I went to the Minnesota Public Television website this afternoon to watch the weekly public access series “Minnesota Almanac”. Much of the hour was dedicated to middle-aged public officials decreeing that young adults’ legal rights should be hijacked. First, a Minnesota legislator was on proposing a statewide increase in the legal age to purchase tobacco to 21...I guess because three decades of giving criminal records to tens of millions of young adults over the purchase and/or consumption of alcohol has worked so well. And then would-be U.S. Senate candidate RIchard Painter came on applauding the new anti-gun legislation out of Florida and calling it for it to be enacted nationally. He made a specific point to casually dismiss the lawsuit suggesting that untethering young adults from what the court has interpreted as their rights under the Second Amendment represents anything worth taking seriously.
I have been enraged for quite some time at the seemingly infinite implications of a cherry-picked desecration of legal rights for young adults, and the rising tide of the cherry-picking in recent years by special interests seeking to redefine legal rights only on goods and services for which they don’t personally approve. But you know what….you’ve convinced me! Let’s raise the age of everything to 21! Leaving any stone unturned in our quest to infantilize young adults would simply be unethical.
Let’s raise the age of signing legal contracts to 21! We can’t very well have children signing contracts.
Let’s raise the age of consent for sex to 21! After all, if we’re decreeing young adults are children, then consensual sex with a college junior is necessarily child rape, isn’t it?
And certainly let’s raise the age of military enlistment to 21! How on Earth can we trust the young adults deemed as children when it comes to the purchase of the firearm to be trained to use those firearms to defend the nation? That would be child abuse!
And I recognize a constitutional amendment exists declaring the legal age to vote as 18, but I will personally write my Senators and Congressman in support of raising that legal age to 21 if current trends continue. Any politician receiving votes from those unworthy of being recognized as adults has no business being in office.
And for that matter, it seems like teenagers and college-age students are often on the front lines to advocate for the erasure of their own legal rights and those of their peers. You want to be treated like children that badly….we’ll give you what you want. But then shut your fucking pieholes you little brats and retreat to the playground jungle gyms where you belong. Let the adults talk and we’ll pat you on your heads and remind you that children are to be seen and not heard.
And last of all, let’s be more aggressive in locking up young adults who dare to attempt to exercise the same legal rights their parents were afforded. Let’s dispense with the facade of “criminal justice reform” and spend tens of billions of dollars on new prisons (or in this case….juvenile detention centers) for the millions of new young adults whose activity we’ve reclassified as criminal by surrendering their legal rights.
Perhaps some of you will suggest a compromise and take some inspiration from the Jim Crow era decreeing that young adults are three-fifths of a person when it comes to legal rights. I won’t settle for that. I’ve been convinced that young adults and children are the same thing. The era of 18-20-year-olds being treated as adults in any way needs to end.
Who’s with me?