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Old 10-10-2005, 06:43 PM
Blarg Blarg is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,519
Default Re: WTF happened to personal responsibility?

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Making 19 a minor seems pretty stupid to me. You're old enough for the electric chair, to die in overseas wars, to vote -- yet you can't buy a beeer?

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I've never ban a fan of this sort of argument. Let's not get philosophical and political here, but voting doesn't have grave potential to ruin lives and isn't surrounded by a culture of fun, wreckless, irresponsibile behavior. The very nature of the military and serving overseas forces people to be far more mature and responsibile than they would otherwise be.

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You can't childproof society by turning everyone into a child.

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This is spot on. It's so sad how purtian based America still is.

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I do think it makes perfect sense to argue about what defines maturity, and that my argument is perfectly valid. We don't want to subject children to the responsibilities of adults, so we define what adults are.

Contradicting ourselves to say, well, at this age you're an adult, but then changing our minds, and our laws to say -- Just kidding! No, you're not!, makes no sense. You're either an adult or you're not.

It's particularly ironic and nonsensical to make someone legal responsible as an adult for the most immensely dangerous, difficult things possible, like life and death in wars, or legally responsible in the most punitive way possible, that is, subject to capital punishment, while then denying they could be legal adults in any other way at all. If they can suffer the most responsibilities and punishments levied upon adults, then by granting them the full adult status necessar to suffer as an adult, they should be granted the full privileges that come along with those terrible responsibilities, without question. For better or worse, they've earned them.

It's particularly bizarre and petty to grant citizens the responsibility to kill or be killed yet not allow them discretion over comparatively quite harmless activities, like buying a beer or playing a game of cards.

There is no false logic going on here. And until recently, Americans recognized that fact, and 18 was the common legal drinking age throughout most of the country. Then some new laws went sweeping through the nation. These laws were based on hsyteria and social pressure, not from a logical consideration of what it is to be a minor vs. an adult. Apparently all the previous generations were wrong about what it means to be an adult, and we now have somehow suddenly become enlightened? No. We've just become addicted to throwing more and more laws on the books whether they could possibly work or not, and whether they make any sense or not.

It's law as social rallying point and palliative; law as self-help fad. Passing new laws provides a false sense of security that social issues are being addressed, but rarely addresses them. Parents won't find their kids under control because of laws; they'll just feel like they've done their jobs without actually paying attention to their kids, and at the same time turn their kids into criminals. Putting up some dumb law is just an escape hatch from responsibility, not a way to get much positive done.
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