A Stitch in Haste

I have always thought that this was a good idea:

State Rep. Mark Pettis, a Republican who served in the Navy, is pushing a bill that would drop the drinking age to 19 for Wisconsin soldiers — but only if the federal government agrees it will not yank an estimated $50 million a year in highway aid.
…
“We’re treating these young men and women as adults when they’re at war. But we treat them like teenagers when they’re here in the states,” he said.
…
The Wisconsin chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving has lobbied against the bill. Its executive director, Kari Kinnard, said statistics show there have been fewer highway fatalities, injuries and other problems associated with alcohol since the mandatory minimum went into effect in the 1980s.

She also said research shows the brain has not fully developed until people reach age 21. “It’s for their own protection,” Kinnard said.

First and foremost, someone please slap that silly MADD spokeswoman. Are we shipping 19- and 20-year olds to Iraq “for their own protection”? If their brains aren’t “fully formed,” then perhaps they’re not mentally competent to enlist in the first place.

Anyway, it seems that we could craft several reasonable exemptions to the under-21 drinking age. My favorite, at least when I was in college, was that full-time college students should be exempted. It also seems bizarre that two 20-year old newlyweds couldn’t drink at their own wedding reception. And so on.

But of course reasonableness isn’t the motivation behind the drinking age. Neither is, contrary to the MADD shill, protecting those affected by it. As I blogged previously on the related subject of the smoking age, we see a variety of unreasonable factors at work instead. First is the Politics of the Warm Fuzzy Feeling: the politicians “did something.” Whether it’s something fair, reasonable or cost-effective is irrelevant.

Second is the death of fiscal federalism. The federal government has no business giving states highway money under any circumstances, but it’s a convenient way to score political points (“your tax dollars at work…”) while bribing states into accommodating federal policy in the process.

Finally, and perhaps most important, we see the disempowerment of an insular minority. While it is of course true that no one is 19 forever, it is also true that, as an age cohort, 19- and 20-year olds are a permanent political minority, with essentially no political power, and are thus subject to the breakdown of the normal political process that is supposed to protect such minorities. This ability of unbridled democracy (a/k/a “mob rule”) to trump traditional protection of rights is a phenomenon with which gays are all too familiar.

If you could reduce libertarianism to a single fundamental theorem, it would probably be “A law must unconditonally make sense under all circumstances to be valid.” The under-21 drinking age makes sense only under the most myopic perspective and only when countless everyday contexts are dropped.

Exempting active duty military from age prohibition could be a small, entirely reasonable first step toward restoring common sense, not only to alcohol policy, but to the legislative process generally. Hopefully some bold member of Congress will take up this state politician’s cause.

Related thoughts from OzarkLad.

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