I have long wondered why our voting class seems essentially stupid. Even those who have “gotten out of their educational cocoons” (if they ever had one) are still quite unqualified to cast an educated, considered vote. I also have long held that voters should take some kind of citizenship test, like those who want to become citizens are required to do. Too many voters are so ignorant they don’t even know who their senators are. Or what a Senate is.
Because of the level of ignorance we have in the US, voting is little more than a matter of validating emotional preferences or prejudices. And of course, politicians know that, and they cater to it in their campaigns.
1. Thank you for the reference to my earlier comments; my first proposal is an easier lift that we simply raise the voting age back to 21 where it had been for many of us here, before the Vietnam War and its draft. The argument then was that if one could be drafted, we ought to have been permitted to vote. Not necessarily a coherent argument, but it won the day and the vote was lowered to 18 years old.
Now, without a draft and with very important elections ahead to protect and to strengthen the USA, I propose raising the voting age at least to 21. However, how many 21 years olds know their elbow from their wrist on any significant voting issue?
2. "Who knows only his own generation remains always a child," is inscribed over the Library at Colorado University and has been attributed to Cicero, is a strong argument to consider raising the voting age even higher to 25, 30 or 35. The protect and to strengthen the USA, we need wiser and more worldly voters, which 18 and 21 year olds certainly are not, and never have been.
An example of this constant generational dilemma was my father, a Navy Captain who fought on the USS Washington in the Pacific in WWII and my college friend from the wild and crazy protesting Columbia University in the late 1960's. They disagreed on everything about Vietnam.
An agreement they made was to read the materials the other was reading for two months and get back together. After two months of reading the source materials of the other, each agreed that they would change their outlook if those sources were where they formulated their opinions.
Question unanswered was, whose source materials were most informed, wisest and most worldly? Now, decades later, I would side with my father's selection of source materials which helped him understand the issues of the day. My Columbia friend's sources were college professor generated, far less worldly, much less mature and far less informed.
The split between maturity and immaturity seems very similar to today which gets back to my argument for our important country to raise our voting age to 21 or even higher if our goal is to protect and to strengthen the USA. The is no doubt to me that our mission as voters is to protect and to strengthen the USA.
From reader John King:
I have long wondered why our voting class seems essentially stupid. Even those who have “gotten out of their educational cocoons” (if they ever had one) are still quite unqualified to cast an educated, considered vote. I also have long held that voters should take some kind of citizenship test, like those who want to become citizens are required to do. Too many voters are so ignorant they don’t even know who their senators are. Or what a Senate is.
Because of the level of ignorance we have in the US, voting is little more than a matter of validating emotional preferences or prejudices. And of course, politicians know that, and they cater to it in their campaigns.
1. Thank you for the reference to my earlier comments; my first proposal is an easier lift that we simply raise the voting age back to 21 where it had been for many of us here, before the Vietnam War and its draft. The argument then was that if one could be drafted, we ought to have been permitted to vote. Not necessarily a coherent argument, but it won the day and the vote was lowered to 18 years old.
Now, without a draft and with very important elections ahead to protect and to strengthen the USA, I propose raising the voting age at least to 21. However, how many 21 years olds know their elbow from their wrist on any significant voting issue?
2. "Who knows only his own generation remains always a child," is inscribed over the Library at Colorado University and has been attributed to Cicero, is a strong argument to consider raising the voting age even higher to 25, 30 or 35. The protect and to strengthen the USA, we need wiser and more worldly voters, which 18 and 21 year olds certainly are not, and never have been.
Did you feel that way when you were 18 or 21? I thought I knew as much as most adults. And I may have been right.
An example of this constant generational dilemma was my father, a Navy Captain who fought on the USS Washington in the Pacific in WWII and my college friend from the wild and crazy protesting Columbia University in the late 1960's. They disagreed on everything about Vietnam.
An agreement they made was to read the materials the other was reading for two months and get back together. After two months of reading the source materials of the other, each agreed that they would change their outlook if those sources were where they formulated their opinions.
Question unanswered was, whose source materials were most informed, wisest and most worldly? Now, decades later, I would side with my father's selection of source materials which helped him understand the issues of the day. My Columbia friend's sources were college professor generated, far less worldly, much less mature and far less informed.
The split between maturity and immaturity seems very similar to today which gets back to my argument for our important country to raise our voting age to 21 or even higher if our goal is to protect and to strengthen the USA. The is no doubt to me that our mission as voters is to protect and to strengthen the USA.
It seems like a lot of Emily’s poems of yesteryear couldn’t be more relevant today.
How dreary - to be - somebody!
How public - like a frog
To tell your name - the livelong June
To an admiring bog!
Anger as soon as fed is dead
'Tis starving makes it fat
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –