A website reports an interesting story on how college presidents believe that it is time to lower the drinking age to the voting age. Apparently, college drinking tends towards binge drinking precisely because it is forbidden.
Actually, this is not that strange. St. Paul warned us a long time ago that if we forbid something, there is a guaranteed certainty that it will become even more desired. In the same way, we cannot tell legal adults that some of their rights are forbidden and expect that they will obediently follow the Law. We have defined the legal voting age as 18, but then have found multiple excuses to define adulthood as either 21 or 25, depending on what particular excuse you want to use to deny full citizenship rights to an adult.
And, oh yes, an 18 year old is an adult, both by law and in practice. More than that, an 18 year old can join the Armed Forces and can die in support of our Constitution long before he or she can buy liquor. Of course, we can argue that we must protect that 18 year old. Well, if we must protect him or her, why are we sending him or her to kill people or to be killed?
But, we have little problem in the USA in tolerating contradictions. So, we have little problem in forbidding full citizenship rights to those who are otherwise legal adults. It is too bad if they die in the service of our country several years before they can exercise the full rights of a citizen. Yes, we can feel very moral about how we have protected our dead service members from making an evil choice.
Leave a Reply