Michael, Michael, Michael. This one was beneath you.
Your so-called bait was nothing more than a lame argument that had more holes in it than a half-pound of Swiss cheese. Trying to go back and retroactively fill those holes, pretending that it was all part of your master plan, is lamer still.
And please don’t complain about “friendly fire” because you were the one who fired the first shot in response to my original article.
Finally, I never disparaged your “youthful creativity”. All I said was that real-world experience is a valuable teacher.
Ask anyone over the age of 40 what was more instructive: book learning or an education received at the college of hard knocks.
So let’s just agree that whereas we are both true conservatives, your views are more libertarian than mine. Again, I chalk that up to the difference in our ages.
Life has a way of shaping and molding us, tempering our ideals with a healthy dose of reality. The wise man is the one who hangs onto his ideals, but who also learns how to adapt and apply them to real-world situations.
You can continue to assert that everyone deserves the fictional “right” to vote and I will continue to maintain that steps must be taken to ensure a more educated and accountable electorate.
Michael, I am more than willing to listen to any and all other solutions. But while you cling to your position that, at the age of 18, everyone should be automatically granted the privilege of selecting our future leaders; I will do my best to make sure that the bar is raised before that privilege is extended.
Simply put, not everyone is mystically and magically transformed into an informed voter at the age of 18. Or at whatever age they decide to register to vote, for that matter.
At the end of the day, something – maybe it’s their actual writings – tells me that the Founding Fathers would have agreed with my more realistic position because the future of our republic hangs in the balance.
