Cheers for Drinking Reform - It should be a libertarian’s dream issue.

National Review Online ^ | March 22, 2013 | Charles C. W. Cooke

[Patriot365]

When I turned 21, Texas lowered it to 18. I’m still peeved about it.

[Rytwyng]

I believe in Sweden that you lose your driver's license for LIFE after just one DWI

I've heard that this penalty extends to everyone in the car. Talk about using peer pressure. "Dude... are you SURE you didn't have any?"

[1010RD]

And liberals are always pushing us to be more like Sweden.

[1010RD]

I suspect that nannyism is the real disease. Bad behavior cures itself eventually. Insulating people from the consequences of their actions just encourages worse risks.

I also think that measuring traffic fatalities or any fatality as your baseline is off. That we have fewer fatalities in Iraq or Afghanistan isn’t because of smarter officers or better tactics/strategies/ROIs, but medical advances in trauma treatments.

Liberals point to gun fatalities when the real benefits of gun ownership rarely lead to someone’s death. Did traffic fatalities fall due to safer vehicles, better training, etc. Illinois has made it very hard to get a DL for a kid. Fewer are getting them early and many wait until they’re 18. So are we measuring a smaller pool of teen drivers and thus see lower fatalities?

Correlation leads the way to all kinds of bad laws or outcomes.

[BizBroker]

Sure, I could vote and do most things when I was 18. What I couldn’t do was return from a combat op and legally buy a beer.

I may have some libertarian leanings, but I do not believe that I have a right to everything but am responsible for nothing. However, If I am an 18, 19, or 20 year old and I have been deemed old enough to take a bullet, someone needs to pony up and buy me a brew when I get back!

[zencycler]

As a libertarian I can tell you that just because I don’t want the government, with the full force of law cracking down on citizens for certain behaviors - DOES NOT MEAN I FAVOR THOSE BEHAVIORS. There is a role for individual responsibility as well as family, church, and community intervention.

AMEN ... and as with many other areas in which the government is too involved, the notion that it's something the government should be handling leads many individuals, churches and communities to become increasingly negligent of their civic duties.

[VermiciousKnid]

Ah yes, I remember the Great Drinking Age Changes of the 80s:

I tuned 18 (in NY), in February and I became legal to drink. Later that year, NY changed the drinking age to 19, beginning on Dec. 1, with no grandfathering. That made me illegal from Dec. 1 to Feb. 24. Then, magically, on Feb. 24, I was legal again, presumably because I was now mature enough. Again. Two years later, NY complied with the federal extortion and changed the age to 21. And so I was illegal again from Dec. 1 until Feb. 24 when I again magically became mature enough to have a beer.

The drinking age should be 18, or they should just go ahead and officially delay adulthood until 21 and be done with it. As usual, though, they want it both ways.

Regards,

[Straight Vermonter]

I just saw on The Military Channel, that Ethan Allen was rum-swilling Green Mountain Boy. If it is good enough for Old Ethan then it’s good enough got me.

He also died from RWI (Riding While Intoxicated).

[Triple]

I hear you...

This is the one place where some republicans come off the rails of limited government. They want a nanny state for social issues even if it creates a nanny state that does some things they don’t want. This is why the political class duopoly of Democrats and Republicans exists today. (They trade pork with each other to maintain control.)

When was the last time the federal government actually got smaller? (Growing at a reduced rate is *not* getting smaller.)

These results are not by accident.

[Ax]

Didn’t know that. I would’ve that someone of his stature would’ve died a little less ignominiously than RWI.