year-olds are immature, politically illiterate, tethered to their phones, socially stunted, dependent and lazy. We can’t let such people vote.
Spare me. Those descriptions easily can be applied to members of every other age group these days. There are many good kids out there, and I’m tired of them being bashed.
Adults are the problem
No, we’re the problem. We adults have proven unable and unwilling to act for our young people’s present and future. In fact, we are worse than an unreliable protector – we are an aggressor. Among our crimes is stealing from their future because we are more powerful than they. Our weapon is the vote. We have it, and they don’t.
An imbalance exists when an aggressor has a weapon and a victim doesn’t, right? So let’s stop disarming the kids. Let’s give them the means to protect themselves, from us, at the ballot box.
There are more of us than there of them, but at least it would give them a fighting chance.
By Steve Brawner
© 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
Is your organization looking for a speaker to talk about what’s happening in state or national politics? Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist who appears in 10 newspapers and is a regular guest on AETN’s “Arkansas Week.” He’s cheap but not free.
Thank you
Excellent. I was especially in agreement with this point:
“Spare me. Those descriptions easily can be applied to members of every other age group these days. There are many good kids out there, and I’m tired of them being bashed.”
I’m constantly amused/frustrated by the comments on Facebook from people I went to high school with who trash today’s young people. I remember what they (and I) were like at that age, and there is really little or no difference. And besides, if today’s young people were really as bad as often advertised, who do you think raised them to be that way?
Amen! And while we’re at it let’s give the NRA the boot.
I almost always agree with you Steve but no on this one. 16 years olds are eating Tide Pods and you think they should get the privilege of voting? I don’t think so.
Well said, Steve! We could totally solve the debt if we ended the wars.
Thanks for reading, everyone, and for commenting. That’s funny, JC, but really, how many 16-year-olds are actually eating Tide Pods? And thanks, Melanie. While I agree that we should reduce our military engagements, and cut military spending, we can’t realistically get to balance without also addressing the two things no one wants to address: revenues and entitlements. That said, if the 16-year-olds could vote, we might have fewer wars!
You go, Steve! As with most all you say, you are right on track. It makes me almost cry when I read what our young people are saying. It makes me ashamed for my generation, knowing that the children who are dying have to step out and defend themselves because we won’t. Keep it up! We need a few of us older folks who will speak out and back up our children – people who can impact the ballot box.
Excellent article!! I trust my own teenagers’ decisions and reasoning more than many adults I know. They are more mature and reasonable than many adults as well.
The problem with the gun control debate is no one can dial back enough to talk reasonably and calmly about a solution. It’s obvious something needs to change, but everyone is too busy shouting and trying to get their own way to discuss this like reasonable, intelligent adults should. Unfortunately, everyone wants to act like toddlers stamping their feet and insisting on ‘Mine! Mine!’
The problem isn’t just guns, and it isn’t going to be solved by banning some or all of them. The problem is that life is not valued in this country, therefore, taking a life is not a big deal. If we can correct that, if we can teach that life is, in fact, valuable and something to be cherished, we will go a long way in solving the problem.