Nothing Teaches Like Experience

Mike Brock has a post up about the Supreme Court's decision to shoot down a bid for the legal voting age in Canada. He makes some good points. I would add that sixteen year olds generally lack the life experience to make fully-formed political decisions. Sixteen year olds base way too many of their personal opinions on what their peers are saying. (That's actually kind of rich coming from a blogger.) Eighteen year-olds aren't much better, but they're at a point in life where their independence is being realized, and I think that has a sanitizing effect on their thinking.

When I was sixteen I was very liberal, because my friends in school were all very liberal. Out views were based on the distorted perspective of the sixties that the MSM has been dishing out since 1970. None of us were even alive in the sixties, but somehow we just knew that it was the peak of Western intellectual and moral development.

When I was nineteen I had moved away from home and lived in Toronto. I was still very liberal and I marched against the Gulf war. Looking back it's not my proudest political moment. But seeing up close that the anti-war crowd was nothing more than a collection of labour unionists (who didn't give a damn about the war and were only there for TV coverage), howling, man-bashing feminists with their own agenda, pot-smoking middle-aged sixties rejects with no agenda and barely a clue about anything else, and Trotskyist loons (who for some reason all had problems with their eyes, which kind of creeped me out) was what set me on the road to the Right. It's also why I'm very tolerant of today's anti-war protestors. I know that at least some of them are receiving a very important education about the nuttier aspects of the Left. Nothing teaches like experience.

2005: The Year in Review

I'll have to make a mental note to go back to this post at Iowahawk in late December. It'll be a sick year if it's even close. Very amusing. June 21 made me laugh out loud.

The UN's Place in Global Policy

Andrew at Bound by Gravity has made some interesting points about the UN, and I just like to take the opportunity to chime in with my two cents.

In his post, both he and Balbulican take the position that the UN is an organisation that can or should be "doing" something about the current tragedy in Southeast Asia. I believe that they are missing the obvious - the UN doesn't "do" most of the things it takes credit for, and despite the best intentions of well-meaning member states and individual UN sympathisers, it never will.

The UN is a forum for endless discussion, for hashing out comprimises that last three weeks, and for blaming everything on Israel. Taking contributions and giving directions from the rear aren't "doing" things. All of the heavy lifting in the tsunami disaster is being and will continue to be done by individual member states, with or without the UN's "leadership".

Note that the Kofi Annan's first response to the disaster is to convene a conference. Because that sort of thing is crucial in the first hours of a disaster, when people are dying of thirst and disease caused by contamination. Note how the UN is already taking credit for work done by USAID, while simultaneously decrying the Americans for working outside of the UN. This is what the UN does - talk shops, hand wringing, blaming problems on others and taking credit for the good it didn't do. (See all of the excellent posts at Diplomad for details.)

I believe that Balbulican is correct, that human civilization is approaching a point where we need global institutions. But the UN is not such an institution - it is too corpulent, corrupt and self-interested to adequately serve as the basis for a global government.

There have been rumblings in the past year or so concerning the creation of a League of Democratic Nations. Membership is contingent on being a mature, self-sustaining democracy. I think this would be a better choice as a prototype for world government.

This Guy is Hilarious

Be sure to read through all of this guy's website - including his bio material. I can see him becoming a regular read. I'd add him to the blogroll on Bounder, but his political leanings aren't obvious and I don't want to be presumptuous.

(Hat tip - Jaeger at Trudeaupia)

Manditory Voting

Kateland at The Last Amazon has written a post about Senator Mac Harb's plan for manditory voting. She refers to it as a "Liberal recruitment drive", which I think is a fair assessment. Common sense says that a left-of-centre party is more likely to benefit from disaffected voters going to the polls than a right-of-centre party. That's not why I'm against the plan, though.

I'm against manditory voting because it's undemocratic. Refusing to participate in an election is as valid a choice as voting. It signifies that the non-participant is conspicuously unaware of the party platforms or the issues, and is not concerned whether one party or another wins. Low voter turnouts indicate a general satisfaction with the way things have been run, and a lack of concern about potential changes to government. In a free society, it is perfectly okay to prefer to spend your time and energy pursuing other interests. It hurts no one that you don't care, and I think the proof of that premise is that the lowest voter turnouts have traditionally occurred in first world countries, that are undisputably the best places to live in.

Forcing people who don't have an opinion to make a choice based on the opinon that they don't have helps nothing (other than, potentially, the Liberal and NDP vote counts).

On a greedy note, manditory voting waters down the effect of my vote. I care about the political future of my country, my province, and my city, and I resent the idea that my vote will have less effect because of a misguided attempt to inflate the Liberal voting base.

Should manditory voting become law, I hope that at least some of those disaffected people forced to vote against their will take a minute to realize that their inconvenience has been made a reality by the Left, and resent it enough to vote Right.

Update: Alan at Occam's Carbuncle has the same notion.