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It’s common knowledge D/S/Cs have been doing all they can to politically and sexually—to many of them, they’re the same thing—indoctrinate kids in the public schools. School kids are a particular target because they’re a captive audience, generally not capable of abstract reasoning, act emotionally and impulsively, have very little life experience—they’re not good at identifying cause and effect—have little general information, and can be easily swayed by a variety of propaganda techniques. Marxists have always preached the key to power was subverting the young, who in China, for example, were more than willing to murder millions, including their parents and other relatives. Aaron Kliegman at Just The News reports on D/S/C’s nationwide push to lower the voting age to 16—or less:

The Democrat-led movement to lower the legal voting age to 16 — or in some cases even younger — is gaining momentum nationwide, scoring local victories while winning the support of lawmakers and activists on the political left.

The campaign’s latest win came in Boston, where the City Council on Wednesday approved a petition allowing 16- and 17-year-old residents to vote in municipal elections.

The petition will now be sent to the Massachusetts Legislature for approval, which isn’t guaranteed. Several other towns and cities in Massachusetts have voted for similar proposals, which then failed to pass the state House.

Progressive members of the City Council argued that lowering the voting age would help young people build a habit of voting and make them more likely to continue being politically engaged later in life. 

‘We don’t apply a maturity index to the right to vote for any other age,’ City Councilor Kenzie Bok, who sponsored the petition, told the Boston Globe. ‘Having the opportunity to vote is what gives our 16- and 17-year-olds a chance to engage meaningfully.’

Well, they certainly think they’re old enough to sexually indoctrinate at five or six, so why not?

Others argued it’s unfair that teenagers can have adult responsibilities and play active roles in society but don’t have a say in public life.

‘Young people are working, paying taxes,’ said City Councilor Julia Mejia, who cosponsored the petition. ‘When it comes to making a decision as to who’s going to represent them, that has been denied to them.’

Mejia also dismissed the notion that 16- and 17-year-old kids may not be mature enough to make important political decisions, saying that ‘oftentimes it’s young people who are educating their parents and their uncles and aunts and older folks about who’s running for office and why they should vote.’

Yeah. Right. I’ll address this shortly, but let’s see the opposite side first:

‘This is a foolish, cynical move by Boston and other jurisdictions,’ Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation told Just the News. ‘Under the law, 16- and 17-year-olds are minors. They can’t sign contracts or leases, buy alcohol, join the military, serve on a jury, or engage in a host of other activities that only legal adults are qualified to engage in because we as a society have judged that they have not yet developed the experience and judgment to make such decisions. They aren’t even treated as adults when they commit crimes, except under exceptional circumstances, for the very same reason.’

If children under 18 can be ‘trusted in matters affecting our democracy,’ asked Spakovsky, then when will policymakers change the law to make people legal adults at 16 so minors can make an array of decisions from which they’re currently barred?

Critics of lowering the voting age often cite the fact that a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed, not reaching full development until about the age of 25. According to one oft-cited study on this subject from 2006, ‘research in neuroscience suggests that the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, is still undergoing major reconstruction and development during the teenage years.’ The study noted that the prefrontal cortex is what ‘enables us to weigh dilemmas, balance trade-offs, and, in short, make reasonable decisions in politics.’

And:

‘They want to infantilize voting by allowing children to vote,’ J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told Just the News. ‘They think that’s their next big constituency. Allowing kids as young as sixth grade to vote for school board — it’s like ‘Lord of the Flies.’ Children are getting more political power than adults, and they don’t even allow children in Catholic schools to vote.’

These are particularly good points:

‘Of course this is part of the Democrats’ effort to constantly keep changing the election laws in ways that they believe will help them electorally,’ Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who chairs the Election Integrity Network, told Just the News. ‘That’s their way: Manipulate the process to impact the outcome. And this is the same party that insisted that ‘children’ should be able to remain on their parents’ health care policy until they were 26 because they weren’t able to take care of themselves … It is only and always about advancing their own power.’

They want to talk about 16 year-olds voting? Fine. Let’s go there, but remember, gentle readers, I have more than a quarter century of experience teaching teenagers, and college students, so I have perhaps a bit more experience in the nature of the target population than those so blithely willing to dilute the votes of Americans.

Teenagers today are little different than those of centuries ago. They know very little and have virtually no life experience. Their interests are terribly narrow—the opposite sex, social media, video games, sports–and seldom, if ever, extend to politics. They are, you see, unable to deal with abstract issues—their brains aren’t developed for that until well into their 20s–and as I previously noted, are impulsive, and poor at dealing with cause and effect. College aged students are somewhat better, but they too tend to know little about government, and care little about politics, beyond one or two issues about which they’ve been convinced they ought to care. On those issues, they tend to be militantly passionate, which is why D/S/Cs want to exploit them.

Teaching the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were an integral part of teaching American literature in the 11th grade—16-17 year olds. I quickly discovered all my students knew about those documents, with almost no exceptions, was they existed under those names, and one had something to do with rights—or something—and they had them, though they weren’t sure what they were.

With very few exceptions, they knew nothing at all about our political parties, and those exceptions knew precious little more than vague impressions, or a sort of a sense of belonging.

I quickly developed a one page handout we reviewed providing a brief outline of the views of Republicans and Democrats on the more common issues. I prefaced that single lesson—44 minutes—by asking for a show of hands if they thought themselves Democrats? Only one or two hands tentatively went halfway up. Republicans? The same. The point was not to “out” anyone, but to illustrate to them how very little they knew about the topic, which often provokes at least some interest in learning more. After we had the opportunity to cover the handout, and discuss—very quickly–how those beliefs applied in the real world, the overwhelming majority of my students identified as Republicans. The rest were sort of Democrats, but many Democrat positions appalled them. Remember, this was semi-rural Texas.

Great, right? Now they’re ready to vote maturely and responsibly. Not even close.

Few, if any, could identify any politician or political appointee beyond the president, and at least a third couldn’t do that. Obviously, they had no idea to which party those unknown politicians belonged, or any of the gradations therein. Was Republican politician Bob a RINO, a real conservative, or so close to a Democrat there was no functional difference? If they voted for candidate X, what would be the likely result? How would that change their lives? They had no idea, and worse, they weren’t capable of understanding it, even if they were motivated to learn, and virtually none were.

But if they could vote, they’d learn all of that so they could vote intelligently! Anyone making that assertion either has no idea about teenagers, or is lying for political advantage. These were—and are—kids who read virtually nothing. To be sure, they might spend quite a bit of time on social media—more girls than boys—but they don’t read anything of substance, and they’re absolutely not going to be doing political research.

So they don’t read, so what? They can still vote. That our young are, for the most part, a big part, non-readers is the source of many of our woes. Reading takes intellectual mastery. It requires learning to pay attention for more than a few seconds. It requires focused concentration, and the ability to make connections between characters and ideas, and that’s just for fiction. Non-fiction reading requires even more, and deeper, concentration, and the ability to connect history to contemporary reality, to learn how to connect cause and effect, and to see how human nature affects reality, to learn from the mistakes of others. These are kids who find Tom Clancy books too hard because of their multiple, simultaneous, plot threads and a larger than usual cast of characters, to say nothing of page count.

I also taught government to college students, ranging in age from freshmen to adults in middle age and older. Need I mention they knew little more about these issues, including the Constitution, than kids? They were more interested, and learned quickly, and I have no doubt, took those lessons to heart, but stop and think, gentle readers. Does my description of my high school students sound like many adults you know?
Final Thoughts: 16 year olds are not nearly sufficiently mature to be trusted with the vote. Many adults are not. So why would D/S/Cs want them to vote? For the same reasons they want illegal immigration: they see them as an easily manipulated source of D/S/C voters. They’re not interested in a larger pool of well-informed citizens voting based on fidelity to the Constitution and America’s benefit. They want emotional, angry, entitled people looking for free stuff from government, people they can rely on to vote without adequate knowledge or who reject anything D/S/Cs haven’t told them or want. They want people more than willing to vote their rights away, to vote against the Constitution, because social justice, man, stick it to the man, man!

They also want people who get much, or all, of their information from social media, which is why they’ve gone stark, raving mad over Twitter threatening to allow free speech, and Elon Musk releasing internal Twitter communications about exactly how D/S/Cs coordinated with Twitter to ensure that didn’t happen.

Perhaps we could learn from one of the central lessons of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Huck often fails because he lacks one essential quality: experience.  He succeeds with the help of Jim, an uneducated slave, because Jim has life experience, common sense, and is a good man.  Huck also succeeds because he has common sense, and a good heart.  D/S/Cs are interested in neither.  They rely on darker impulses.

Effort expended on this subversive agenda would be better spent ensuring our elections were conducted without fraud. But that wouldn’t benefit D/S/Cs, now would it?