Dumbest damn editorial I've read in years:

[acmavm]

You’re 16, You’re Beautiful and You’re a Voter
By ANYA KAMENETZ
Published: February 6, 2008

<snip>
THE 2008 presidential campaign has made history in many ways, not least being the arrival of a new generation at the polls. Voters under 29 were the first to anoint Barack Obama as their candidate. Reversing a general decline that began in 1972, youth turnout leapt in 2004, and in the early contests in this primary season it was up sharply.


We should hasten the enfranchisement of this generation, born between 1980 and 1995, by lowering the voting age to 16.

Age thresholds are meant to bring an impartial data point to bear on insoluble moral questions: who can be legally executed, who can die in Iraq, who can operate the meat cutter at the local sub shop. But in a time when both youth and age are being extended, these dividing lines are increasingly inadequate.

<snip>

And why stop at voting? Sixteen is a good starting point for phasing in adult rights and responsibilities, from voting to drinking to marriage. In reality, this is already when most people have their first jobs, their first drinks and their sexual initiations. The law ought to empower young people to negotiate these transitions openly, not furtively.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/opinion/06kamenetz.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
_______________________________________________________________________

Amazing. If the little darlins break the law, they want to be tried in Juvenile Court. But now they want to vote, drink, whatever at 16. Nebraska lowered the drinking age to 18 years ago. It was such a fiasco that it had to be changed back to 21. But this cluck wants 16 to be the magic number.

Sheesh.

[DCKit]

1. The pedophiles are salivating.

Just a few more years....

[NMMNG]

2. Hey, if they want the rights, they need to accept the responsibilities

Being an adult isn't all it's cracked up to be. I had a college professor who had a plaque in his office that read "Parents, throw your teenagers out of the house now while they still know everything." I was able even then to get a chuckle out of it.

[slampoet]

5. The Plaque should say "Children move out" the other "Parents,throw your teenagers out of the house"

Is what happens to teenagers in homes of abuse.


I don't share your humor.


If any of the commenters on this thread actually saw what the teenager of today has to work with as opposed to one of the Seventies, maybe you all would have a sense of shame and humility about what they will see in the edge of their adult lives that will be lived beyond your deaths.

[acmavm]

7. What the teenager of today has to work with??? Where in the hell

did you ever get the idea that life was ever easy for anyone regardless of when they were born? What they will see in the edge of their adult lives? Do you think, in your ignorance and arrogance, that these teenagers will be seeing things that have never happened before?

As opposed to a teenager of the 70s? We actually stood up for something and were counted. What the fuck has this bunch done?

[MrCoffee]

13. Damn right! You guys levitated the fucking Pentagon!

The Greatest Generation! :patriot:

[NMMNG]

15. I get the impression some got their notions of teen life in the past

from watching repeat TV shows like The Brady Bunch. You know, where a "crisis" was Greg couldn't have access to the family car for a hot date or Marsha had too many dates on Saturday night and needed to find a way to weasel out of one. It's much the same way freepers believe life in the 50s was really like Leave it to Beaver then run around whining that we need to get back to how life was "back in the day" because it's gone to hell in a handbasket since then. It was never like that people--that's fiction.

[Sapphocrat]

16. Two words: Karmic payback.

It's not worth getting worked up about, acmavm -- we're just getting payback for resenting our parents' generation, and today's teens will get the same spiel ("Your generation ruined the world! I didn't ask to be born! Blah, blah, blah, waaaaaaaaaaaah!") from their children.

It used to grate on me as a kid, but now I understand perfectly why parents (of every generation) say, "Wait 'til you have children of your own!"

These kids who want (to paraphrase the ever-quotable lwcon) to chuck us into the Soylent Green hopper will get the same shabby treatment from their kids.

I look forward to it.

[NMMNG]

12. Teen of the seventies, eh?

I was a little kid in the seventies.


And I know what some teens these days have to endure, but don't get the idea that teens had a cushy life in the past. We had problems even then. Teen angst wasn't invented by Generation Y, you know.

[treestar]

11. True, would child support end at 16 too?

Now it ends at 18 in most states.

Too funny. I bet they aren't thinking of that.

The trend is the other way, too. When I was 16, we could get a driver's license. Now some states only allow permits before 18.

[Berry Cool]

3. This person is throwing everyone born between 1980 and 1995 in the same "generation"?

Um, kids born in 1995 are now 12 or 13. They've got a ways to go before 16. And how much do they really have in common with people born in 1980, who are now 27 or 28?

Just because 16 is becoming when "most people have their first jobs, their first drinks and their sexual initiations" doesn't make it the right age to start making major decisions. A lot of the things kids do when they're 16, from drinking to having sex, are just plain dumb and they turn out not to be really be ready. But because THEY have decided they're ready, we're now supposed to say "Fine. Go ahead and drink, marry and vote if you want. In fact, sign your ass up for a hitch in the military and get shipped to Iraq, After all, the service looks so kewl in the recruitment ad they play at the movies..."

On edit: Dumbest responsibility she wants phased in for "responsible" teens as young as possible: CREDIT CARDS!!!!

[KharmaTrain]

4. It Wouldn't Matter...They Wouldn't Vote Anyway

I worked in getting the 18 year old vote...I had a vested interest, I was 17 at the time it was enacted. While I couldn't wait to vote (just like how my 19 year old son was yesterday in casting his first vote), but so many others I knew "couldn't be bothered" with voting. And this was at the tail end of Vietnam...the draft was still alive (not as potent, but still there) and still many of these people...some of whom I marched with in protest marches a few years earlier, were too busy to bother with "politics".

No politician in their right mind will favor lowering the voting age...creating a wild card in their own election plans with a group that is both hard to predict and manipulate. It's far easier going to a nursing home and scaring the crap out of a bunch of seniors.

[Thothmes]

6. Does this mean

That they can enlist in the Armed Services at 16, without parental consent? If they are old enough to vote, they should be old enough to fight.

[EstimatedProphet]

8. If 16 year olds could vote, Britney Spears would be president

Therefore the editorial is proven wrong.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. I bow to your impressive use of statistics, logic and real-world knowledge

in that impressive bit of logic there.

:sarcasm:

[EstimatedProphet]

10. Shame on me for making a joke.

How dare I make a joke in GD! The horror! I should be punished!

[musette_sf]

14. 16? no way! 14 Or Fight , Baby!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6TT5UT00wE

(this movie was one of my guilty pleasures in my teenhood)