Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “should run for president and dare the Supreme Court to stop her.” So says a leftist writer who further emphatically states, “Immigrants, young people, and everyone else should be allowed to run.” He also says that the Constitution should be altered to allow this and calls the natural-born-American requirement “ridiculous.” Yes, utopia is an open field, open borders, open elections, and open minds — so open the brains fall out.
The proposal, by Vox editor and co-founder Matthew Yglesias, is just the latest in a cultural revolution that has torn down statues and Christmas displays, wants to eliminate the Senate and Supreme Court, and would, if it could, tear up the Constitution.
Yet we could tear up — in sadness or laughter — reading Yglesias’ fanboy trumpeting of Cortez. The congresswoman-elect burst on to the scene when she scored a June primary upset over longtime incumbent and Democrat establishmentarian Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th congressional district. She only captured about 16,000 votes on a 13-percent turnout. But she has since burst out and become a leftist rock star because, opines Yglesias, “of her incredible wit, charisma, social media savvy, and basic political smarts.” I’m almost at a loss for words.
He also says the politician is loathed by many of her colleagues because, in part, she’s “more impressive than they are” and that she is “one of the most talented players.”
Is there another Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one I’m unaware of?
In reality, far from Ygelsias’ description, the Cortez we know is more like the simpleton Chance character in the 1979 film Being There. She has been good for gaffes and laughs, with lowlights such as nattering on about the “three chambers of government” and how she’s going to be “inaugurated,” saying employment is only low “because everyone has two jobs” (and she boasts a Boston U. economics degree!), and claiming that her Medicare-for-all plan would cut down on “funeral expenses.” (Well, she won me over: I’m definitely supporting the candidate who can cure death).
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Yglesias also extols Cortez’ “everywoman persona” and writes that she has “spent more time as a bartender than a politician,” not mentioning that her experience stealing tips (according to a coworker) in her former field has perhaps well prepared her for her new one. Yet he then demonstrates that he may be a Being There journalist, or a typical one (dishonest), as he bills her as “a Latina from the Bronx.”
Uh, no. I actually lived in the Bronx until I was almost Cortez’ age (29) and have since resided in the county she was raised in from the time she was five. So I’m acquainted with the town of her years she can remember: posh and patrician Yorktown Heights. Believe me, she wasn’t carrying a switchblade and rolling with the Sharks.
Yet while Cortez may not be the best poster girl for the case for scrapping the presidential minimum-age requirement (35), Yglesias’ article is not mainly about people but ideas. So let’s analyze them.
Under the intra-article title “Young is better than old,” Yglesias complains about the “septuagenarian in the White House” who may be in “mental decline” and mentions that 2020 Democrat frontrunners “Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden — are 77 and 76, respectively.”
“There’s nothing wrong with old people per se,” he continues, “but essentially everyone has lost a step or two both mentally and physically by their mid-70s.”
Now, curiously, his leftist set typically bristles at generalizations; consider the reaction if someone said “Whites are better than blacks” or “Men are better than women.” But his generalization is an incomplete statement. It should read “Young is better than old at ______.”
While older people certainly have lost “a step” in most physical endeavors, research contradicts Yglesias’ implication regarding intellectual capacity. In fact, reports Inc.com, “In some ways, you might not reach your cognitive best until your 60s or 70s.”
In particular, older people are superior in “crystallized intelligence,” defined “as the ability to use learned knowledge and experience.” That could be sort of important when governing.
Yglesias also makes the point that “29 (Ocasio-Cortez’s age) just honestly isn’t that young. People younger than that are routinely trusted with life-and-death situations in a huge array of contexts, ranging from parenting to military service.” This is true and brings us to an interesting point.
The Founders certainly viewed 29 as a mature age. Not only didn’t people live as long two centuries back, but children often assumed adult roles and responsibilities. Tender-age orphans, for instance, might become apprentices in a craft. Even more strikingly, the youngest U.S. naval captain was 12-year-old David Farragut, a boy who’d been commissioned a midshipman (an officer) at age seven in 1809; Giocante de Casabianca, who bravely manned his post and perished in the Battle of the Nile in 1798, was aged somewhere between 10 and 13.
Yet despite young lads in such positions being common, the Founders still made 35 the minimum age for the presidency. This was for the same reason why, while boys were conscripted into Sparta’s military camps at seven, one couldn’t be a member of the city-state’s ruling council until age 60: fighting for your land, though sometimes necessary and noble, isn’t governing your land — wisdom matters.
Oh, sure, Tom Wilson was correct in noting, “Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.” But take a person with the gift of prudence and who seeks to cultivate it, let him reach his 50s or 60s, and you can have a sage.
In contrast, a 20-something with that same gift has the same great potential, but likely lacks the experience necessary to have fully realized it. As a competent person in any endeavor — work or play, discipline or sport — knows, experience counts.
So while Yglesias writes that the age-35 rule is a relic bequeathed to us “from the 18th century [that] nobody would seriously propose creating today if not for status quo bias,” this is a bit like claiming that since 18-year-old soldiers can fight on the front lines, irrational bias is the only reason they aren’t generals.
Also note that with how modern society stunts people’s moral, spiritual, and emotional development, 29 isn’t what it used to be. Do you think young Officer Farragut grew up glued to an iPhone and playing video games? Is today’s average child of 14 — historically, a common age for marriage — ready for that move? If anything, we shouldn’t be thinking about lowering the age for running for president, but raising the age for voting for one.
Yglesias also makes the case for immigrants as presidential candidates, writing that when “this was in the news, almost nobody actually defended the prohibition (because it’s ridiculous).” I’ll defend it because it’s not.
It’s certainly true that some immigrants become more staunchly pro-American than many natives. Why, I know an actor who claims Mayflower ancestors, but considers traditional Americans “unevolved.”
Nonetheless, immigrants are more likely to exhibit divided loyalty, especially on an emotional level, that realm resistant to reason. And if a president must ponder military or punitive economic action against a nation, it may cloud his judgment if it happens to be the one he grew up in.
Of course, one may ask why we don’t just judge everyone as an individual, but would we apply this to all age-based limitations? For example, people can’t lawfully enter into contracts until 18 even though some 17-year-olds are more mature than many 19-year-olds. Other things restricted based on age are driving, buying firearms, voting, purchasing alcohol or cigarettes, and marriage. Profiling-based group limitations sometimes must be instituted.
Lastly, there’s a deeper issue here. Yglesias’ age-oriented proposal and “Young is better than old” prejudice reflects a “youth” culture that for a significant reason doesn’t respect age:
It doesn’t believe in the ageless.
That is to say, the best of elders’ characteristic strength is wisdom, while the youth are more in tune with fashions. Note, however, that wisdom is knowledge of what is “true” or “good” — of the ageless — and why would this be valued in a relativistic time in which people don’t believe in (absolute) Truth, in the good, but only in “values” or “perspectives”?
Those not perceiving the ageless only see the aged, and they will always subordinate the former to fashions not just because fashions seem new, exciting, “cool,” and are popular with the herd, but because of the common bias called chronological chauvinism. To wit: It’s superior because it’s of my time. It’s prejudice against the alien group known as “ancestors” and in favor of your own group, which, of course, is “better” because you happen to be in it.
Unfortunately, since only the ageless can tell you when your fashions are fallacies, when your new ideas are simply old mistakes, ignorance of it can be deadly.
Photo: AP Images
