India is considering lowering its voting age to 16 — if more young people get involved in elections. (Indian Express; H/T NYRA)
Young people have as much or more at stake in the electoral process as their elders, because their rights are less well-protected and they’ll be around longer to deal with the consequences of political decisions. The principle of “no taxation without representation,” rooted in John Locke’s argument that we can’t have property rights in something others can take from us against our will, requires that young people be represented: They are subject to taxation now, and public debt is more or less a means of taxing those who produce in the future.
Perhaps more important are considerations of human flourishing: If participation in “ruling and being ruled” (in Aristotle’s phrase) is part of flourishing, everyone should be able to participate. And if young Indians, like young Americans, commonly leave home around their 18th birthdays — the current voting age there as well as here — that means they come of age just when they’re no longer in the place whose politics they’ve grown up with. So they have less reason to vote, or to consider themselves prepared to vote wisely, than they had when they were 16. And that means a voting age of 16 may help people develop a habit of voting.
Obviously, my arguments support abolishing the voting age, with or without some non-chronological method of determining who’s qualified to vote. But going from 18 to 16 is a start.
For tweets on lowering the voting age, see the National Youth Rights Association’s monthly #16tovote Twitter event.
Game, marriage, and the fate of civilization
You have probably heard of “game,” a set of skills and character traits that, according to its advocates, will get a man a lot of sex with many different women.
And you have certainly heard of traditional marriage, which, according to its advocates, can help sustain lifelong love between one man and one woman.
What do you think advocates of game and advocates of traditional marriage have in common?
How about a fear that contemporary sexual norms cannot sustain Western civilization?
“Ari,” Ruth Institute (National Organization for Marriage)
“Ferdinand Bardamu,” In Mala Fide
To take game as the micro solution and restoring lifelong marriage as a cultural solution to the same problem does involve a problem: The man who adjusts his character to pursue game, and (as is implicit in that) gets in the habit of having sex with many women, seems unlikely to be good husband material — or to be seriously pursuing the woman who could motivate him to give up his philandering. He must be willing to try to make a woman love him, knowing that he will soon cast her aside: this means planning to hurt her emotionally. Similarly, being receptive to such male behavior would be a bad strategy for a woman seeking a husband. So it is difficult to see how one man can simultaneously pursue both game and marriage.