Children Have the Right to Protest, But Leave Voting to the Adults

In our society, whatever is important is what we don’t let children do. They can’t buy property, take out loans, consent to medical procedures (with the glaring exception of abortion), or rent a car.

The aftermath of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has played out similarly to every mass shooting before it with one difference. A difference that sets it apart from all such previous incidents: a surge of activism by its victims and survivors to demand new gun control measures. This started as a wave directly after the shooting on Feb. 14 and reached its peak during the national school walkout last Wednesday.

So enthralled were they by the Parkland students’ juvenile enthusiasm that numerous commentators seized it as justification for lowering the voting age to 16. Former speechwriter to President Barack Obama Jon Lovett defended the proposal on the grounds that “voting is how America’s young people can protect themselves” from the threat of gun violence in schools. According to political scientist Jonathan Bernstein, “Voting is the training wheels of political participation.” Teens are allowed to lobby and organize, so there is no reason to bar even 13-year-olds from voting.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be treating high schoolers as adults, but college students as children.”

The title of an op-ed by University of Kentucky law professor Joshua Douglas spoke for them all: “Parkland students show why 16-year-olds should be able to vote.” Similar appeals appeared in such reliably progressive organs as the New York Times and the Nation.

This adulation stands in stark contrast to progressives’ attitude to another form of youthful crusading: protests by college students targeting speakers who deviate from leftist orthodoxy, especially on identity politics. This is curious, for when they aren’t dismissing these demonstrations as isolated events which mask the real threat to free speech or rejecting the very notion of a free speech crisis at American universities (despite considerable evidence to the contrary), they’re excusing campus censorship on the grounds that college students are . . . children.