I’d suggest taking underage drinkers to see individuals who have been killed or totally transformed to hospitals, morgues, or homes by drunk drivers before they are permitted to drink. Under age drinking is a fact of life. BUT there are other facts of life that might be more important than allowing and encouraging this behavior. Besides it is illegal. Ten drinks seems a little excessive even supervised. Parents need to teach their children the responsibilities and dangers of drinking.

I may be a bit off base commenting here also. I grew up in one of the bigger cities her in a middle class neighborhood in the city. I was allowed at 16 to go downtown and see bands when I was 16. The drinking age had not become unreasonable like it is now. (it was 18 at the time) 18 year olds could still go out and have a drink in addition to being able to vote, leave their parents or die for their country. They were also treated as adults when they were 16 or up for the most part.
We would catch the bus downtown and either cab back (5 kids in a cab at about 3 bucks a pop) or have our parents pick us up if we had spent all of our money on Sangrias or Lonestars. That is responsible parenting, kids. We had cars but never drank and drove. It was absolutely forbidden. I still do this to this day, 20 years later. Thanks mom and dad. =)

Again, shouldn’t our children be our responsibility and not the state’s?

this kind of thinking could get you elected. too bad nobody in office or running for office thinks this way.

i think we should legalize date rape and those knock out drugs just this one night. its gonna happen once or twice anyway. why not make it legal?

Because, as I always point out, my rights end at your nose. Your body is yours, as is everyone else’s, and you have a right to say no to sex. Date rape violates your right to say no.

That said, a parent allowing their child to drink violates whose rights exactly? No one can make this case….

The first thing you taught them with allowing the drink is, Hey its alright if you flout the law.

I have yet to meet the person who doesn’t ignore the laws that they think are wrong. If my county passed a law tomorrow saying I couldn’t own a sword…I’d still keep mine, and I’d defend my property against anyone who tried to take it.

Law

Kenny : “Awwww, someone doesn’t like parents making choices!” That has to be one of the stupidest things any one wrote.

I’ll ignore the fact that you can’t spell or use grammar to save your life and move past mocking you…

Reread the following passage:

So if this saves lives, what then? If it helps teach teens to drink responsibly, and they don’t get alcohol poisoning, what then? If it keeps them from driving drunk, what then?

If it does good, then what? You’ll ignore that and call for a parental ass kicking again? Lame.

And nice to see Suite dodged the rest of teh debate.

The trouble is you provide a precedent that the law doesn’t count or you can ignore the law. It would depend on the responsibility of the parent (mother driving around the kids to play car baseball) and after they break the law they are willing to do the time for the crime. Also what is the cost to society? What does it cost you and I as taxpayers to give them a bed and breakfast at the jail. When it starts costing someone else then the proverbial nose has been reached and your freedom ends

I think the comments on this are absolutely ridiculous. Does anybody here actually have an 18 year old “child” or had one. Were any of you actually 18 or just born adults? I’m 37 and scratching my head on this one. I applaud the “grown ups” for doing this but especially the “kids” that are responsible enough to celebrate their day of becoming adults by allowing themselves to be locked up over night to get hammered instead of doing it on the road. MADD is absolutely mad for protesting something like this. Responsible drinking celebrating the absolutely madness that is highschool.
Once again I’m 37. I drink socially and am responsible for it. I don’t drink and drive. Unless it an extreme special occasion I don’t go over the limit. I credit my parents for not making it a stigma. Maybe it was the times. It wasn’t frowned upon when I was a kid (i.e. 16 and up) to order a Margarita or a beer when out for dinner. I was taught what it was like to drink responsibly before I left the nest.
This is not a political issue. I loved what the police said about private property and parental agreements. It’s illegal but wouldn’t be if every single parent was there. I have no problem with this. They upped it my making the parents decide how much the senior could drink by prepaying for it. A cheerleader would be hammered after 4 drinks but a linebacker wouldn’t even be touched after 10. I am going to teach my child when he is old enough to drive that it is ok to have one drink with dinner if you are out. It is ok to have a couple when out with friends if you wait the requisite time before getting behind the wheel. Most importantly, as long as it doesn’t become habitual, it is perfectly ok to get hammered on special occasions if you don’t get behind the wheel and are in a safe environment.
The idiots that are part of MADD should be celebrating this instead of outraged and go back to their core statement. Not much different than PETA that euthanise the majority of pets they take in. A good idea taken over by zealots that miss the original point.

Great and lets legalize marijuana. A Stoners safer then a drunk.
The parents need there ass kicked. The age old arguement just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
The arguement you are using has been around for a long time from

Awwww, someone doesn’t like parents making choices!

So if this saves lives, what then? If it helps teach teens to drink responsibly, and they don’t get alcohol poisoning, what then? If it keeps them from driving drunk, what then?

Oh wait, you’re outraged. Emotion not logic, my bad.

i think we should legalize date rape and those knock out drugs just this one night. its gonna happen once or twice anyway. why not make it legal?

I don’t see how MADD makes people live by their standards? Everyone has their own choice. These groups are just trying to discourage irresponsible drinking….which among young kids is pretty rampant. (actually rampant at every age).

Anyway, what they are doing is illegal. Even in Canada, the drinking age is 19. We regularly call out people to abide by our laws, but when we want to rationalize…or feel less guilty about our own lives….we decide to be hypocritical.

Sorry, but the idea of this being something good is so naive. A group of parents who think it is a good idea to host a party like this are immature. Do you really think teaching kids to ignore the law and make irresponsible decisions is good parenting? Ridiculous.

If the laws change you have somewhat of an argument, but you are wrong.

MADD is not about forcing people to “Live” by their standards. Drunk drivers are the ones who “Force” people to “live” by their standards because they destroy peoples’ lives!

Except this has nothing to do with driving. MADD, once a proud group that existed to protect people, has become the arbitar of everything alcohol.

ZZ: Careful! You’re treading on the toes of the “no rules for my pet groups” libertarian ideologues.

OH NOES! We mustes supports drunk driving if we disagrees with your theories! OH NOES! TEH HORRORS!

MADD is not about forcing people to “Live” by their standards. Drunk drivers are the ones who “Force” people to “live” by their standards because they destroy peoples’ lives!

It’s akin to saying we’d see less teenage pregnancy if we simply legalized sex at any age. Utter poppycock showing that libertarianism is ultimately the twin to liberalism.

So how has illegalizing underaged sex worked for preventing pregnancy?

It hasn’t? Hmmm.

Oh and it makes our kids sex offenders too? SUPER! Twofer!

This is a win? Teenage pregnancy shooting through the roof and more people on the sex offender list?

Nanny statism can thrive on the right as well. Cest la ve.

Imperfection in results does not in any way logically imply that the exact opposite would be more successful and anyone who doubts this may merely consider that not attempting to paint your house perfectly will in no way result in it magically being painted perfectly.

So what do we call a lack of results? We dislike that there are X number of deed Y. So we criminalize Y and X goes up? Any logical person would call that a failure.

Using the painting example, I hire a guy to paint my house and offer 20 for each room he paints. After 2 days, he’s only done 2 rooms out of a 13 room house. To try and speed him up, I change the deal. Until you finish all the rooms, there is no payment. I come home the next day to find he’s done nothing. While this doesn’t mean I am at fault…it means my change in rules didn’t work. Indeed, it may have contributed to nothing getting done.

All human effort is imprecise and imperfect but that is expected in advance by honest people cognizant of their limitations for the point is not perfection but struggle for or against a given outcome.

Let’s call this what this is. It’s a moral/legal version of economic liberalism. Just because something doesn’t work AT ALL, and indeed gets the opposite result, doesn’t mean it doesnt work! Let’s double down and do the exact same thing TWICE as hard. Just as Obama argues that things would be so much worse without his stimulus, you argue that the world would be worse without this law.

But the law doesn’t work. And it makes teenagers and twenties sex offenders. So now. We have TWO, count them one, two, problems instead of one. Your solution sucks.

If you can prove through proper evidence and logic and dissertation that modern American society is properly teaching its children to resist abuse of alcohol and that there are not already a surfeit of immature and irresponsible children already in the society as a ready made market for abuse, then I would be willing to consider the idea.

This violates what you just said above. Let me repeat YOU for your benefit:

Imperfection in results does not in any way logically imply that the exact opposite would be more successful.

So, you’re just arguing in circles. That teen pregnancy went up doesn’t mean your ideas don’t work. But couldn’t I just argue the same thing here? That just because there is alcohol abuse doesn’t mean parents aren’t trying? Do you listen to yourself?

That you fall back on the usual “nanny state” theme without attempting to make proper cogent argument only strengthens this as proper supposition based on the available evidence.

Um, I actually made a pretty kickass, though mocking, refutation of your argument above:

So how has illegalizing underaged sex worked for preventing pregnancy?
It hasn’t? Hmmm.
Oh and it makes our kids sex offenders too?SUPER! Twofer!

Here, once more, for the benefit of repetition, since they say threes work best…Oh and it makes our kids sex offenders too?

Please do try to think beyond getting what you want and beyond your infatuation with your seeming intellectual breakthrough of grossly incorrect self-consistency. To embrace libertarianism in the way you and Rob do is to set yourselves as smarter than the whole of your species and to say it to them to their faces which is the same as liberals do but they have at least a much better delivery in directing the anger to be blamed on some other scapegoat group and they already got to the people ahead of you.

Let’s toss aside your snide remarks, and the fact that your ideas don’t work, and actually address this “human history comment. Cause guess what chuckles, it ain’t on your side.

Throughout the entirety of human history, we have recognized puberty as the onset of adulthood. We encouraged “children” to get married between 14-16. They’d hold a job, or at least be an apprentice, and most would have a family be age 18. The idea of saving yourself for marriage then was an easily attainable goal. A few years max, and boom you’re married! Today, we encourage waiting til marriage, and tell teens they’re children til they’re 18 (by which time, in olden days, they’d have 2 or 3 kids already), and THEN start looking for a mate. Throughout the bible, children were allowed to drink wine.

Oops.

(Continued)

And it’s different than condoms in school. Condoms in school is, again, the state.

Again, shouldn’t our children be our responsibility and not the state’s?

The excuse of they are going to do it anyway is the same excuse used for condoms in school, premarital sex at the parents house and a shit load of other liberal thinking. Thanks Rob and others for joining the left side.

I’m not on the left. Authoritarians like robert108 are on the left. I’m in favor of the state not making parenting decisions for you.

If you don’t want your kids to drink, don’t let them drink. I happen to think that exposing kids to alcohol at a younger age and teaching them to deal with it responsibly is a better way of handling the situation than outright prohibition until 21.

Maybe you disagree. Either way, shouldn’t it be our decision and not the state’s?

Rob:

If we ended alcohol’s taboo status by making it legal for Americans of all ages I think we’d see less abuse of it among the young.

This statement is the single most ignorant thing I’ve read from any human regarding their own species all year.

There is no taboo on other beverages and foods which do not have a chemical effect on the brain, thus skewing judgment, precisely because they do not skew judgment. Alcohol is proven to have an adverse effect on reasoning and for that reason every society which has developed alcoholic beverages has strong taboos on its overuse and strong condemnation of drunkenness in those of authority and almost as strong for those at large in general.

Children are by definition without experience of adults and in a formative stage where the way they will be as adults, driving the nation and society will be created. They are immature and need their minds sharp which is why proper sleep and nutrition is held to be of great importance in every human society which aspires to an educated and mature adult population.

In a time of mass social upheaval where ethics and morality seem to be alien and our children are learning to do better ONLY as a reaction to exposure to inadequate parenting and a casually negligent society which shows little proper care for them and instead displays to them a sense of hypocrisy in the constant political use of them as a conceptual group and not as individuals who should be nurtured for the sake of humanity, to give them a further avenue of avoidance of personal reconstruction for the betterment of themselves is ludicrous.

On top of this the deleterious effects of over consumption of alcohol are well known starting with the liver.

Further, our business sector is already running outside of ethical and moral considerations as it is in reaction to the endless partisan fighting back and forth without an eye to right or wrong much less concern for the commonweal. To legalize alcohol for all ages is to set up the poorest and least stable to become a new target market for all manners of popular alcoholic drinks and it doesn’t take a genius to foresee that.

To posit that we would see less abuse by making it legal across the board when basic knowledge of human nature and the current moral and ethical state of the nation is what it is, is to be supremely naive. I expect this though out of the modern libertarian mindset which in the name of the dream of getting what it wants is willing to look less than honestly on itself and its fellow man and quite selectively as they are more than willing to see themselves and their fellow man in a less than hopeful light when something that is too much for them to accept is put to it.

It’s akin to saying we’d see less teenage pregnancy if we simply legalized sex at any age. Utter poppycock showing that libertarianism is ultimately the twin to liberalism.