I Have to Laugh

[Occhidiangela]

You and your peers and yourself were the folks whose service and sacrifice was behind the dropping of the voting and drinking ages to 18 from 21.

Seems the drinking age ran back up to 21 in most states after the Baby Boomers all dried up and realized that their kids would get drunk in college too, just like they did. :P However, they left the voting age at 18 even with the removal of the draft. (Hmmmm with 'selective service registration still required for men at 18, maybe we should let all men who register buy beer again with their 'draft card' as proof of ID. What a concept! Drinking and voting go hand in hand, right? I bet Budweiser would lobby for this one . . . )

In any case, that was the state of play when I hit 18, and I got to learn while in 'college' just what my limits insofar as intoxicants were. I consider that an important part of my own education. Without you guys, I'd have had to wait until there was less room for error, or gotten a fake ID.

Thanks, even though millions of brain cells died due to my freedom to soak my being in beer. Learning was achieved, one hangover at a time.

PS: The tone may be light, but the thanks is sincere on more than one level.

Oh, and about liberal veterans who have no time for conservatives, no kidding, they are all over the place, even down here in Texas. I particularly enjoyed one afternoon in front of a C Span show featuring Veterans against the Iraq war. Rather than a lot of empty noise, sound bytes and BS, the presentation they made, the speakers they had, the questions they raised, and the points they made were excellent, and provided me with food for a great deal of thought.

I wish more folks would have presented their views as intelligently. (Fox News, are you listening?) It would have changed the tenor of the public debate for the better, by orders of magnitude, though I wonder at whether or not that could have changed policy.