Random Thoughts, Getting Out The Youth Vote
I am not young enough to know everything.--Oscar Wilde
Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.--Winston Churchill
The question of the youth vote is an increasingly important one, and one that is the subject of two pending pieces of legislation in California that may or may not survive, lacking GOP support. One measure would allow 16- and 17-year olds to preregister, so that when they turn 18, they would automatically be registered to vote. The other measure would allow 17-year olds to vote in primary elections as long as they would turn 18 by the time of the general election.
It is certainly a time of growing civic engagement among youth. As Al Gore says in The Assault on Reason, the Internet will continue to grow as a core arena in the democratic process, and in the age of Facebook, MySpace, blogs, and flash mobs, youth will serve and be served, and I think that is a development of fundamental importance.
The quotation from Churchill, while appealing, is perhaps a bit too simplistic, especially as terms such as conservative and liberal have had chameleonesque shifts in meaning over the years and from country to country, particularly in reference to political parties--not to hear the media say it, with their set-in-stone, sound-byte usages. Nevertheless, there is a clear divide between the GOP and the Democrats when it comes to supporting these pieces of legislation.
From an article in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Gosh, why would Republicans be concerned about youthful, idealistic, and passionate new voters registering as Democrats?
My response is twofold, the sardonic and the sincere. Let's start with the sardonic, because that's just more fun.
Mr. Adams said he used to be liberal, then became wiser. Ah yes, the wisdom of conservatives, much like the experience that John McCain has subtly implied that Obama lacks, the sort of experience accrued by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in the Nixon administration that has been so beneficial to our country and our world in the last decade.
Mr. Adams also says he wants an informed electorate, so that we need a legitimate cutoff date, which is apparently 18. Of course, not so long ago, 18 was "old enough to kill, but not for votin'," according to Eve Of Destruction--which, along with Masters of War, comprises the heart of my two-track Dick Cheney tribute mix. 18 is as arbitrary as anything else when it comes to marking maturity.
Granted, our public education tends to stop at WWII, or the last time the US might legitimately be argued a hero in world history (Japanese-American internment camps being one of many glaring asterisks, of course)--the first Gulf War rendered ineligible for consideration after we gave Saddam the mustard gas he used on the Kurds and Iranians in the 1980s. And it is true that teenagers are sometimes prone to falling for fads and buying into an image, which can be a danger in a culture where, among many valid critiques, one of the arguments against Condoleeza Rice as a vice-presidential candidate is her status as a single woman. Substance is sometimes hard to separate from the chaff when it comes to political coverage.
However, senior year, American Government in Mr. Mitchell's class, we read The Ugly American and considered the effects of Vietnam. Youth does not inherently imply an inability to render careful analysis and make sound political judgments.
There are many reasons why a liberal such as myself would seriously consider expatriation from a culture that so often seems out of step with compassion. But as Gore argues in The Assault On Reason, the ideals of democracy that we possess are worth fighting for, and with a reinvigorated civic debate among youth, I think this can be done. Whether or not these particular pieces of legislation pass, the idea behind them is valid, and as long as we continue to pursue paths that open doors to political participation for the youth and the otherwise heretofore disconnected, then there is hope, which can be dangerous, but which can also be a beautiful thing.
Whether there is much difference between Democrats and Republicans, or whether a groundswell of youthful idealism could lift third-parties into relevance, those are not questions I can answer. But like Oscar Wilde, I do think there a fine potential in youth. For one thing, youth is not Dick Cheney.
Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.--Winston Churchill
The question of the youth vote is an increasingly important one, and one that is the subject of two pending pieces of legislation in California that may or may not survive, lacking GOP support. One measure would allow 16- and 17-year olds to preregister, so that when they turn 18, they would automatically be registered to vote. The other measure would allow 17-year olds to vote in primary elections as long as they would turn 18 by the time of the general election.
It is certainly a time of growing civic engagement among youth. As Al Gore says in The Assault on Reason, the Internet will continue to grow as a core arena in the democratic process, and in the age of Facebook, MySpace, blogs, and flash mobs, youth will serve and be served, and I think that is a development of fundamental importance.
The quotation from Churchill, while appealing, is perhaps a bit too simplistic, especially as terms such as conservative and liberal have had chameleonesque shifts in meaning over the years and from country to country, particularly in reference to political parties--not to hear the media say it, with their set-in-stone, sound-byte usages. Nevertheless, there is a clear divide between the GOP and the Democrats when it comes to supporting these pieces of legislation.
From an article in the San Francisco Chronicle:
It's only natural that young voters would be more inclined to be liberal and to register Democratic, said Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R-Hesperia (San Bernardino County), vice chair of the Assembly's Election and Redistricting Committee.
"I'm a pretty conservative guy now, but when I was 17 I was a raging liberal," Adams said. "You start to see problems as you get older. As you get older, you get wiser."
He also argued that it would be wrong to set up a situation where political parties could send organizers into California high schools and attempt to recruit impressionable students.
"Our concern is that we want an informed and worldly electorate, and here we have these kids in high school and they're trying to get a grasp of the world," Adams said. "The assumption is that they're not able to make informed decisions, so we have to have a legitimate cutoff" date.
Gosh, why would Republicans be concerned about youthful, idealistic, and passionate new voters registering as Democrats?
My response is twofold, the sardonic and the sincere. Let's start with the sardonic, because that's just more fun.
Mr. Adams said he used to be liberal, then became wiser. Ah yes, the wisdom of conservatives, much like the experience that John McCain has subtly implied that Obama lacks, the sort of experience accrued by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in the Nixon administration that has been so beneficial to our country and our world in the last decade.
Mr. Adams also says he wants an informed electorate, so that we need a legitimate cutoff date, which is apparently 18. Of course, not so long ago, 18 was "old enough to kill, but not for votin'," according to Eve Of Destruction--which, along with Masters of War, comprises the heart of my two-track Dick Cheney tribute mix. 18 is as arbitrary as anything else when it comes to marking maturity.
Granted, our public education tends to stop at WWII, or the last time the US might legitimately be argued a hero in world history (Japanese-American internment camps being one of many glaring asterisks, of course)--the first Gulf War rendered ineligible for consideration after we gave Saddam the mustard gas he used on the Kurds and Iranians in the 1980s. And it is true that teenagers are sometimes prone to falling for fads and buying into an image, which can be a danger in a culture where, among many valid critiques, one of the arguments against Condoleeza Rice as a vice-presidential candidate is her status as a single woman. Substance is sometimes hard to separate from the chaff when it comes to political coverage.
However, senior year, American Government in Mr. Mitchell's class, we read The Ugly American and considered the effects of Vietnam. Youth does not inherently imply an inability to render careful analysis and make sound political judgments.
There are many reasons why a liberal such as myself would seriously consider expatriation from a culture that so often seems out of step with compassion. But as Gore argues in The Assault On Reason, the ideals of democracy that we possess are worth fighting for, and with a reinvigorated civic debate among youth, I think this can be done. Whether or not these particular pieces of legislation pass, the idea behind them is valid, and as long as we continue to pursue paths that open doors to political participation for the youth and the otherwise heretofore disconnected, then there is hope, which can be dangerous, but which can also be a beautiful thing.
Whether there is much difference between Democrats and Republicans, or whether a groundswell of youthful idealism could lift third-parties into relevance, those are not questions I can answer. But like Oscar Wilde, I do think there a fine potential in youth. For one thing, youth is not Dick Cheney.
posted by Devin at 3:33 PM
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