The Patriot Post® · The Kids Should Vote, They Say

By Brian Mark Weber ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55482-the-kids-should-vote-they-say-2018-04-20

The 2020 presidential election could get very interesting. Think about it: A whole slate of ancient leftists and unknown upstarts will likely battle it out to be their party’s standard-bearer. Bernie Sanders might try again to win the nomination stolen by Hillary Clinton in 2016. Or we could see Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren going head-to-head against Donald Trump. And if Democrats get their way, your neighborhood 16- and 17-year-olds might be standing in line with you on Election Day. But they won’t just be handing out “I Voted” stickers. They’ll actually be voting.

The Washington, DC, city council is considering a bill introduced by Ward 6 council member Charles Allen lowering the voting age to 16. But unlike other small cities around the country that have passed similar measures, the District of Columbia is treated in some ways as a state — which would allow these DC adolescents to cast a ballot for our next president. That would require congressional approval.

This isn’t the first time the Left has tried to tap into the frustrations of young people in order to advance its agenda. In 1971, fresh off the Vietnam War protests across the nation, Congress passed the 26th Amendment, which gave citizens 18 and older the right to vote.

The argument at the time was that anyone old enough to be sent off to fight in an unjust war ought to be able to vote. In the 1960s, when leftist politicians saw the lengths to which young people were willing to protest against the establishment, they just couldn’t wait to bestow political power upon their draft-dodging brethren and like-minded fellow travelers.

Today’s argument for allowing 16-year-olds to vote is based on the same premise. If the Parkland school shootings taught us one thing, it’s that George Soros-funded teens can be just as rebellious as their 1960s counterparts. But today’s youth protesters are willing to go even further than the Woodstock generation: They’re perfectly willing to trash constitutional rights if it means forcing their policies and ideology on the rest of us.

The Washington Post thinks adults failed the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and that “maybe it would make sense to give them and their cohort a bigger say in their future.”

Would it make sense? As David Davenport writes at Forbes, “If it is a question of maturity, researchers generally agree that the brain is still developing until the mid-20s, with moral reasoning and abstract thought coming later in the cycle than previously thought.”

More problematic is that studies show a significant number of high school students lack proficiency when it comes to U.S. history, civics and the Constitution. Some can’t name a senator or member of Congress in their home districts, or even the president of the United States for that matter. So why push voting rights for kids who don’t know the first thing about government?

The Leftmedia is drooling over the possibilities.

Joshua Douglass at CNN suggests, “The students are fed up with our politicians and are using their voices to demand change. Imagine if they could also vote and turned out in significant numbers. Would meaningful gun reform legislation be more likely to pass? Would our politicians actually be more responsive to the public will?”

Well, the cat’s out of the bag. This isn’t merely about opening the door for today’s passionate and thoughtful youth to participate in our democracy. Nor is it about ensuring that future citizens will stand up for freedom of speech or constitutional rights. Quite the opposite, in fact. This is about using the Parkland tragedy to infiltrate the impressionable minds of young people to repeal the Second Amendment. Period.

And make no mistake: David Hogg and his Twitter-savvy acolytes will be further trained to fight for a broad range of causes and issues in the future. Democrats don’t view these kids as thoughtful citizens but as loyal soldiers in an army ready to tear apart the fabric of our Constitution. Think about it: No one would be pushing voting rights for 16-year-olds if they were marching for the protection of babies before birth, defense of the Second Amendment or preservation of traditional marriage.

The media tell us that no generation of youth has ever been so poised to make an impact at the ballot box as Millennials. But that generation can already vote, so what about those behind them? If these budding leftists are given voter ID cards in time for the next presidential election, chances are they’ll have lost interest in this whole citizenship thing.

Heck, with Donald Trump’s roaring economy, these kids might actually have to show up for work and pay taxes by 2020 — at which point they’ll find out that not all bosses allow their employees to walk out of work to join a protest. And by then maybe they’ll understand that shouting down alternative ideas or trampling upon constitutional rights makes one a left-wing agitator, not a responsible citizen.

To all those 14-year-olds hoping to vote in two years, here’s some advice: Read the Constitution, study history and learn about our political system. You’ll see right through those adults currently using you to push their leftist agenda, and you’ll earn the right to one day cast your vote for president.