Nearly every day I check this blog to see a.) how many people come to visit our cozy little corner of cyberspace and b.) by what means they came to click here. Lately, I have been somewhat bemused at the large quantity of people who were linked to the site after searching on the web for “28th amendment.” There are, in my mind, three reasons why such high traffic exists: people want to read this website (not likely); people are checking to see if there is an actual 28th Amendment in our Constitution (until I can get ¾ of state conventions to ratify this site [keep writing to your congressmen, people! I know we can do it someday], there is no such article); or, there is some porn/gay porn/bestiality site of the same name (probably the case) whereby people are mistakenly led here. My apologies to the many horny visitors for that misunderstanding.
That having been said, consider this formula: if young people are the future, and young people compose the Democratic Party, is the Democratic Party our future? California Republicans seem to fear so, because they are blocking two bills in the State Assembly that would allow sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds to preregister to vote, as well as allow seventeen-year-olds to vote in primaries if they will be eighteen by the general election. Naturally, since young people tend to be more liberal—and since eighteen- to 29-year-olds prefer Barack Obama to John McCain by roughly two-to-one (with party identification mirroring that margin)—and liberals tend to cling to the Democratic party, Republicans are unsupportive of these measures. One representative, Anthony Adams, said that “I’m a pretty conservative guy now, but when I was seventeen I was a raging liberal….You start to see problems as you get older. As you get older, you get wiser.”
Those remarks translate to: young, dumb liberals grow into old, wise conservatives. Of course, liberalism is not exclusively the domain of the young—half the wrinkled heads on the Supreme Court at any given time are bound to bend liberal, as is currently about half of Congress, not to mention the elderly Jewish community in Florida who mistakenly voted for Buchanan in the 2000 election. Nor is liberalism a sort of naiveté or recklessness with the country’s values: from the liberal civil rights agenda of the sixties to the liberal gay rights agenda of today; from the liberal cause of Medicare to liberal national health care; young people in America expect to be prosperous, healthful, and to respect the color and gender barriers that will continue to be knocked down throughout their generation. Young people, in supporting these points, are merely looking out for their generation just as every generation has done. Some of them may agree with the Republican agenda, but all of them have a right to be suspicious of the political party of rich, white men who are trying to block their ability to vote. Maybe the best measure to supplement voting rights for new registrants is to abolish the requirement to register with one party or the other.
The Republicans’ argument seems to be that young people are not mature enough to pick their representatives, rather than being unknowledgeable about politics. But the people who are elected are knowledgeable—the voters’ job is to pick the candidate whose agenda on the issues is preferable. Besides, is the middle-aged conservative who believes that Barack Obama is a racist Muslim less dangerous to the political process than a college student who knows otherwise? Is it fair that young Barack Obama should be left to resolve the Iraqi war, whereas wise old Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were unable to do so? And really, what has youthful liberalism ever brought America? There was 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson’s anarchist scheme that all men are entitled to “life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness”; 25-year-old James Madison’s idea that the freedom to practice any religion or no religion should not be infringed upon; seventeen-year-old Benjamin Franklin’s anonymous observation that an honest atheist is superior to a hypocritical holy man. Thank goodness none of those indiscreet radicals were able to hold positions of power in the American republic.
Certainly older conservatives have more experience with the socioeconomic forces at work in this country, but does that mean that young, idealistic liberals should not have a say in current affairs (which is also the theme of the 2008 campaign)? As for “seeing problems” when they get older, are issues such as providing the opportunity to marry for gay couples, welcoming immigrants, and supporting health coverage for each American really going to ruin the country when all is said and done? Young people are living in a country with more freedoms, more people who are of different colors and lifestyles, with better medicine, and with the ability to receive and dispense information faster than any other generation, so it only makes sense to want to improve on that standard of living and to see results quickly. I suppose most governmental creations do run awry sooner or later: civil rights reform now has to contend with affirmative action lawsuits; Social Security is a broken system; but those reforms were necessary at the time and continue to be necessary. It is up to the young people to adapt new solutions to the old problems of social and economic injustice.
7/6
