The political stunt that worked, lowering the voting age, and the Shroud of Turin

Sending busloads of illegal immigrants to New York was bold and brilliant. It was too easy for liberals to sit in their safe enclaves, far from the border, and accuse anybody who wanted to control the border of racism. Now that the cost of caring for all these people is getting unmanageable up north, they’re changing their tune. NYC mayor Eric Adams is calling for action to address the migrant crisis.

It was fine when the border states had to handle all the costs, but when it gets close to his walled community, something has to be done.

Personally, I find Joe Biden’s border policy traitorous, and it steams me just to think about it.

Maryland leads the way. In the wrong direction.

Several Maryland cities have already lowered, or are considering lowering, the voting age (for local elections) to 16. This isn’t “insane,” as I saw one commentator claim. The difference between 18 and 16 is not a line between sanity and insanity. It’s just a marginal push to make the electorate more liberal — just as raising the voting age to 21 would be a marginal push to make the electorate more conservative. (“Show me a young man who’s not a liberal ….”)

Liberals want their still-indoctrinated drones to get involved politically to push things further to the left. I.e., before they’re old enough to wise up, like Paul Simon, and realize most of what they learned in high school was crap.

18-year-olds are too young to vote, in my opinion. They haven’t done anything yet. They haven’t had a real job. They haven’t lived on their own, paid taxes, or raised a family, or done any of the things associated with responsible adulthood.

But there’s nothing magic about 16, 18, or 21. It’s a question of when a person has become a responsible adult. And by that standard, we probably shouldn’t let people vote until they’re 30.

The Shroud is more complicated than you think. Nobody has time to investigate all the things there are to investigate in this world. You have to take shortcuts. So, for example, when I see people pointing to anomalies about 9/11, I take the shortcut that if the conspiracy theories were right, some responsible journalist would have pointed it out.

I take that shortcut knowing full well that journalists are generally lazy, intellectually incurious, and have demonstrated their willingness to go along with “the narrative” against the facts.

Consequently, I can’t blame someone who quickly concludes the Shroud is a medieval forgery since the carbon 14 tests came back with a date in the 14th century, plus or minus. It seems like a reasonable shortcut to check that one off and move on to other things.

The trouble is, it’s way, way more complicated than that. (As are many things.) If you’re curious, check out the recent episode on the “Pints with Aquinas” podcast.

One thought on “The political stunt that worked, lowering the voting age, and the Shroud of Turin”

  1. QUOTE: Sending busloads of illegal immigrants to New York was bold and brilliant.

    Weren’t many of these asylum seekers? As such, isn’t that legal?

    QUOTE: The political stunt that worked

    I guess that depends on one’s definition of “worked”. If it was to call fresh attention to an age old issue and earn partisan points, then indeed it worked. Yet, if it’s to resolve the issue at hand, it appears it merely placed the issue in a different location. Albeit the political football is now in the hands of Dems, I’m puzzled as to why the issue wasn’t resolved when the country was in the hands of Republicans. Didn’t they have solid solutions???

    Since both have consistently failed…maybe they should try something different…working on bipartisan solution. That won’t happen because both sides relish the political capital gained from maintaining the status quo. Political pundits wouldn’t like that either…it takes away a reason to express fake outrage.

    QUOTE: 18-year-olds are too young to vote, in my opinion. They haven’t done anything yet.

    If they are indeed too young to vote, then maybe they are too young for military service. Seems to me that those who are old enough to serve and possibility be injured or die for their country should have input into how it’s run. Maybe the same rationale should be applied for legally obtaining fire arms, consuming alcohol, and driver’s licenses?

    It would be interesting to put “voting age” itself to a vote…to see what the majority deems as an appropriate age and their justifications.

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