It isn’t an issue of “grown up enough. “
No sir
The real issue ,is total lack of a mental health milieu ,for chronic insanity ,unrestrained ,and a government protraction of facilities improvements ,to house large numbers of young and adult offenders of gun culture. Aggressive use of firearms ,in a non war situation ,in a racialized society ,like ours is ,under trumpism ,isn’t going to cut it.
So basing gun ownership on war/ age of owner isn’t addressing the dangers inherent in gun ownership by enablers of the chronically mentally ill. We could redesign the private and state prisons to rehouse diagnosed killers and degrees of violent gun owners with active police records and Evals.
That is the only return to 1940’s America that I want to see. Asylums on the hills of major city hubs. We won’t repeat the same mistakes in government that we made when Reagan closed down mental health facilities funding in states.
2
Like freedom, being an adult is a privilege. Sometimes an obligation. Its not a right.
Ask
Is the activity supervised?
How addictive is it?
Voting, military service, and strip clubs are not as addictive as alcohol. In their own ways they're supervised with limits on person's behavior.
Marriage and kids should probably be postponed to 21 unless there is help and supervision from their relatives.
Unless we are in war, 18 year olds should not be on front lines. They could be in training but not fighting.
If you’re old enough to get married, you should old enough to do pretty much anything. How can you believe someone has the mental capacity to choose their life partner for the next 60 or so years, financially support that partner, and potentially start bringing new lives into the world, yet you think they shouldn’t be allowed to choose to smoke, drink, vote, etc?
1
I always wondered why the powers that were didn't just give draftees the right to vote upon their induction.
4
It's all rather stupid. For starters, these are - truly - kids and have all the odd behaviors and quirks of kids. And their driving record is abysmal, for example. Yes, the drinking age should have been raised and it was. No, the age for voting should never have been lowered. As for war, war demands young bodies and the strict discipline of such service tends to keep the youngster in line. A bit of a paradox, to be sure but it IS reality.
4
@SilverLaker 4284 so what you are saying is that it’s okay to use child soldier. That’s real nice. Real nice... I think I just threw up. Excuse me.
4
The right to vote or not does not determine civic engagement. Many people in their twenties who are old enough to vote don't bother. I am old enough that when I was between 18 & 21, the age for both voting and drinking was 21. Yet, I distinctly remember sitting in my car the morning after the 1968 election intently listening to the results (it was still not declared). I was 19, but would not get to vote for a POTUS until I was 23 - still, I was interested and involved.
That said, maturity is such an individual thing that any decisions we make about drinking, voting, marrying etc., will be older than necessary for a few and too young for others. Heck, I know people in their 70 who are perpetual adolescents and a few 20 year olds who have significant maturity.
3
When I think of the teenagers that were drafted in Vietnam (my Uncle was only 19) I feel ashamed that society did not do more to ensure that he had opportunities and protection of his human rights rather than drafting him to fight a war that his elders declared. We, as a society, need do more to make sure that all young people do not begin their lives in war zones, whether that be in actual combat zones or in homes where domestic violence and rape culture exists ... or in neighborhoods where young people are preyed upon, in the many ways in which teenagers are targeted by drug dealers, gangs, sex-work traffickers and other predators who wish to exploit them. Along those lines, so many teenagers are pushed out at 18 and get stuck in low-paying, even dangerous jobs with few opportunities to pursue a college education or living-wage trade. Some even succumb to homelessness as they find it is impossible to pay rent on a fast-food income. Young adulthood should be a time to build a foundation that leads to a hopeful future, not a time when a young person must struggle to survive.
3
Let's raise the age for military enlistment to 25 (age to rent a car some places) and see if we are involved in as many wars.
5
The solution is so obvious, raise the voting age back to 21. If they are too immature to own a gun they are too immature to vote, unless they are in the active or reserve military. I start drinking in NY in 1953 where the legal age was 18. But as I was a senior in high school at 16 I got served with my 18 year old friends. But then we drank to be companionable not to get drunk.
2
So at what age do you think someone should be able to sign loan paperwork for tens or scores of thousands of dollars? Are college freshman and sophomores mature enough to take on outrageous debt?
I remember when Massachusetts raised it's drinking age back to 21, one argument was too take alcohol out of high school, since most people turn 18 in their senior year.
I wonder if setting these limit at 19 or 20 would be a good compromise?
@Paulie
Oh hahaha.
The consumption of alcohol begins in middle school here. It began in middle school when I was a teenager and I lived in CA where the drinking age has always been 21. It has nothing to do with the law or the change in the law.
That said, it is laughable that 18 year olds can vote and can die for their country but they can't drink, smoke, toke, or apparently buy a gun. That 18 year old in the military is surely doing many of those "illegal" things, especially using lots and lots of guns.
1
We can't separate society's inconsistencies from recent developments in American culture.
Earlier generations of 18-21 year old young adults were expected to function as full fledged adults, and society's institutions supported that. Many of us probably have grandparents and parents who were married and raising families by the time they were that age.
A young man could get a job fresh out of high school and earn enough to support a family.
Today we have college and university environments where young adults behave irresponsibly as they enjoy their freedom from their home environments. binge drinking and so forth. Yet, many 21 year old college graduates don't earn enough to truly be on their own.
7
I agree that the age to drink could be lowered, but I don’t see any mention of the insane CAR CULTURE in the US. Young drivers are already much more likely to have accidents, and I don’t trust American teens to not drink and drive. (In Europe, they drive at a later age and way more people use public transportation.)
Perhaps teens could be allowed to drink in restaurants when they’re with their parents?
8
It is natural for 18-year-olds to explore adult lifestyle options. Like all other adults, these young people should drink moderately and responsibly, or not at all. But it must be their own decision. The drinking age should be lowered to 18.
Did you review John McCardell's NYT op-ed article 09/13/2004? And are you aware that it was Senator Elizabeth Dole who spearheaded the campaign to raise the legal age to 21? This ridiculous situation needs to be changed.
4
Maturity may be measured by various standards. Degrees of maturity appear at various ages in individuals.
All this variability makes it difficult to set a “one age fits all” limit. In addition, appropriate ages for alcohol use, voting, military service and other actions could be considered differently.
When generalizations are applied in law-making, as in many other areas, the individual has not been considered. Someone has said:
“What is normal? Simply the average of deviance. “
30
3
It's "College of William and Mary", not William and Mary College.
1
I recall as a student in New York, when the legal age was 18, that college freshmen learned quickly,when ordering a glass of wine or beer with a meal or snack, to handle it as responsibly as others did at 21. To do otherwise would be to brand oneself as immature.
I also can remember that when visiting other states, where the the legal age supposedly was 21, that no one ever questioned me twice when I ordered a drink with dinner at 18 or 19. Has anything really changed?
Emotional and mental maturity is there at 18 for most. For some, it never arrives.
4
There's no reason someone who is 18 should not be able to make adult choices about smoking, drinking, driving, guns, joining the military, getting married, etc. Except for the fact that parents increasingly do not prepare them for this kind of independence, including paying your own way, going to the dentist, getting your own insurance, etc. My mother said to her 18-year-old adults, "You can go to college or get a job, but you cannot stay here." She always knew her job was to launch us into the world, not protect us from it.
5
The appropriately named Mr. Parent is very much wrong about the United States being the only country in the Western world to prohibit alcohol. The Nordic countries, such as Norway Finland and Iceland, had prohibition as well
3
a lot has changed since then. My recollection (i was in college when the NYS rules changed), is that it was mostly about deaths from drinking and driving. The attitude towards drinking and driving was different then. Instead of zero tolerance, it was more dont drive so drunk that you are unsafe.
It took 30+ years to change that.
It isnt like the law prevented 18-21 year olds from drinking.
lisa d
The path I followed, which I'm sure is not for everybody, was to get away from my parents and away from the pressure to support myself on a HS diploma; facing all of that, plus the added burden of having no craft skills, such as those required of carpenter, electrician and other trades, etc., I opted for the military. Aside from the military, I was only qualified to work for minimum wage at a local department store. I knew I could not run with that. So, I joined the armed services.
In retrospect, it worked out well for me. I was supporting myself living in a somewhat protective environment and was much better off than living with my parents and their, sometimes unreasonable, restrictions. I received vocational training in electronics at the beginning of my enlistment period and I had the chance to live independently, yet securely, while earning my way to college via the GI Bill.
A year after my discharge I began attending college full time on the GI Bill and, fortunately, I was mature enough to have the focus and direction to guide me through my studies, unlike most of my peers at the time. The military may not be for everyone, but everyone might profit from knowing it is an option.
5
So much for freedom. We are still being defined and controlled by those in power who insist putting people into categories whether by age, gender, income, wealth, who we are or where we live, how we want to travel or to where.
We have a 72-yr old child in the Oval Office and much of congress is run by adults throwing tantrums when they can't have their way, and the debate is whether an adult is 18 or 21?
5
It is horrible that 18-year-olds, who are barely more than children, are allowed to become fodder in wars. The powers that be take advantage of them at a point where they are looking for an adult identity and have not yet had a chance to start families of their own. Try enlisting a 40-year-old.
4
Every person is different. Some very young kids take on incredible family burdens when the need arises, whereas some people in their 70's still act like impulsive, spoiled children.
I grew up in Canada and in my province, we were adults at 18. Period. I found being responsible for my own well-being and education stimulating, as did most of my friends. However, we didn't have the extraordinary financial burdens that many young Americans carry. Life has changed, and in particular it has become more competitive and expensive to get started, so dependency can last longer. But my personal belief is that 18 is the correct legal age to make your own decisions.
7
I would say 21. Yes, the brain is supposedly still developing but at 21, people have a clear sense of right and wrong and are capable of living without the day-to-day intervention of their parents. People in their 20s (and sometimes 30s) are infantilized by remaining in their parents' homes jobless and playing video games all day. Being responsible for yourself and having your own income (whatever type of job), expenses and living space help to make you an adult.
Democrats have recently proposed legislation in New York that would allow fourteen-year-olds to consent to vaccines without parental knowledge or consent. This makes me feel that politicians should be mature and adult enough to list all payments from Pharma on their websites.
1
I started college when that hateful, senile fool Reagan caved in to the insurance industry and effectively raised the national drinking age to 21.
My classmates and I found other ways to entertain ourselves. Hint: We didn't "just say no."
By the way, nowhere in this article is it mentioned that 18-year-olds can also take on tens of thousands of dollars in non-dischargeable student loan debt.
22
Yes you are not allowed to smoke or drink before 18 or 21 but you can change your gender or have an abortion without parental notification- absolute madness in America today!
8
@new conservative but you did not say anything about sending 18 year olds off to fight in wars.
Brain development stops around 25, which seems like a good working definition of when we become our "adult" selves. For example, statistically speaking marriages that begin from 25 and upwards have a much higher chance of success than those made from 24 and under. Students going back to school in their late 20s seem much more grounded and focused on schoolwork than partying like teenagers. A person in their mid-20s would be much more cautious and realistic about taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in school loans than an 18-year-old.
That being said, this doesn't mean that people under 25 shouldn't be allowed to drink, or join the army, or sign contracts, or drive.
1
@K. Actually, I think it does mean that people under 25 shouldn't join the military. Okay, a compromise- people under 21 shouldn't join the military. The military haunts high schools for recruits and signs up 17 year old people, who have no idea what losing your civil rights and killing other people, especially civilians, can do to you. If we weren't allowed to sign children up for the military, something we depend on in order to find endless wars with a volunteer army, it would be a different world.
2
Mental health treatment is especially dicey for eighteen year olds, who have often addressed their conditions in conjunction with their parents before they magically become legally responsible for their own care.
I don’t know many eighteen year olds who can navigate health insurance, find an appropriate and available therapist and make decisions about prescriptions, especially when they are depressed or anxious.
It’s a huge problem.
11
I was an adult at 8 years old based upon the responsibility placed upon me. My son is 30 and hasn't figured out adulthood. Age is irrelevant.
25
Any time a young person from another country visits The US they are constantly baffled by "the drinking age thing".
I always hear "People in the states are such Puritans." In Spain the drinking age is 16 and they have comparatively few drinking problems.
The other factor is the car culture. In The US teens can't wait to get their hands on a car because in most parts of the country you can't go anywhere or do anything without those all-important wheels.
How about this: Let them drink at 18 but no driver's license until 21 by which time they'll have gotten a lot of that binge drinking out of their systems?
6
When are you really an adult?
Hmmm...I'm in my 50s and I can't honestly say with certainty that I've gotten there yet. Even more scandalous, I'm not sure I want to. What more horrible, depressing state could there be to live one's life than that of "adulthood"?
That deliberate facetiousness aside, while human development can be predicted as a whole, on a case-by-case basis it's impossible (for now, although I think a sufficiently advanced AI, with sufficient access to both individual and collective data could do the trick) to name the precise year when someone is mature enough to vote, to drive, to marry, to be sent into armed conflict, to drink, or to do/choose any number of other "privileges" we associate with age.
We might very well be better off developing assessments that would be given periodically to each individual to determine their ability to make responsible (i.e., adult-level) decisions. Once someone has passed, they are granted the privileges of adulthood. There are, of course, problems with this that would inevitably arise when dealing with individuals that are deserving of autonomy in decision making but challenged when it comes to testing. People along the autism spectrum come to mind. I do believe, though, that with sufficient recognition of this challenge, we can adapt the test to recognize different methods of cognition.
3
And you can’t rent a car until you are 25. So much for a business trip. Explain that to me.
11
@Sandy Walter
Statistics show that drivers under the age of 25 get into more accidents than older drivers. Rental car companies do rent to drivers under 25 though there can be surcharges. Being an AAA member helps.
2
When I was a child, I was off on my bicycle riding all over our neighborhood and exploring the woods. Much of the time our parents had no idea where we were, even at age 10.
I recently saw a piece on the news about a 14-year-old who had never gone more than a block from his house unsupervised. And of course there are the reports of child services being called out because the parents had the "gall" to let their kids play in a park.
So it is not just defining adulthood in an inconsistent manner-- it is overprotecting children up until one day, suddenly, with no preparation, they go from coddled to adulthood, with no real transition. They've had no practice at taking responsibility and no practice at being independent.
It is ironic that the more we use the term "young adult" the less we seem to treat them as such.
29
@Bill There's a very definite sense of paranoia out there regarding children that didn't exist before. The Culture of Fear. Everyone's out to get you.
A child will grow up much faster if they're not being watched 24/7/365.
4
@Bill I found your comments interesting. I am working on a unit with my middle schoolers on growing up and rites of passage. I agree that parents are doing their jobs to teach teenagers how to be adults. It doesn't just magically happen. Kids aren't at fault. We are.
1
Of course it makes no sense, but things won't change much. People lose all interest in these issues after the first few drinks on the morning of their 21st birthday. I know I did, instantly realizing that those puerile 20 year-olds should talk less and listen more.
7
I'm sure I would have disagreed with what I am about to say when I was 18-21 years old, but...
I don't see any inconsistencies in allowing someone to join the military at 18 but not allowing them to drink or own guns until they are 21 etc..
Maybe it makes sense to allow someone to impact their own life at one age (join the military, take out loans etc) and to potentially impact other peoples lives (own guns, drink etc) at another ago??
2
@dlhicks Probably better not to drink if you're in the military.
2
@dlhicks - Joining the military is one of the best ways to ensure that you are going to impact other people's lives. It's a position of power, and thus should be reserved only for those who have truly reached maturity.
The same should be true of joining a police force.
2
Joining the military requires high school graduation, passing mental and physical aptitude tests, and graduating eight weeks of intense basic training. Only a few percent of American youth complete the requirements. The drinking age, however, applies to everybody turning 21, with no screening for aptitude, no training, and now required supervision.
3
"In Alaska, teenagers as young as 14 can get married with a court order."
1) This is nothing but state sponsored child abuse.
2) Marriage is a legal contract. In no other circumstance can a person under 18 enter into a legally binding contract - and for good reason.
8
An American citizen is an adult when they begin to pay taxes.
2
@Chasseur Americain I think many people pay taxes when they rob their piggy bank to buy themselves treats behind their parents' backs. Perhaps you meant income taxes? That would make many 16 year olds adults.
1
@Chasseur Americain - In NY State 54 years ago, you could get working papers at age 14. Taxes were withheld. I still had to wait until 18 to drink and be drafted. (from Donna's husband)
2
We approach adulthood when we start getting serious about how are spending our time relative to work and relationships. This period, in my experience and observation, begins at 28 to 30.
2
Certainly raise the minimum age to apply for a student loan to 21, maybe even 25. Student loans ruin more lives than cigarettes or alcohol.
3
It’s kind of important for people to get student loans at 18 because that’s the age one goes to college and actually needs them.
6
Maybe they should work for a few years to earn money for college and to gain an appreciation of what a $30,000 debt means. Education is wasted on the young.
1
I think 18 should be the age of adulthood as you can vote at that age, or enlist in the military and/or go to war without a parent's signature. Why delay adulthood and responsibility?
3
Because of shorter lifespans in the 19th century, Americans married at a much earlier age, say, before 20, and had started having their children as adolescents in many instances. Young people were compelled to work factory jobs from an even earlier age, say, 4 to 7, in lieu of attending school if they were poor children of newly-arrived immigrants. Slaves had no choice of a mate, and could be thrown together with any other slave at their owner's will, or more commonly, thrust into an unwilling state of concubinage to satisfy the vile lusts of their caucasian owners who compelled their own spouses to look away at this very common moral turpitude. Now we have the helicopter parent and even discussing those items would be strongly discouraged, if not outright forbidden, by those vigilantes in order to protect their budding genius. Political correctness whether learned in adolescence or at college throws another layer of denial and revisionism atop our collective heritage from the founding times not so long ago...
1
In my 30 years of teaching human development in psychology courses, I've regularly engaged my students in discussions and polls about the inconsistencies mentioned in this story.
As my own young adulthood unfolded when the drinking age was still 18, and having come of age the same year that the draft was suspended, I was curious to know why, as a voting block, they didn't simply mobilize to lower the drinking age back to 18.
The same students who would risk a criminal record and academic expulsion asserted that they were, as a cohort, not mature enough to handle alcohol. Perhaps they saw the prevalence of underage drinking as a marker of immature judgment? For all other 'adult' responsibilities, they felt they were completely capable of making informed voting choices, owning and using all manner of guns, creating children, and performing military duty.
Another persistent disconnect related to their disdain for candidates promising free college for all. Where I thought they would embrace the concept, they were overwhelmingly disapproving. Why? They claimed it wasn't fair. Why should others down the road have access to education?
The students at my campus were all receiving financial aid and still working multiple part-time jobs in order to stay enrolled. No matter that this meant they simply prioritized their part-time entry level work over studying or assignments, and was their justification for sleeping through class or failing to meet performance standards.
1
Don't allow anything until age 25. Don't allow military service until age 35.
4
@Barking Doggerel Don't allow military service at all! Sure would solve an number of problems.
1
@Barking Doggerel Considering that even most 18 year olds wouldn’t qualify for military training, I can’t imagine an entirely middle aged army being all that effective, although it is a somewhat entertaining mental image. -NW
Since people seem to be taking longer and longer to mature, maybe the threshhold should now be 30. Either that or develop tests that gauge emotional maturity and base "maturity" on a score.
11
@Eli Denying people their full legal rights based on “tests.” When has that ever gone wrong? -NW
Link for those who don’t understand history or sarcasm:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/06/voting-rights-and-the-supreme-court-the-impossible-literacy-test-louisiana-used-to-give-black-voters.html
Three months ahead of my eighteenth birthday, I enlisted in the military. I didn't smoke, drink, or drive dangerously, and neither was I particularly interested in violent conflict. But, the military had invited me in at age sixteen, and made specific suggestions as to specialties based on exam scores, so after thinking about it, I joined. Many decades later, I'm still trying to figure out whether and how I've matured enough to be thought of as a 'responsible adult'.
So, I'm inclined to accept the imperfections of youth, and help young folks in my orbit as best I can, and encourage them to live long, live well, and to do what they can to avoid harming others along the way. Sixteen, eighteen, or sixty-something, it's amazing to learn that we share so much.
3
Just make 21 the minimum age for military service, voting, drinking, smoking, taking out loans including student loans, and marriage. Maybe even driving.
21
Might as well extend high school another 3 years if adulthood doesn’t start until 21.
2
@M Davis How are young adults between the ages of 18 and 21 going to pay for college if they can’t join the military or take out loans? Why should young adults who are working full time and paying taxes not be able to vote? Why should young adults who are raising children and cohabitating not be able to enjoy the social, legal, and economic benefits of marriage? How will they get to work or drop their children off at childcare if they can’t drive? -NW
5
@Andy They actually extended it another four years – they call it college.
Pragmatically speaking.. you are either legally an adult at 18, or you are not.
Make up your minds legislators, and then stay consistent.
If you can vote at 18, and die for your country at 18, then consistency dictates that you ARE and adult and should be eligible for anything any other adult is. Period... full stop.
But you know what.. special interests are behind the mishmash of different laws and different resulting legal ages. Legislators can solve this once and for all.. but then again.. they ARE owned by the special interests.
44
@Chuck
The question is not when you are "legally" an adult. A law can be passed that says one is an adult at age 7. That does not make it so in terms of maturity of thought.
@pat
We all know the context here is between age 18 and age 21, and that currently different legislation sets different age limits between 18 and 21 for different things.
Stop derailing the context please.
The sadest part of all of this is....
Politicians trying to legislate their personal beliefs upon young adults via age based legislative discrimination OR anti-discrimination.
Does Rodgers really give two hoots about what does and does not constitute "responsible adult" based on age? Not at all.. he simply wants to keep pressing his pro-gun rights personal beliefs on behalf of the gun industry.
Make no mistake here.. this is not about what age represents responsible adulthood.. it all about the gun industry putting as many firearms in as many American hands as possible. Eventually the gun lobby will work hard to continue to lower the legal age to own a firearm... first to 16, then 14, then 12.
19
@Chuck I’m not sure if I agree or not. I agree about Rodgers playing a game and I’m certain that there is some type of compensation involved for him. I have owned guns since I was twelve and I’m now 63. I cannot tell you the last time I shot one and although I know where all of my guns are I haven’t seen any of them for more than a year. I was able to participate in drinking alcohol at 18 and I’m not sure that was a real good idea for me or some other people who I interacted with during that time. I join the military and after my first day in boot realized that smoking was a better plan than picking up trash during a break so 35 yrs later I finally quit. I guess it’s just life and we all know that if an 18 yr old wants a beer he or she is probably going to get one or ten.
1
America doing what it does best, namely cherry picking. We do it appease special interest groups on political/ moral grounds, or financial gain.
You wonder why young people aren’t clear regarding a healthy path to adulthood. Do the right thing, It’s either 18 or 21 for all. Set a benchmark for this generation to strive for.
Vote, smoke, drink and defend our country at the same time.
Stop the confusion and forcing them to lie.
13
"When are we truly grown up?"
For me personally, I'm hoping never.
9
My 20 year old daughter recently drove from Montana to Alabama to take a job with NASA.
Long days of driving, and when she tried to check in to the hotels she had made reservations for online, she was turned away because she isn't 21. (Fortunately her boyfriend, a few months older than her and 21, was able to fill out the registration form and get them a room.) What a mishmash our staggered permissions are!
46
Hotels don’t rent to teenagers because they have had bad experiences. Same with car rentals. The mature teenagers are harmed by irresponsible teenagers. The law raising the drinking age was pushed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving because of the ghastly history of teens driving drunk.
3
But the person in question was not a teenager.
1
The argument that anyone eligible to be sent to possibly die in armed conflict for their country should also enjoy full rights as an adult never goes away. That is because there is no intelligent way to counter it.
69
@Alan R Brock
The argument is that the rich send people who are not adults to war. Being sent to war does not make you an adult.
@Alan R Brock It seems that people whose brains are not fully formed are more easily persuaded to possibly die in an armed conflict than people who have lived long enough to consider the alternatives. Also young minds are more likely to be susceptible to the viruses of patriotism, nationalism, tribalism, and a variety of religious doctrines. They may as well get drunk like the rest of the adults.
3
@pat
You are addressing a related but separate issue.
It's nice that this article quotes a psychology professor who is an expert on brain development to give some context to the political issues that are explored.
What would also have been helpful would be if the article also gave some global context in terms of the practices that are common in other countries. The United States is not the only country to have grappled with how to acknowledge the political rights of young adults. Knowing how other countries deal with this issue would have rounded out the article's analysis.
15
The quixotic, inexplicable, and bizarre mishmash of laws and regulations highlights one thing: We are terrible stewards of our young.
As a life-long anti-war activist, I've long made the point that it's beyond absurd to restrict the quaffing of a beer while merrily pushing our own children into a wall of gunfire. It's actually indefensible.
The issue is not giving them beer younger. Obviously. The issue is why we create this tissue of lies about how much we care about their safety only to abandon any sense of ethics, decency, or rational thinking when it comes to making them fodder for war.
I've written for a decade about the war we're waging on our children. We won't provide them with a good head start by safeguarding their nutrition, health, and education. Our infant mortality rate is 71% higher than the comparable country average; we fail to provide adequate daycare and maternity or paternity leave; we cut out programs for the arts and sports that would provide healthy, nurturing outlets for young energy and passions. We saddle our young people with crushing college debt. We are destroying the very air they breathe and water they drink. And, yes, at the drop of a hat we push them in front of tanks and out of planes to go kills someone else's child.
Enough of the pretense. Our actions speak volumes. Darwin knew that the species that cannot safeguard its own young, is a species on its way out. It's time to prove we're not going the way of the Dodo.
If we can...
67
@AhBrightWings: Amen. Exhibit A: yesterday's federal appeals court ruling against Kelsey Juliana et al. (Juliana v. United States): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/climate/juliana-climate-case.html
@John Lonergan The peace you speak of depends on what part of the world you live in and your socio-economic status. People of color, people living in poverty, minorities, etc. have not experienced much peace.
5
@AhBrightWings
You become an adult the day you become a parent.
Folks without children will cry foul, but that's the truth.
"His critics missed the point, he [Mr. Rodgers] said."
No, it's Mr. Rodgers who missed the point. If he wants to change a law about youth gun ownership, he should marshal data about how gun ownership by youth is safe, not bring up an irrelevant sideshow about cellphones.
Why doesn't he marshal such evidence?
Presumably because it doesn't exist.
33
@Dan Styer OTOH it could be argued that cellphones are more dangerous than guns.
Solution? Use cellphones for target practice.
It could also be "argued" that the world is flat.
The way to resolve such "arguments" is to use facts and data, rather than slick sideshows.
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts".
-- John Adams, defense of soldiers involved in the "Boston Massacre", 1770
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/05-03-02-0001-0004-0016