Amidst the endless talk on social
media and the mainstream media on the Parkland shooting, another policy
position is being espoused by the Left (aside from the predictable hysteria
about gun control)—enfranchising high schoolers. Soon after the shooting, the MSM enlisted a
number of them as spokesteens for their anti-gun agenda. Most notably, student David Hogg immediately
emerged as a media darling. He came off
as poised and well-spoken, and the media flocked to him—so much so that his
articulateness raised suspicions that he was being coached and had pre-prepared
talking points.
Hogg, (along with a few
others), has been elevated to rock star status and has now become the reigning
authority and point person on gun policy in the U.S. He has been omnipresent in the media,
blathering on and on, blaming the NRA, NRA supporter Dana Loesch, and the
governor of Florida for the shooting while exonerating the people whose job it
is to protect children—the F.B.I. and the Broward County Sheriff’s office,
urging boycotts of the State of Florida and companies that have ties to the
NRA. He has refused to return to school
until gun restriction legislation is passed.
Liberal Democrats haven’t had such a marquee spokesperson since Sandra
Fluke was hawking free birth control a few years ago. The cynic in me is inclined to believe that
young Mr. Hogg and a few of his other classmates are perfectly comfortable
standing on the dead bodies of their fallen classmates to propel their future media
careers.
Some on the Left are proposing to
take this further and are now calling for the enfranchisement of these teens. Harvard professor Laurence Tribe and Bloomberg
contributor Jonathan Bernstein vociferously advocated lowering the voting age
to 16, and even lower, if possible. Tribe
asserted “This #ChildrensCrusade will transform America” and that “Teens
between 14 and 18 have far better BS detectors, on average than ‘adults’ 18 and
older. Wouldn’t it be great if the
voting age were lowed to 16?” Joshua
Douglas at CNN similarly threw in for the kiddie vote, “The real adults in the
room are the youth from Parkland Florida who are speaking out about the need
for meaningful gun control laws.”
Bernstein argued that it will increase voter participation by getting in
the habit of voting early in life and said the voting age might be lowered to
as young as 13.
What’s puzzling about this sudden
push by the Left to grant children a political voice and full participatory
rights in our republic is that until the Parkland shooting, the Left was actively
extending childhood. Obamacare permitted
them to stay on Mommy and Daddy’s health insurance until age 26. Our higher education system had infantilized
them and even left leaning Salon and the New York Times voiced concern about delaying
adulthood (see, e.g. Judith Shulevitz’s article from a few years ago https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-shulevitz-hiding-from-scary-ideas.html). Colleges coddled them in “safe spaces” and mandated “trigger warnings” to
protect them from ideas that might hurt their feelings. They passed out coloring books, crayons,
teddy bears to help COLLEGE students cope with the results of our electoral
process. Likewise, it was only a few
short weeks ago that the New York legislature was considering passing
regulations forcing P&G to make Tide Pods less appetizing because teens
were harming themselves by eating detergent pods. But now the Left has done an abrupt about
face and is clamoring to grant full voting rights to individuals that have not
earned their first paycheck yet and whose mommies still pack their lunches and
do their laundry for them.
What gives?
The Left is following the Rahm
Emanual dictum, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Never mind that the Parkland shooting
represents a total breakdown at all levels of government in its duty to protect
us. That tragedy is being seized on to
advance a pet objective of the Left—to either erase or water down the 2nd
Amendment so much that it becomes meaningless as to its primary purpose, which
is to underpin the social compact (But
when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same
Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their
right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new
Guards for their future security- Declaration of Independence). Some sort of package restricting guns, ammo
or the ages at which they will be permitted will now almost certainly
pass. With untouchable children serving as
both shields and swords, some erosion of the 2nd Amendment is now
inevitable.
But should children be granted
the right to vote? Absolutely not.
While it is entirely appropriate
to permit the survivors to emote and express themselves over what happened, it
does not follow that it entitles the kids to a full ticket to our political system. The first clue lies in the CNN “Town Hall”
meeting. The disrespect shown Rubio and
Loesch by the “Town Hall” itself is a compelling argument for why children
should not be voting members of our society.
It was a one sided affair in which the NRA was labelled “child murderers,”
Loersch was accused of being “owned” by the NRA and Rubio was charged with not
caring about children. Adolescents make
adolescent arguments that are devoid of fact and analysis and that was on full
display last week.
The abdication of government to
protect these children ---to be the parent permits the children to try to
assume that role. In a household that is
run by a drunk or a drug addict, children often try to pick up the slack and
assume responsibilities they are not ready to handle, often with disastrous
results.
That is, in part, what is
happening here. Young Mr. Hogg is being
lauded as “courageous” by the MSM. Meanwhile
the highly trained paid state actor armed with a weapon stood outside and did
nothing as children were slaughtered. Children should not be given a vote because
the adults in our society have, in some cases, abdicated their responsibility.
The advocacy of enfranchising
children arises out of desperation by the Left.
The Coastal Elite had assumed that the election of Hillary Clinton, and
another four or eight years of regulatory growth and increased influence over
the judiciary would cement its grip on political power for generations. The election of Donald Trump smashed those
progressive dreams. The Left’s initial
reaction was to label Trump’s election as “illegitimate” and they began by
attacking the electoral college. While
certain attempts are still ongoing, eliminating the electoral college and electing
a president via a straight popular vote will not be an easy thing to pull
off. The other attempt at increasing
political power of the Democrats was to eventually enfranchise illegal
immigrants. Trump dangled out the
prospect of a one-time enfranchisement as bait but with lots and lots of
strings attached and so far, the Democratic leadership isn’t biting.
Floating the idea of
enfranchising children is simply another attempt at creating another pool of
voters for the Left. Contrary to Mr.
Tribe’s assertion, high school kids do NOT have a superior BS detector—they
actually swallow lots of BS, and sometimes with Tide Pods along with it. They most often have uncontrolled emotions,
their pre-adult brains have been scientifically shown to underappreciate risk,
and they are usually some years off from contributing to our society. But under the aegis and indoctrination of
progressive school boards, the energy, malleability and quixotic idealism would
make high schoolers a perfect voting bloc for Democrats if you could possibly get
them enfranchised.
The enfranchisement of children
will not happen. The Left and MSM will
be content to let them carry their water over gun control. But over time, the Left will keep chipping
away at the 2nd Amendment and taking it apart in pieces until one
day we will wake up and it just won’t be there anymore.
The Parkland atrocity and its
aftermath is yet another instance in which the West has failed to protect its
children, every bit as much as it failed last spring in the U.K. when an
Islamic terrorist bombed the rock concert in Manchester. Our government failed to protect these kids
from being slaughtered and to make matters worse, the political Left is
exploiting them to advance their agenda and hoping to enfranchise them to increase
their political strength, shamelessly using them. Sadly, our divided politics and partisan media won’t even let
children grieve. We should let them grow
up before tossing them into the political fray.
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