National Review writer: 18-year-olds are too stupid to vote and should be beaten... [View all]

[cynatnite]

The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg is claiming that 18-year-olds should be denied the right to vote because they are “so frickin’ stupid about so many things.” In a video first posted by the Daily Caller, Goldberg laments the culture’s obsession with youth and argues that conservatives should “beat out” young people’s belief that “socialism is better than capitalism.” Goldberg is the third National Review writer in two months to face controversy:

GOLDBERG: Personally, I think the voting age should be much, higher, not lower. I think it was a mistake to lower it to 18, to be brutally honest….It is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity than youth. We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young. And yet there’s this thing in this culture where, ‘Oh, young people are for it so it must be special.’ No, the reason young people are for it because they don’t know better. That’s why we call them young people. [...]

The fact that young people think socialism is better than capitalism. That’s proof of what social scientists call their stupidity and their ignorance. And that’s something that conservatives have to beat out of them. Either literally or figuratively as far as I’m concerned.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/12/jonah-goldberg-young-people-are-so-frickin-stupid-video/#ooid=54bHhuNDrdPIqn9GwkhEDjoPplQ_7xya

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/06/01/493804/national-review-writer-conservatives-should-beat-young-people-who-think-socialism-is-better-than-capitalism/