| Yes, I was being blatantly sarcastic, in response to luckypup's comments about only allowing self-sufficient, contributing members of society to have rights such as drinking.
Restricting people's rights by any criteria, whether it is age, self-sufficiency, competency, etc., is, in my opinion, wrong. If you are 35 years old and don't have the sense or judgement not to drink yourself into liver disease by your 40th birthday, in what way are you different than a twelve-year old doing the same thing? Frankly, I don't care how old you are - either you give everyone the right to be an idiot at any age, or you are going to be restricting people's rights in an arbritrary manner.
Rights are rights, and Americans are born citizens of their nation and should be able to exercise those rights. There are 15-year olds more politically informed and competent to vote for their representatives than many "adults" who simply vote for the candidate with the whitest skin or largest <tool>. Every step we take to restrict our citizens' rights is one step closer to the kind of thinking in my previous post.
It does frighten me that you have heard similar opinions expressed elsewhere. I thought I was being rather extreme for the sake of a point. It's scary to think there are people out there, presumably voting, who are serious about those opinions. |
