Originally Posted by
Eli Gottlieb
By, For, and Of: An essay concerning government by trust and the philosophical justification of young people's rights in the United States of America
by Eli Gottlieb, June 1st 2005
Government by, for and of the people is the principle that this republic (If for the moment we may call it that and it remains so.) and all other modern republics and democracies were founded upon. In theory it means that the people govern for themselves. In practice it means that government is the responsibility of elected officials who are chosen by voters periodically from a field of candidates. In addition, every person is supposed to be guaranteed certain basic rights. Finally and most importantly, this and all governments are supposed to arise from the mechanism of social contract.
It is reasonable fact that as far as theory goes there can only be a less than ideal social contract because of the way the contract is created. John Locke himself admitted that few, if any, men since Cain and Able have existed in the State of Nature which people leave by creating the social contract. These people, few they may have been, created the social contract because they desired law and order more than they desired unlimited anarchic liberty and government was the best way to obtain that law and order. The contract for a rebublic supposedly states that the people give the government authority to govern on the basis that the people gain authority to periodically appoint the government. This is less than the ideal social contract of government changing on the dime to suit the people's wants, but suits the real world just fine.
What then, are the practical implications of this contract? The basis of the modern American social contract is the vote. Through it Americans exercise their sovereignty as a people to decide who will govern them in the positions created by the numerous levels of constitutions. When these officials, legislators and executives are elected they are able to create bureaucracies, collect taxes, make other laws, and maintain a police force to enforce laws important enough that breaking them is deemed a criminal offense. In some places judges are elected as well and judge all legal disputes brought before their courts.
Dirtying this happy state of affairs is absolutism rearing its head once again in the form of legally enforced ageism. While in most states of our Union even an ex-felon is allowed their social contract right to vote, all people under the age of eighteen are governed without the right to vote. They are considered the chattels of their parents or state appointed guardians with no rights beyond that to live safely and receive the state's version of an education. They are not given Locke's natural rights of life, liberty and property, nor are they given the social contract the rest of the nation is: that allowing the government to govern gives them the authority to vote and therefore govern the government.
So what is their social contract? In a country of government by, for and of the people how does a disenfranchised minority group fit in?
What the law tells us is that the situation of young people is this: government by elected officials over the voting age, of voters above the voting age, for young people under the age of majority. Adults over the voting and candidacy ages govern for the sake of what they think young people need. The governed young people are left with no legal recourse whatsoever, no channel to speak their actual needs and desires except through guardians who have every option to not pay any attention at all.
As in the monarchies of old perversions of interest have inevitably occurred. A school system has been brought about and foist upon young people's backs which purposely inculcates obediance and destroys the innate love of learning present in most children. This information comes from none other than John Taylor Gatto, an award-winning ex-schoolteacher. Curfews and parental custody restrict young people's movements around their own homes and hometowns. They are routinely denied the rights of fair trial people over the age of majority take for granted in our society. They can be put in medical or psychiatric treatment by parental consent alone, against their will, or wisked off to an abusive gulag school by night. Even young people's monies, investments and material possessions are controlled by parents and guardians in the name of those same young people, sometimes with the result of guardians stealing or squandering their children's goods and never being held responsible. Can it be called in the child's best interests to invest all of their money in an unstable stock market? That has happened to some as a result of young people being governed as trusts with their parents as the trustees.
This is surely a grave list of offenses. It would most definitely seem that the current system of government by adults, for youth and of adults not only allows abuses, but fosters them. In the name of preserving their Life the Liberty and Property of young people are confiscated. It is those rights, Life, Liberty and Property that the social contract is established to uphold, and therefore if those rights are violated and destroyed the people have the right to reconstitute the social contract and government until their grievances are addressed.
It is then determined that unless they are given a proper social contract that upholds their rights young people become as oppressed as the subjects of a king. Government by the people, of the people and for the people is the only regime that can be tolerated in any nation that wishes to call itself a democracy or republic. It has already been established that the fundamental right of a democratic or republican social contract is that of voting, and so young people need the right to vote before all their other rights.
Once the vote is granted all other rights will surely follow from there as young people exert more influence in government. First will come the lowering of the voting age, the candidacy ages should be next, and others until finally age limits are abolished and a truly reasonable and just social contract based government is established for young people as well as old.
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I didn't have the time...
I tend to write things out better than I edit them -- when I'm feeling intelligent, not intelajent, that is. Right now, I'm feeling intelajent.
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