Big countries vs. small countries

[Welverin]

I disagree on both. I voted before I was 21 and did so responsibly, not just picking a bunch of people I knew nothing of, and knew plenty of my peers that did so as well. And 18 is a reasonable age for the military, when you consider historically that people were fighting at younger ages than that.

Historically people did everything at younger ages, doesn't make it reasonable now.

I do like keeping the drinking age up, and wish it'd be more vigorously enforced. My freshman dorm took that law, chugged a few rounds of it, then vomitted all over it. And then went out to throw a wheelchair around in the hallway, cause apparently that's what drunken idiots do for fun.

Doesn't speak well for the responsibleness of eighteen yearolds.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Admittedly my knowledge only comes from US TV shows, but you let children* drive don't you?

*As in teenagers under the age of 16.

As with every question regarding laws in the US, the answer is "depends on the state". I can give you the answers for California, but I don't have a clue how it works in other states.

In California, you can get a learner's permit at the age of 15 1/2, and get a full license at the age of 16. However, both of these are under pretty strict regulation, requiring the teenager to have gone through a driver's education and training courses, and severely limiting when and how that teenager can drive. At 18, you can get past the limits of a provisional license and get a real driver's license. The children of professional farmers can operate farming vehicles, but there are a number of restrictions on that which I am not 100% certain of (and I'd rather not visit my local branch of the DMV to check). Of course, all of this applies only to public roads, so you can do basically whatever you like on private land and private roads...

On a side note, this brings up another pretty big point of difference between Americans and Europeans. Europeans tend to think of laws (and many other things) as being a country-based affair, so they always talk about "American laws" and such, even though the vast majority of laws that govern day-to-day life in the US are at the state level. There is no federal law against murder in the US, instead each individual state has made murder illegal using their own laws, and some of these are actually quite different in their specifics. Even things like driver's licenses don't cross over very well. A driver's license from Nevada has about the same weight in California as a driver's license from France would (it gives you the legal right to drive, but only for a grace period after your arrival during which you need to get a California license).

 

[Orius]

I do like keeping the drinking age up, and wish it'd be more vigorously enforced. My freshman dorm took that law, chugged a few rounds of it, then vomitted all over it. And then went out to throw a wheelchair around in the hallway, cause apparently that's what drunken idiots do for fun.

I think what's really needed isn't so much an arbitrary age, but rather an expectation of responsibilities. So it doesn't bother me if the drinking age is at 18, as long as drinkers that age are held to the same standards as adults. Naturally there's going to be a problem if legal drinking at 18 leads to (well more) college binge drinking. Even now with the age at 21, a lot of people seem to think you spend your 21st birthday going to the bar and getting smashed without having to use a fake ID. It's not just booze either, but things like tobacco, sex, etc. You're considered an adult now, so try to act like one, and it's not a suggestion.

On a side note, this brings up another pretty big point of difference between Americans and Europeans. Europeans tend to think of laws (and many other things) as being a country-based affair, so they always talk about "American laws" and such, even though the vast majority of laws that govern day-to-day life in the US are at the state level. There is no federal law against murder in the US, instead each individual state has made murder illegal using their own laws, and some of these are actually quite different in their specifics. Even things like driver's licenses don't cross over very well. A driver's license from Nevada has about the same weight in California as a driver's license from France would (it gives you the legal right to drive, but only for a grace period after your arrival during which you need to get a California license).

Yeah, a lot of everyday matters are delegated to the states rather than the federal government. Many time the states do the same things, particularly with criminal law enforcement, but in other areas like say driver's licenses, education, guns, and so on, they sometime differ. It frees up the federal government from having micromanage a lot of stuff by delegating responsibilities, which would be more difficult in a country as large as the US. At least, I consider that an advantage with my political views, that and state governments are a bit more repsonsive to the public than the federal government. Though sometimes the feds use spending to force the states to do what they want anyway (that's how we got the drinking age at 21 for all states, Washington threatened to withhold funding for highways if the states didn't comply). This page explains it fairly well:

American Federalism - Television Tropes & Idioms

Anyway, it's probably similar to the breakdowns between the EU and its member states, except that the American states aren't sovereign nations.

 

[Aeolius]

When a fire breaks out in the Principality of Sealand , the whole "country" is affected.