(06-25-2016 10:51 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(06-25-2016 08:44 AM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(06-25-2016 06:44 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  The breakdown by age is pretty stark:

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/brexit-...te-n598481

Basically people under 50 wanted to remain, especially millennials. They basically had this forced on them by a bunch of bitter, resentful old people, and will have to live with it long after the "Leave" voters are gone.

How dare those old people vote! Who do they think they are? Don't they know that young people know everything? Heck, they will tell you so themselves...

Everyone of every age should have the right to vote and have equal say. But I did find it interesting that the division was so stark between the older and the younger generations. And what's so interesting about it, is that inherently, the younger generation are much more affected by the outcome of the vote. Not only do they have to live with the results the longest, but they are the generation that becomes more constrained. The older generation are set, they won't be moving, won't be working - they will be living in the UK, and that's about it. Now the younger generation will have to deal with any new hurdles that this places on them working "abroad" and creating a life in the EU, but not in the UK, if desired.

Now, who knows if there will be any additional hurdles created to free movement/living between the UK and the remaining EU countries, but your appearing dismissal of the greater influence that the decision will have on the youth of the UK is just as bad as the previous comments apparent disdain for the older voters wielding more influence.

I did not, and do not, dismiss the theory that the decision will have greater impact on the young. I dismiss the theory that that matters in whose opinion should have the most weight. Youth, by definition, is inexperienced, and in politics especially, young voters have shown time and again that they don't always know what they're doing (the swoon for Obama in 2008 being one fairly clear example). The perspective of experience -- of people who have had careers and raised families, who have seen human folly as well as a human greatness -- should not count for less than the self-interest of backpackers.

Moreover, it is entirely reasonable that those Britons who are old and wise enough to remember war (both hot and cold), to have seen the deluded statist "isms" of the last century, to have a sense of just how shallow the roots of liberty can be outside the Blessed Plot and its common-law descendants, might just feel that the bureaus of Continental Europe -- the land of popes and commissars, of guillotines and gas chambers -- are a less reliable protector of the common weal than are the House of Commons and the English Channel. Youth -- famous for its inattention to history and to risk -- may have a different theory, but it is not a better or more important one.