An argument you might make against juvenile suffrage is that the current system protects children from politics. It's not simply that they'd vote the way their parents wanted them to, thus slanting the outcome, it's that they'd be targeted by political pressure --- from their parents, teachers, peers, and the media --- in ways that they aren't today.
This doesn't answer the previous question so much as begs a new question. The current system protects children from politics, but why?
You mention targeted political pressure, but only in a vague sense; it almost seems like foreboding of something unknown, and therefore scary and threatening. It may not be for you, but for people who develop this sense of foreboding about everything unknown, this sort of argument can carry a lot of weight.
Anyway, this pressure already exists. It is how people already have formed political identities when they reach voting age, and are willing to defend them, even irrationally, against people of differing political philosophies. If they don't get it from the parents, or the teachers, or the media, they'll get it from their peers, who will have gotten it from the prior three sources. Protecting them in this sense seems like an almost insurmountable problem.
Or maybe I misunderstood what you mean by political pressure?
I mean, right now, nobody is intently inquiring about who a 12 year old is voting for. Commercials on TV don't target them for voting. They aren't asked to take positions on extremely complex issues like EFCA or stem cell research. They are spared a lot (not all, but a lot) of the most polarizing political controversies we're exposed to.
I'm not really trying to defend this argument, but if I was going to be a devil's advocate, I'd say that increased exposure to American politics might not be good for juvenile mental health.
Ahh. I see what you mean now. They aren't expected to have already taken sides, even though they might have anyway. I wish that mentality were allowed to the rest of us. Being pressured to prematurely take a side really encourages less rational and more identity-based arguments.
On the thought of them being spared all of this, I run into more than a few tweens (wife's sister being one of them), who have taken positions on complex issues anyway, and defend them using the targeted messages TV ads and pundits throw around. Obviously, I'm not implying they understand the context of their arguments -- I can't help but worry most people don't -- but they have already formed an initial opinion about things.
I don't expect you to defend this argument -- it is just me thinking out loud -- but I wonder how much we're already seeing of the juvenile mental health effect of politics, since we seem rather ineffective at protecting them from it.
If I said "woman need to be protected from politics", I think you'd justifiably interpret that as suggesting that they be protected from themselves. Maybe you think they should be protected from themselves, but that is what you're doing, essentially, when you try to shield someone from exposure to ideas and the capacity/responsibility to make judgments about those ideas.
Put another way: you're trying to deny them the opportunity to make a certain choice (that is, vote) for their own good. That is the definition of protecting someone from them-self.
Your logic doesn't work. There is no similarity between "protecting women" and "protecting children". Women don't need to be protected. Children obviously do, at least from some things.
You misunderstand me. I was not, in that comment, stating that women and children should be protected (or not) from the same things.
I was pointing out, simply, that (whether right or wrong), being "protected" from politics is in fact protection from oneself.
Now, you may feel that children should be protected from themselves, whereas women should not. That is a perfectly consistent position. The grandparent seemed to be unclear that that is what you were advocating, and that is the confusion I was clearing up.
Even now, there were many stories a few months ago about (Obama, McCain) supporting children in predominantly (McCain, Obama) territory getting bullied. Maybe letting them in on the process would foster discussion and let them think before they get stuck in a mindset.
