The Necropolitan Sentinel

You know this man-child thinks Obama is the greatest president in American history. He also demands free movie downloads for life.

Presenting America's future:

According to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of young voters think the government should do more — something only 44 percent of all voters support. On government-run healthcare, the most popular policy preference among young voters was to expand it.

At a more personal level, in one of his post-election dissections, His Royal Highness, King Shamus the Destroyer, posted this anecdote:

I overheard a conversation between two college girls.  It went something like this:

Lady A:  The election is tonight?

Lady B:  Yeah.

Lady A:  I kinda like Mitt Romney.

Lady B:  Yeah, but he wants to take away student loans.

Lady A:  Screw that shit.

Screw that shit, indeed.

Which leads me back to a reference in something I linked yesterday about the GOP pandering to the Youth Voter bloc. In it, an apparently intelligent and articulate young woman, calling herself a conservative, explains to us old people why we need to give in to Youth's hostage demands and become Democrats Lite:

I happen to be one of the latter, a college student at a time when youth is a hot political commodity. Most kids my age bristle at the word "conservative," and I don't blame them. The right has done nothing to welcome young people.

She's a "hot political commodity", worth her weight in gold (or is it green? — I'm not sure anymore) and if only we'd listen to her, the GOP would win:

As a member of this all-important demographic, I know that neither I nor (almost) anybody else coming of age today supports the Republican social agenda. That's the way the country is moving—so just deal with it. Modernize and prioritize.

Though it may be painful, though it may be costly at the polls in the short run, Republicans don't have a future unless they break up with the religious right and the gay-bashing, Bible-thumping fringe that gives the party such a bad rap with every young voter. By fighting to legally ban abortion, the party undercuts the potential to paint itself as a rebel against the governmental-control machine.

"Modernize and prioritze". Ah, yes, we're pre-Cambrian fossils who need to get with It.

I'm very much in favor of a type of personal liberty which allows people the freedom to make bad decisions and screw up their lives in whichever manner they choose, but there is a point where such bad decision-making effects others. I can't say where that point is exactly, but I do know that when you start talking in "trillions", you've probably gone well past it. Once you've chosen to go past it, you have reliquinquished the right to instruct me on anything.

I wonder if these damn kids know how many zeroes are in a trillion. Do they know that the unfathomable distance from the Earth to Pluto is a mere 1/300th of a trillion miles? Do they know that a trillion dollars could buy a new aircraft carrier — one of the most massively complex and expensive machines ever devised by man — 75 times over? Do they really know what an incredibly gargantuan amount of money over a trillion dollars in taxes is?

Yes, we need to appeal to Youth Voters and include them in the political process but there comes a time when we have to help them avoid behaving irresponsibly. When we are obligated — even morally obligated — to save them from themselves. We can't do that if we continue to try to pander to their every petty whim and precious ideal.

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