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Re:The Banality of Systemic Evil by _delirium on Tuesday September 24, 2013 @08:41AM (#6437495)
The alignment of the two ages is actually pretty recent, at least in the US. Traditionally, military conscription age was 18, while voting was 21. It was moved (in 1971) due to agitation from people who argued that it was unethical to conscript people to die for their country, but not trust the same people to vote for their leaders. But that's merely an argument for why voting age should be <= conscription age, not necessarily an argument that it should be ==.
Re:The Banality of Systemic Evil by nooneelse on Tuesday September 24, 2013 @04:56PM (#6440694)
I think it a pretty good argument that the voting age should be less than the conscription age by enough that the person conscription has had a chance to participate in the voting that led to the government which is conscripting them. It sets the order of events more in line with a hypothetical ideal social contract to which one agrees by one's actions and then owes such a high price to.