HORRORS!  HE WANTS TO LOWER THE DRINKING AGE!

Actually, I do.  But I'm not doing it alone, nor am I recommending it alone.  

I've put away the horror film references (don't worry, this is a one-time break) and I'm trying a quick social commentary.  Being me, though, I'm using an idea that already horrifies a lot of readers.  

The MADD maedchens will disagree ferociously with me, but I believe the drinking age should be lowered to 18.  

In fact, I think society has already lowered it without telling us.  

I have three reasons for my belief—the rite of passage, enforcement apathy and the lone stand of a single college president.

First, virtually every other activity that we as a society deem an economic, personal or social rite of passage is legal at 18.  

An 18-year-old can vote, fight in a war, drive, babysit, own property and/or a business, sign a contract, get married, get tattooed, get surgically enhanced, star in pornography and gamble (within some limits)in Vegas.  

The drinking age at 21 seems an antiquated concept at best, an old maid of a law who doesn’t realize the circle of life is spinning on without her.  Legalizing 18-year-old drinking at the moment is almost an afterthought anyway, an “oh yeah” shoe Congress hasn’t dropped yet. 

Second, the law is soundly ignored in so many venues as to make it an absurdity.  

For every convenience store that says “no” to a 20-year-old co-ed looking to supply the party, she will find a dozen that say “yes.”  

Fake IDs (presented to myopic bartenders in dimly smoky clubs) are a bigger industry now than forged documents for Jews were under the Reichstag.  

And every family has one uncle or brother or cousin all willing to front for neophyte alkies and buy the booze.  The one most interested in partying will always buy.

Finally, there is the president of Notre Dame college, Father John Jenkins, who made headlines when he refused to use college funds to police off-campus parties, despite MADD boycotts and Federal threats of cutting funds (as close to blackmail as a government can get without getting actually Stalinist).    

Jenkins reasoned that his limited economic resources had better things to do for higher education, rather than bankrupting the fund hiring party Gestapo to make sure that all 99 bottles of beer stay on the wall. 

It’s time for us to own up, cut the cord, rend the veil, let the lame rise and walk and lower the drinking age.  It may be non-PC MADDness to say so, but we as a society already lowered it a long time ago; our actions deafen our words--and muzzle our over-ancient laws.