The American Spectator

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Here's to Youth

8.25.08 @ 12:01AM

THREE LONGEST YEARS
Re: Reid Collins' Teacher's Pets:

You know when that 20 year old gets home after spending 15 months wearing 40 pounds of body armor in 140 degree heat, I think it would be nice if he could buy himself a beer.
-- Jim Karr
Blue Springs, Missouri

I am, alas, old enough to have gone to college when the drinking age (for beer and wine) was 18, but the voting age was still 21. And so we'd drink a good bit on the weekends, but took our studies seriously the rest of the time, and survived. Those who would have become problem drinkers at 21 simply became problem drinkers a few years earlier. By the time I completed my studies, the voting age had been dropped from 21 to 18, on the theory that if one was old enough to die for one's country (we still had the draft), one ought to be able to cast a vote on the matter. I believed then, and believe now, that the same can be said for drinking a beer.
-- Pat Korten

Once again we are shown just how bad it is when people try to justify the limiting of freedom of free thinking adults. Mr. Collins' article is not only poorly worded but also poorly argued. How many people in this country are between 18 and 21? And considering that a great many of them still drink alcoholic beverages when they feel like it, saving 900 lives a year is supposed to be sufficient justification to allow our government to limit the rights of these men and women?

Is 18 the age of majority, or isn't it? It's old enough to vote. It's old enough that the government can come down and pick you up, put you in uniform and send you across the world to fight for the state (the draft isn't used, but it's still there). It's old enough for you to make any contract which you please and be forced to pay the consequences. Yet it's not old enough to drink when you choose?

And Mr. Collins, how do you argue against the lower rates of drunkenness and alcohol abuse in nations like France and Germany where the drinking age is much lower? It would seem to me that this would argue for a lower drinking age (even below the age of majority). It's really very simple. There are a lot of different reasons these young men and women drink. Most do it for social status. Some do it for fun, and yes, Mr. Collins, some do it because it is illegal and taboo.

And did you really write an argument that was essentially "they might even have sex if they get drunk and/or high?" How long has it been since you were a teenager, Mr. Collins? Trust me, they don't need any drugs to encourage that particular activity. And quite honestly, peoples sex lives are none of our business. Actually, people's lives are none of our business as long as they aren't hurting anyone else. And a lower drinking age will help simply because it means people are less likely to be somewhere getting drunk and then have drive back home.

No, Mr. Collins, this argument is simple. The mandatory 21 drinking age is yet another example of an over-reaching federal government forcing the will of a minority onto the whole of the citizenry. But hey, guess that's okay if their forcing a conservative position?

And I didn't even start ranting about your total lack of understand on how making pot illegal is also down right unconstitutional...
-- Charles Campbell

Let 'em eat (rum) cake.
-- Arnold Ahlert
Boca Raton, Florida

ABOVE THE PAY GRADE
Re: George Neumayr's Obama: 110% Pro-Choice:

Barack Obama's strong pro-abortion beliefs are there for anyone with eyes to see. Yet, a few months ago, the Catholic Universe Bulletin, the official newspaper for the Dioceses of Cleveland, published a letter that explicitly claimed that Obama was more pro-life than John McCain. And why? Because McCain divorced and remarried.

Now it is true that letters-to-the-editor do not reflect the editorial position of newspapers or magazines. But for this Catholic newspaper to print such an obvious, partisan lie on such a critical issue as abortion shows how far Catholic judgment has fallen since Vatican II.

So much of the current clerical leadership of the is so corrupted by political correctness that I fear it would give Satan equal time to present his case with no thought given to the many that he would thereby deceive.
--Peter Skurkiss
Stow, Ohio

RED POWER
Re: Roy Cordato's Both Sides Promote Energy Socialism:

Letter to the Editor

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