UNPOPULAR POLITICAL OPINIONS

         1.     People Should Not Be Encouraged to Vote

The mayor of Las Vegas, Shelley Berkley, recently lamented the less-than-20% turnout in our recent primaries, and described voting for elected officials as "the most sacred right of being an American citizen.”  She is wrong about that.  The most sacred right of our citizens is to be left alone if they choose not to participate in politics.

 

You hear this complaint frequently, usually from do-gooder politicos like The League of Women Voters and such.  When people stay home, it’s a disgrace, you see, and a plague upon our democracy.  How can we increase turnout?  Why can’t we get more people to vote?  Maybe we should give them a lottery ticket for voting.  Maybe we should require it, and punish those who don’t show up.  Some countries do.

 

But what exactly is the argument, Mayor Berkley?   How does it benefit the body politic if people who choose to know nothing about the candidates and issues are pressured to vote anyway?   And why is it any of your business how citizens prioritize their interests and activities so long as they live lawful and productive lives?

 

It is especially annoying for elected officials themselves to encourage increased voting.  They sometimes even use public money for “Get Out the Vote” campaigns, even though there is a fundamental conflict of interest when they do so.  For some politicians, more votes will increase their chances of victory; others benefit when turnout is lower.  The ones who push for a higher turnout mostly seek to increase their own electoral prospects; their pleas have nothing to do with the civic responsibilities they may claim to espouse.

 

Some citizens listen to speeches, read brochures, and research the candidates.  Then they vote.  I’m that kind of guy.  But other people have other views and other lives.  They may feel they don’t have time, or they have more important things to do, or the candidates they are offered are not worth their time or trouble.  In a country like ours where the government grows bigger and bigger every day, it is easy to forget that one of our basic rights is to be left alone to live our lives in peace, as we see fit.  And that may mean avoiding, to the extent possible, the intrusions and collectivism that surrounds us. 

 

 

2. The Age of Consent is Far too High

 

Beginning in 1880, a revolution occurred in age of consent (for sex) laws in America.  There is no federal law of consent, but in 1880, most states set the consent age between 10 and 12.  By 1920, almost every state had raised the age to at least 16.  Today, all 51 jurisdictions (including D.C.) have set it to at least sixteen.  Eleven jurisdictions have the age of consent at eighteen.

 

Many of these laws have “close-in-age” exemptions concerning sex between people who are bothbelow the statutory age. Thus, two fifteen-year-olds having intercourse is not a crime anywhere.  However, when a 19-year-old boy jumps in the sack with his 17-year-old girlfriend, there are places where he is committing a felony, even if she asked him to and she is a freshman at Harvard.

 

The raising of the age of consent conflicts with the reality that teens are much more sophisticated and knowledgeable than they were in the past.  Without speculating on what 12-year-olds in 1880 knew about sex, 12-year-old girls today know exactly what it is and they have seen it on the internet.  In other words, when a teenage girl decides to have sex with a 22-year-old guy, she knows exactly what she is doing.  Consent laws are not designed to protect her from predators, but rather to prevent her from making “bad decisions” the government or her elders disapprove of.  It’s a power play, and in a free society, it’s oppression.  She owns her body just as much as you own yours and she should have just as much right to do with it as she pleases. 

 

Then there are other scenarios that require more thought than the how-old-are-you-and-how-old-is-she laws involving the age of consent.  What if he’s fifteen and she is his twenty-eight-year-old English teacher?   Well, we can all agree that she should expect a pink slip from the school principal, but do any of us feel in our hearts that jail time should be an option?  I’m sorry if this shocks you, but boys and girls are different, no matter what the 1964 Civil Rights Act says.

 

And what about the boy who is fifteen and wondering if he is gay and wondering what to do about it?  Suppose there is a man in the neighborhood who everybody says is “queer” and the boy is polite to him and they become acquainted and sex happens? Again, the question is not whether “good decisions” have been made, or whether the behavior itself may be distasteful to many.  The question is whether anyone should be fined or imprisoned or labeled a sex offender for the rest of his life. 

 

From these examples, it may have occurred to you that there is a fundamental problem with the way these laws are constructed.  They are black and white rules, but they cover human situations with many possible variables.  If she is 18, she’s legal.  If she’s 17, you are a felon.  You are a felon even if she told you she is 22 and she looks like she is 22 and she has a driver’s license that says she is 22 and you genuinely believe she is 22.

 

There are situations where it may be fair to draw legal lines this way.  If you misinterpret an income tax regulation and you wind up underpaying your taxes by $10,000, most of us would understand a prosecutorial approach featuring strict liability.   Pay your taxes or you’re on the hook.  Period.  Check your returns.  Hire an accountant.  Whatever.  Unlike the age of consent issue, there’s no morality involved in paying your taxes---nobody likes it but everybody has to do it--- so there is little objection if there are hard and fast rules, with no backtalk allowed. 

 

Refusing to recycle your beer cans is another example.  You may believe recycling laws are stupid, and you may be correct, but if your town has a recycling law you will get a ticket.  We don’t care what you think.  If you don’t like the recycling law, you can always move. 

 

But two people deciding to have sex with each other is nothing if not nuanced and complicated and morally complex.  Why do we REFUSE to listen to any explanation about what he thought or what she thought or who they are or what their motives were?

 

There is a simple reason.  The courts and the government don’t want to hear about it.  If explanations or excuses were permitted, every prosecution would be disputed.  Jury trials would be demanded.  Witnesses would be called to testify about intimate and embarrassing facts and histories.  Age of consent laws allow no explanations because, if they did, judges and juries would have to listen to them for hours, and they don’t want to.  Who would want to listen to that crap all day long?

 

The reason age of consent laws are enforced so strictly is understandable, but it remains unfair to the “criminals” who get snagged by them.

 

But there is a solution.  Lower the age to a point where reasonable people will not object to harsh enforcement.  If the law allows consent at age 12 and the girl is actually only 11, no one will be swayed by the defense of: “Hey!  It’s not fair.  I thought she was 13.” 

 

 

 

3.    Felons Should Not Have Gun Rights Taken Away

 

      Federal law, in 18 U.S.C. 822 (g)(1), prohibits anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison (the fed definition of a felony), from possessing any firearm or ammunition.  It is a lifetime ban, and it includes long guns.  Note that these crimes are punishable by one year in jail.  You may get probation and never spend a day in chokey, but if your crime might have been punished by a year in jail (e.g., lying to an FBI agent even though you were not under oath), you are a felon.   All fifty states also impose restrictions on felons possessing or owning guns.

 

In 1828, Webster’s Dictionary defined a felony as a crime punishable by death.  Today, with our current definitions, there are about 17 million felons in the U.S.  Harvey Silverglate’s famous 2009 book, “Three Felonies a Day,” makes the case that under state and federal laws, each of us routinely and unknowingly commit about three felonies a day.  There are hundreds of state and federal laws the violation of which is punishable by one year or more.

 

There are many other disabilities applied to convicted felons.  They are often barred from voting or holding political office or obtaining various commercial licenses.  And these prohibitions apply to all felons, whether their crime involved the use of a gun or whether it was violent at all. There are bribe-takers and drug users and swindlers and tax-evaders who, upon conviction, become second-class citizens for the rest of their lives.

 

These laws date to a time when there were only a handful of felonies on the books and all of them were serious crimes of violence.  At that time, 200 years ago, barring a tiny group of truly bad people from having guns or exercising other rights may have been justifiable.  But today, these laws alter our society by creating a subclass of citizens who cannot fully participate in it.  In addition, the laws prevent a large group of people, many of whom are not violent at all, from exercising fundamental human rights like the right of self-defense.  Some felons live in very dangerous neighborhoods and are unable to protect themselves and their families.  Nothing is ever gained by rendering potential victims of violence defenseless against the real dangers in the world. 

 

Copyright2026MichaelKubacki