Rights without duties. For years, the left has been pushing for the voting age in political elections to be lowered from eighteen to sixteen. The reasons given are noble.
«We must broaden the weight of young people in our society», was the slogan with which Enrico Letta, then head of the Democrats, launched what he himself called «a battle». «The civic passion of so many boys and girls must be rewarded», echoed his predecessor as secretary, Nicola Zingaretti. «If at sixteen you can work and pay taxes, you must also have the right to vote», added the enfant prodige Luigi Di Maio. «Yes to lowering the age, young people have shown great civic awareness with their climate mobilizations», sided Nicola Fratoianni, representing the eco-anxious, with the blessing of Angelo Bonelli, according to whom it is «a choice of democracy and future to recognize minors the right to choose who governs». But the most peremptory was Giuseppe Conte: «At that age, one already has full psychophysical maturity».
Don Patriciello puts the left against the wall: “It’s not slaps flying, but knives”
“It’s no longer slaps flying, but knives.” This is how Don Maurizio Patriciello photographs the situation…
THE GIFT
How much hypocrisy. The real reason for the proposal to vote at sixteen is well-known: Pd, M5S, and Avs rely on the inexperience of those entering life. The ballot paper for minors is conceived as a gift, a right to which no duties correspond. The logic reflects the way of thinking of our progressive parties, which are decades behind. They are convinced that today’s young people are like their grandparents: all idealists, bourgeois revolutionaries, and scarcely practical, and therefore naturally lean left, in the name of the collective good to which, not yet working, they are not called to contribute. Thus, they tickle the young people without asking anything in return, but they are the first to know that lowering the age is just a desperate operation to increase the percentage of votes in the ballot box.
The proof of this is the chorus of protests that has risen from the left against the government, which has just approved a law changing the criteria for the imputability of young people between fourteen and eighteen years old. Coincidentally, the same group that, when it comes to garnering consensus, considers our young people to be brave and mature citizens who cannot be denied the right to vote for the left, is criticizing it. Old enough to vote for the Pd, but not mature enough to answer for their crimes: this is how the left, with a squinting gaze, sees Italian minors. According to the progressive front, it’s easier to have an idea of who it’s convenient to be governed by, something that escapes the majority of adults, rather than understanding that it’s wrong to stab a peer or an elderly person to rob them, vandalize a city, or deal drugs. Lunar, a reasoning too bizarre even for our opposition.
In fact, upon closer inspection, the first ones not to believe what they say are precisely the exponents of the left, who outline scenarios of extreme authoritarianism, claim that high school students will no longer be able to demonstrate in the streets, and speak of a distortion of juvenile criminal justice. In reality, the government’s rule does nothing more than reverse the burden of proof of imputability. Until now, anyone under eighteen who commits a crime, except in very serious cases of rape, armed robbery, and murder, is considered incapable of understanding and willing, and therefore of understanding the meaning of their action. It is up to the magistrate, if they wish, with the advice of psychologists and social workers, to establish whether the young person knew what they were doing.
When the government’s proposal comes into force, it will be assumed that even a minor, if over fourteen years old—an age below which they remain not imputable—is punishable, unless they can prove to be particularly immature or even incapable of freely determining their actions. No revolution, no power taken away from magistrates and experts; only the application of the constitutional principle that different situations require unequal responses.
The PD sides with the ‘maranza’ and incites Italy against Meloni: “Your children in jail”
As soon as the law changing the rules on the imputability of minors between 14 and 18 years old was approved, immediately &e…
ACCOUNTABILITY
The message the government wants to send to young people is, as Giorgia Meloni summarized, that those who make mistakes should pay. The reversal of the burden of proof makes young people accountable and also allows, technically, for faster and thus more effective justice. «Too many hide behind non-punishability», said Don Maurizio Patricello, the anti-Camorra priest of Caivano, making it clear how it actually favors the recruitment and permanence of very young people in organized crime. Indeed, juvenile justice’s primary goal is the rehabilitation of the young person, not punishment. The imputable young person can be directed to probation, taken into care by the State, and set on the path to recovery. The non-imputable person is instantly returned to the environment that made them a criminal.
And at this point, one wonders whether minor criminals are more irresponsible, or the adult opposition members who want to let beardless youths vote but then, if they commit crimes, prefer to leave them in the hands of the mafia and camorra.
