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| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Child laws are designed to protect a vulnerable segment of the population who may be suceptible to dangers that adults have a larger chance of avoiding. They aren't an imposition of society to oppress a minority, they are an extension of rights, priveledges, and restrictions imposed upon individuals more vulnerable in our society.
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Simply non sequitur. By logical extension, if I were to kidnap you and lock you in a padded room, I would be doing you a favor, because you would be far less likely to get yourself killed in an automobile accident.
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Well that's rather surprising since you haven't really critiqued the methodology of much my political reasonings to arrive at this state of apprehensiveness about my voting choices. Are you not "comfortable" with anyone who doesn't think in a like manner for their vote  ? Oh well, I'll take that as the price I pay for being an outspoken moderate/"conservative" on these forums  . Although that's still rather surprising since I'm for laissez-faire economics, increased civil liberties, and I voted for Gore.
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I'm not comfortable with it for the same reason you aren't comfortable with a 12 year old driving next to you. You can't predict what he is going to do, and are concerned his decision-making might not be up to par. But, like the 12-year-old might be an excellent driver, you might be an excellent voter. I was trying to show why it was a bad argument, not really making any commentary about your political position.
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At any rate I never said I was uncomfortable with their voting choices, I stated that they would likely be easily swayed since they have not achieved maximum use of their cognitive thought processes.
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Most people are easily swayed. That one category of individuals may exhibit this characteristic to an even higher degree than the control group is not a criterion for disenfranchisement.
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Competance and rationality are two separate things. Why do I think that a 65 year old with slower reflexes and spatial coordination should drive as opposed to a more responsive 12 year old? Simply because that 65 year old man will more than likely realize his difficiencies and adjust his driving methods to take into account his inadequacies. A 12 year old is likely less mature (and it's a fact that maturity increases with age), and not as capable in realizing the cause and effect relationship of his actions and thus less likely to appreciate the consequences of his actions as a whole.
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More generalizations... the law must be adaptable to extreme cases, not merely useful in the typical scenario. It's like writing software, you don't only have to test expected values, but boundary values as well.
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Not myself, and not most people I would imagine. Nearly everybody that I know of has more or less achieved a political revolution in awareness when they turned 18, and are living independant from their parents. I'm fairly certain that it is far more likely for an 18 year old to develop independant political thought than a 13 or 14 year old that is living in a parent's household.
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A well-regarded study of English voters in the 1980s reported that 90% of the Conservative party consisted of members whose parents both voted Conservative. Liberals were no different. No evidence suggests these numbers would be any higher for younger voters.
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Well it would be fine and dandy if we had a test to demonstrate maturity to make your own decisions, and then test each child as they grow a year older but that's simply unfeasible. Virtually every country on this planet operates under assumptions with their age laws.
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It isn't really that unfeasible. Certainly, no test would be perfect, but if you're suggesting we couldn't make one that fulfills the role more adequately than age-based assumptions, then you're being ridiculous. Just because every country does something doesn't make it right, that's argumentum ad populum.
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So then you're gambling with the lifes of those incapable of making well informed decisions?
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Yes, give me liberty or give me death. Is that a hard concept to understand?
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Can you remember a time in your life when you made a poor, incorrect, immature decision, that you would most certainly have done differentely in retrospect? Can you remember a time when you were misled as a child whereas you otherwise would not have been as an adult now? I think if we did a poll here a lot of people would say yes.
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Certainly, I can think of instances which would appear to fit those criteria. However, the saying goes that hindsight is always 20/20, and I don't believe my perceptions of what decision I would have made are an accurate or objective means for evaluating changes in my decision-making capacity. Even if my decision-making was worse than it is now, and I'd like to think it was, that doesn't mean I was unqualified to make decisions about voting, drinking, etc. when I was younger. Nor does just because someone else's decision-making has improved mean they necessarily are qualified once they reach a certain age.
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Well under your system of children's rights, children would not be obligated to go to school. And the state would have no obligation to that child to even provide a decent education system about morality and right and wrong. As such they may not have any education system asides from what their parents dictate. You can't have things one way then argue the opposite point.
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Well, a couple of things. First, I don't think our education system should be teaching morality, but rather objective causes and effects. Second, under my system of children's rights, children would be obligated to go to school, but it would not be because of their age, but rather because of their educational background. Rather than freeing children from the obligation to attend school, I would simply extend that obligation to all citizens who have not completed the first ten grades of school.
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So then by your reasoning abolish ALL laws associated with age. Therefore abolish laws providing for the additional welfare of children over adults. They are no different from adults in the rights that they afforded so they are one and the same. As such they should not be provided with any extra advantages that adults do not have access too otherwise that would be discrimination. Thus there are no societal obligation to care for, provide, or GUIDE any child since they are essentailly assured the civil liberties to make their own decisions at birth, to work, to save for their education, etc. ... they are mature, informed adults much like any of us for all intents and purposes and they can care for themselves.
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Not necessarily abolish them all, although definitely most of them. Those which serve important, rather than spurious, functions could be adapted to measure maturity in ways other than age, or to rely on evidence, rather than assumption or generality.
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Really? Abolish child labor laws? Well I look forward to the ability to make my kids work towards achieving self sufficiency in terms of food and housing costs at the sacrifice of their education. Under the same labor laws as adults, a kid working minimum wage of a generous $6 an hour would need to work at least 5 or 6 hours a day to meet housing and food costs. Combine this with another 6 or 7 hours of school and we're really putting the little bastards to work! I'm sure I can find SOME job for them to do considering factory owners in the 1800s seemed to have no problems at all!
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Unfortunately for you, they'd have to want to get a job. If you tried to force them to get one and give you the money, you would be guilty of extortion.
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Much of that titanic legal ocde is to ensure and interprate the liberties presented to us by the bill of rights and the constitutional amendments. Would you prefer execssively open endded legal systems that neither resolve nor dissipate issues? How are we the big joke we presently are? Please I'm curious to understand how over the past 200 years our legal system has been a big mockery or joke??? Especially since our government has been in existence for under 300 years whereas our neighbors around us have had organized government for the past several centuries.
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Our legal system is a joke when owning a plant (marijuana) is considered a heinous crime. Our legal system is a joke when a two men (James Beathard and Gene Hathorn) can be convicted of the firing the same bullet and sentenced to the death penalty. Our legal system is a joke when trial lawyers who think they have a weak case intentionally try to select the stupidest and most easily manipulated jurors. Our legal system is a joke when one government beaurocracy can threaten to shut down a supermarket for not having "traction approved" flooring, and then when the supermarket installs it, another government beaurocracy can threaten to shut them down because "traction approved" flooring is unsanitary because it can harbor small food particles. Our legal system is a joke when the President of the United States is selected by the Supreme Court.
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That's a very idealistic way to look at the world and I don't think that that is the way our forefathers OR martin luther king intended to imply with the concept of "freedom".
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It's the natural logical extension of the principles they advocated. It also derives directly from the Lockean concept of the Natural Rights of Man, which is one of the primary sources of principles upon which the United States was founded.
Depriving children of the right to make decisions for themselves simply because the average child is more likely to make a poor decision than the average adult is like arresting all black people because black people commmit more crimes than white people. It is gross overkill, and fails to recognize the many exceptions to the given generalities.
| quote: | Originally posted by Drug_Tit0
And here are a few question for you. Imagine this situation. A 5 year old child has a 2 year old brother. The brother gets all the attention, and the child is pissed off at him. They meet near a staircase, and the older child pushes the smaller one down the stairs. The younger one breaks it's neck and dies. Does a 5 year old child deserve a death sentence for intentional murder? Obviously, a fully capable free minded individual would see that such a course of action would lead to likely death of the younger child. As occrider said, children at that age are very egocentric and don't view other people as equal individuals.
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I can't answer this fully without going off-topic yet again by raising a large number of issues I have with the present incarnation of typical justice systems in the world, but I'll do my best to give a brief answer. The fundamental question is whether their role is revenge, rehabilitation, or prevention. I don't think the 5-year-old should be sentenced to death, but I don't think the reason is because he is 5-years-old, but rather because his death would accomplish nothing for society except for the goal of revenge, which is not what I think the justice system ought to be seeking.
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Or imagine this - a child at birth has all the rights and obligations of an adult. So if I offer a 2-year old child a cookie in exchange for his cheap labor from ages 10-50, if the offer is accepted by that child, does it mean it's the child's fault for accepting that offer? A child of that age would find 1$/day a large amount of money. You are making 2 mistakes in your reasoning. First one is that you consider children to be self sufficient and more intelectually capable than they really are. The second one is that you don't realize people will try to find and abuse to the maximum any holes in the law they find.
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You make two mistakes in your reasoning.
First, you assume that since it would be difficult to measure maturity by any standard other than age, age is the best available measurement of maturity. If you ask me, if we're going to use maturity as a basis for law, we have an obligation to do a better job of measuring it.
Second, you assume that if we don't protect children because they are children, we can't protect them at all. That's hardly true, there are plenty of laws which protect individuals from the exploitation of others which are not age-based, such as usury laws. I don't think it would be all that difficult to avert all the gloom-and-doom scenarios you and Occrider are proposing with laws which do not rely on age-based generalizations.
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His administration sickens me... Rumsfeld & his Defense comity, and especially John Ashcroft
