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.
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.
posted by Marty at 11:06 AM
1 Comments:
When the 1990 elections happened the same year I reached the age of majority. I had just moved to Toronto and wasn't eligible to vote for my local MP. At the time I wasn't very politically knowledgeable (as this post attests) and didn't bother to vote back in my home riding. I'm glad I didn't, because I probably would've voted for the kneedippers and I'd have that shameful black mark on my soul forever.
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