Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., repeatedly suggested a leading Arab American activist is a Hamas supporter when she testified Tuesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on hate crimes, and he told her she should hide her “head in a bag.”
The activist, Maya Berry, said repeatedly that she did not support Hamas and was “disappointed” by the minuteslong exchange toward the end of a hearing called “A Threat to Justice Everywhere: Stemming the Tide of Hate Crimes in America.”
“You are the executive director of the Arab American Institute, are you not?” Kennedy said at the beginning of the exchange. She said she was and agreed with Kennedy that she is a Democratic activist.
“You support Hamas, do you not?” Kennedy asked, referring to the militant group behind the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel. The question prompted gasps and surprised laughs from the audience.
“Senator, oddly enough, I’m going to say thank you for that question, because it demonstrates the purpose of our hearing today in a very effective way,” Berry responded. Kennedy then cut her off and insisted he needed a yes-or-no answer.
They’re children. That’s why. We could talk about lowering the voting age to something like 16 but trying to stan all the kids for voting is ridiculous. Using them as a precedent to empower their parents with extra votes is extra ridiculous. And this isn’t a McDonalds, it’s the most fundamental right in any democracy.
You’re right, it’s the most fundamental right in democracy, so why are we denying it to them?
“They’re children” isn’t actually a reason. By not giving them a vote, you’re essentially telling them that their needs don’t matter.
That doesn’t make sense. There’s no logical connection there. Their needs obviously matter because their parents take care of them.
Also, JD isn’t saying to give a 4 year old a vote. He wants to give that kid’s parents an extra vote. There’s no logical connection to those parents using the vote for their child.
And if you’re modifying it to say the children should vote then I’m not sure you understand the actual idea of voting. Voters should be making informed choices and a 4 year old has trouble figuring what cereal they want, and is suspicious of this thing adults call math. Asking them to vote is ridiculous.
If their parents take care of them, and their needs matter, then why don’t the parents get the vote for them?
We give parents the proxy for children’s rights all the time, why is voting different?
As was in the original argument, why does Jane with 3 kids (4 people) and Barb childless (1 person) have the same input on how the government is funding schools, or how healthcare is being distributed, or even on things like environmental regulation. All three of those things will directly impact the children now and in the future.
Because that’s a false premise. Barb still uses the environment and the education system. Her doctors and her water do come from somewhere. She has direct, personal, interest in those systems giving good results.
And the proxy is ridiculous. They’re signing school permission slips. Anything big has to wait until the child is old enough to consent, around 16 in most places. Furthermore proxy voting has never worked at scale. It has been abused literally every time it’s been used, which is why we’ve gone to giving one vote directly to each person.
The only thing this is meant to do is juice birth rates and feed into Nationalist Christian ideology about everyone needing to be in a family with kids.
It’s false that children exist and are people? Barb is one person, Jane and her three kids are four persons. You are effectively saying that children don’t matter by removing their right to vote.
Barb only has a direct interest in the short term (her remaining lifespan) and we’ve already seen many political policies designed only to benefit older people voted in despite them being harmful to the youth. This is exactly the same problem we see with companies pushing hard for quarterly profits but fucking their long term profitability, just on a slightly longer timescale.
As for your assertation that anything big has to wait until the child is old enough to consent? That is not how it works at all.
Parents give consent to conduct extreme medical interventions all the time, from Chemo to Amputation, they can also consent on behalf of their child for other unnecessary bodily interventions like Circumcision, Tattoos, and Piercings. Parent’s take legal action on behalf of their children for all sorts of matters. Parents even get to just pack them up and move them to a different country if they want to.
Proxy voting doesn’t work at scale? Yes it does. Proxy voting is literally how the US government operates. You vote for a local politician, who then votes on bills on your behalf. This is not a direct democracy, it’s a republic which is a form of proxy at a massive scale.
Is there something wrong with higher birth rates? Are people not allowed to choose to have children? Are those children not citizens?
None of your arguments explain why Children shouldn’t get a vote.
Oh look, here come the straw men and false equivalencies. So we’re done here. You can’t seem to defend this with anything solid.
Straw men?
You’re the one dodging everything. You won’t even admit children are people.