I voted the "no homework, no chores ticket!"
I simply cannot think of any issue that so perfectly illustrates the idiocy (or is it lunacy?) of our times than that there are people, by all appearances intelligent people – indeed, somewhat influential people – who think that children ought to be able to vote. Apparently egalitarianism has reached, or is very close to, its apogee, which is good, in a way – pretty soon we will have to return to sanity, just like satellites eventually must come crashing back to Earth. Regardless, I have to admit my puzzlement over how bloody seriously these people take their notion that voting is a ‘human right’ that all must be allowed without any limiting considerations; for instance, oh, I dunno, competence.
Here is how it is. If it were the case that the egalitarians are right and we are all equal then, yes, our opions should all count and be counted the same.* The eminent fact of reality, however, is that despite whatever moral equivalence may be possessed by all humans, we are not equal in many respects, not least those that concern political decision-making. In the case of children, consider some of the many ways we feel justified in exercising guardianship over them, believing them incompetent to make well-formed judgements:
- We force them to go to school and learn a curriculum that is of little or no intrinsic interest to them, in preparation for their adult lives.
- We withold from them access to materials that are deemed unsuitable, disturbing, or harmful to their moral education; such as violent films, internet pornography, misogynistic rap/satanic rock’n'roll/Bach, etc.
- We limit their access to dangerous products (like drugs, firearms, fireworks, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.) and their participation in dangerous activities (driving, elective surgeries, tattooing/body piercing/body modification, skydiving, bungie-jumping, etc.).
- We generally excuse criminal activity by minors on the belief that they either do not understand what they are doing or that they are hormonally prone to irrational acts.
Why do so many feel so justified in imposing these rather strict limitations upon children? Because we recognize something they cannot - that they are not competent to run their own lives. The fourteen year-old doesn’t ‘get’ why she should have to learn history, but adults do, so we make her learn it (as best we’re able); if we let her have her way she’d be learning celebrity gossip about Lady Gaga instead of learning about how awful the past was and the present could be. Parents don’t let their kids choose the dinner menu because they would never choose vegetables and, opting only for Kraft Dinner, would become anemic in no time.
Adults know better because they have more experience than kids. Adults have lived through life and seen the conequences of their actions, both good and bad; Dad insists Johnny do his homework because he never did and now he’s a poorly paid janitor and Mom tells Janie to keep her thighs together because she didn’t and now, well, she has Janie to worry about. Adults have also had to make their own way in the world, to struggle for every penny they have. The kids just get a new bicycle on Christmas morning, but mom and dad have to pay. The kids get to live in a house rent-free but mom and dad have to go to work every day to afford the mortgage.
The kids don’t know how hard that is or what it feels like to have to go to work every day, because their only immediate understanding of the world comes from whatever environment the adults in their lives have constructed for them. This environment – typically the public school system and, if they’re really lucky, a stable household where mom and dad keep their emotional crap to themselves – is totally unlike the workaday world the rest of the population experiences, so their experiences there gives them precious little insight that can be usefully applied outside of that environment. Whatever they do know about how the outside world works comes from the second-hand accounts of others and so, necessarily, isn’t of much use either. The only way they are going to know what it’s like out there is to get out there, try and make a living, buy a house, get married, pay taxes, have kids, get addicted to drugs, have health problems, etc.
So they just don’t know enough to make informed decisions about who to vote for or what policies to support. Taxing the rich to give to the poor sounds good – and when everything has been handed to you , it might seem quite natural – if you don’t understand that both the rich and the poor might be where they are for reasons. Indeed, they cannot even understand the trade-offs being made because they have never been unable to afford that new TV because of income taxes that pay for homeless shelters.
*Lest anyone accuse me of constructing a strawman, I understand that no egalitarian thinks that everyone is literally equal (that is, identical) - any human attribute is expressed in a range of degrees of perfection – but rather that our moral value as human beings is the same.
