Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is right about increasing the voting age to 25 for those who don't participate in public service or who fail a civics test.  Twenty-five also happens to be about the age when irresponsible and self-pitying snowflakes finally start emerging into adulthood.

It will require a constitutional amendment, but there's precedent for changing the voting age with all deliberate speed.  The 26th Amendment, which reduced the voting age of citizens from 21 to 18, was ratified in record time. 

Back then, much of the momentum came from leftist sloganeering around the Vietnam War, such as "old enough to fight, old enough to vote."  But now we have an all-volunteer force in which a very small percentage of Americans serve.  Those who do tend to grow up more quickly and have earned the right to vote.  Those who don't serve are comparatively tardy in developing a sense of civic duty.

It's well documented that 25 is the new 18, which could underpin a compelling new slogan to give impetus to Vivek's proposal.  Indeed, the National Institutes of Health declares that the adolescent brain is fully developed at about age 25.

That today's youth are slow to reach adulthood is one reason that they are subjected to exorbitant car insurance premiums.  Those insurance actuaries are quite smart and generally know what they're doing when the rubber hits the road.

Whether or not it is correctly attributed to Sir Winston Churchill, someone with wisdom stated, in effect, "If you're not liberal at 20 you have no heart; if you're not conservative by 40 you have no brain."  For a constitutional republic to function smoothly, ultimately, the brain has to rule the heart.  But as we are now seeing in the debt ceiling kerfuffle, bleeding-heart excesses and unfettered appetites have to be tamed.  After all, spending like drunken Democrats under the aegis of Modern Monetary Theory represents voodoo economics.  Hey, that might be a good question on Vivek's civic test.

Emerging adults who do serve, or who pass a civics test, are well on their way to meeting Vivek's voting qualifications.  At least they are mentally equipped to resist progressive political propaganda, if they choose.

By contrast, those who attend university before serving are often incapable of thinking for themselves.  Their impressionable minds, frequently altered by foreign substances and riddled with the liberal disease, uncritically embrace the first contorted notions of social justice that pop into their heads.  

Actually, one feels sorry for them, because too often they have to put up with shameful antics like this from an art professor at Hunter College in New York (she used rude language while violently dismantling a pro-life display).  Anyone daring to express intellectual curiosity and creativity in her class is likely to get an F.  No wonder the snowflake youngsters, for the most part, are intellectually lazy and prone to an art professor–style meltdown when confronted with reality beyond academia's ivory towers.

Our Founders bequeathed us a constitutional republic.  Let's keep it, in part, by ensuring that the electorate is not ravaged by immodest and immature mob rule spearheaded by unglued art professors, or worse — the hysterical Squad of Democrat basket cases.  Life is already challenging for the precious snowflakes, so we shouldn't impose upon them the requisite due diligence of examining campaign issues, candidate positions, and voting materials — until they've served or demonstrated civic competence. 

Vivek, as usual, is on to something.  Furtherance of his proposal could be facilitated by the increasing body of evidence that 25 is the new 18.

Image: TalkAbout.