39. Legal age for adulthood should be reduced in the United States.

"A child becomes an adult when he realizes he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong. " Because I agree with these words of Hungarian psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, and because I figured that out before I was 18, I support the resolution, which states: RESOLVED: Legal age for adulthood should be reduced in the United States. Before I begin, I offer the following DEFINITIONS to clarify the round: LEGAL AGE: the age at which a person acquires full legal rights and responsibilities ADULTHOOD: the state (and responsibilities) of a person who has attained maturity SHOULD: must; ought (used to indicate duty, propriety, or expediency) REDUCED: brought down to a smaller extent, size, amount, number, etc. (all defined from . http://www.Dictionary.com...) Move with me now to the RESOLUTION ANALYSIS, an explanation and evaluation of the topic: 1. The "legal age" is the age at which a person in the U. S. receives full legal rights. However, in these fifty nifty states not all rights are acquired on the same birthday. Indeed, if all rights were taken into consideration, the legal age might be 55 (when you can order Senior Citizen Specials at Perkins). But a good portion of these rights (pornography, voting, military, smoking, gambling, etc. ) are officially set at age 18. Therefore, I shall assume that by "the legal age," the resolution means 18, and I shall concentrate my entire case on the legal rights attained at that age. 2. The resolution does not specify what the new legal age should be, nor does it mandate that the PRO provide a specific new legal age. The debate is only about the merits and drawbacks of a lowered legal age. If the CON requires a specific age, let's just say I advocate moving it from 18 to 16. With these standards for debate set, we can now move on to CONTENTIONS, the meat and potatoes of the case. My position will be split up into three points: I: THE LEGAL AGE IS INTENDED AS A SIGN OF MATURITY. Like membership in an exclusive club, the legal age is a criterion which determines the eligibility of a person to receive some right or privilege. Legal age is an imaginary line that separates the men from the boys (or the women from the girls) in regards to a certain right. For example, a six-year-old child probably could not responsibly gamble, but a 32-year-old probably could. By defining the legal age for gambling (and other rights) at 18, the government's goal is to express that a person below that age is immature, while a person above that age is mature (in terms of the right in question). II: THIS STANDARD OF MATURITY IS CONTRADICTORY. Unfortunately, this maturity standard is rife with contradiction. Instead of having a clearly defined standard of what constitutes maturity in terms of age, the government has blurred the imaginary line to the point where it is virtually unrecognizable. There are two reasons for this, which I shall label "A" and "B. " A: The legal age has exceptions. The legal age for joining the military is 18 in general (no pun intended). However, this age does not truly represent a level of maturity, because 17-year-olds can still join the military with parental consent. If the legal age truly measured maturity, this exception would not be allowed. Another exception of the legal age is emancipation. Emancipation is a legal process by which a minor may sever all (or most) ties with their parents. While parental consent is required for students under 18 years of age for many different rights, this criterion is removed when the parents no longer have legal authority over their child. By the defined legal age, emancipated minors would still be considered immature and ineligible for the rights of an 18-year-old, but by the current legal process many of these rights become available. In both of these cases, the legal age fails to assign maturity uniformly. The imaginary line that individuals cross in the process of maturing is lowered in special cases, with no actual test to determine whether the person whom the bar is lowered for is mature enough to handle these rights. This creates a contradiction, and makes the legal age an illegitimate requirement. B: More serious rights have lower levels of maturity than less serious rights. In most states, the legal age for applying for a driver's license is 16, but it ranges from 17 (in New Jersey) to 14 ï¿½ (in my homeland, the Dakotas). In any case, the legal age for this right is lower than the legal age for most other rights - 18. This is a massive error in judgment. The government assumes that a child is mature enough to handle a moving vehicle (which is rather difficult to learn, and can cause serious injury or death if used improperly) while at the same time immature with regards to voting (which has no dangers associated with it) or purchasing pornography (which, in a legal sense, is equally not dangerous). If we were to administer standards rationally, the legal age for driving would be equal to or higher than the legal age for other rights. All of these contradictions turn the legal age into a meaningless quantitative measure with no legitimacy. When a standard can be bent in special cases, and when the standard incorrectly assigns maturity for different rights, it is no standard at all. It is an antiquated and abused system that has failed its purpose of defining maturity in legal situations. III: THE LEGAL AGE SHOULD BE LOWERED TO CORRECT THESE CONTRADICTIONS. If the legal age for the rights given at 18 were lowered, we could remove these contradictions and re-establish the legal age as a level which would properly define and regulate maturity. All of these conflicting rights could be established at age 16, perhaps, and no exceptions would be allowed for military enlistment, emancipation, or anything else. The standard set by the government would finally have legitimacy to separate mature from immature and assign rights and responsibilities accordingly. For the above stated reasons, I support the lowering of the legal age.