Listening to a video conversation this morning, I heard that the proposal to lower the voting age from 20 to 18 in Taiwan didn’t get through. That didn’t get my attention as much as the expressed disappointment of the person presenting that fact. I am not surprised at his expression of disappointment, I am just too jaded with that sort of puerile hubris. Those who want to rule the world, which, according to pop group Tears for Fears means “Everybody”, prefer that younger people with empty noggins be forced to vote, since immature voters are far more easily swayed by verbal virtuosity than older folk who have experienced the viccissitudes life has to offer. Me? Raise the voting age to thirty, I might say? Well, yes and no.

I say it’s not as simple as lowering or raising the voting age. As a first cut, yes, voting and suchlike ought to be left to older and presumably wiser voters. In “Starship Troopers”, Robert Heinlein tells about how only combat veterans of the Terran Federation were allowed to be given status as citizens, and only citizens had the right to vote. It’s not about how old the voter is, or whether he is a combat veteran, or even whether he has had the presumed discipline and academic rigor to finish what is generally known as the baccalaureate. I would say that his parents, peers, teachers, employers and community leaders, including religious leaders, give their vote to cast him as a “Citizen”, upwards from a “Provisional Citizen” or a “Citizen by birth”. That’s not as archaic as you might have been led to think, it’s actually pretty sensible.

So. How about we stop running around like headless chooks yelling and screaming about inconsequential idiocies like lowering or raising the voting age? Just continue running your PR campaigns. Personal Responsibility campaigns, that is.