By Noel S. Williams

A broad franchise is a laudable goal, but a knowledgeable electorate is crucial to a functional democracy. Maybe we can't outlaw stupidity, but we can surely restrict the impact of youthful naiveté by increasing the voting age for non-military personnel.

Much of the rationale behind the 26th Amendment, which reduced the voting age from 21 to 18, is flawed. "If I'm old enough to serve, I'm old enough to vote," was a popular refrain in the '60s, but now we have an all-volunteer force in which a very small percentage of Americans serve.

Ultimately, setting the voting age is somewhat arbitrary, but one way to keep naive young people with immodest judgment off the polls is to repeal the 26th Amendment.

Sure, 18-year-olds can get married, but their divorce rates are as excessive as their unfettered desires. They can sign contracts and incur massive student debt, but they can't drink alcohol until they're 21. A Pew Research Center study found that 53 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds live at home. Moreover, one of the biggest selling points of abominable Obamacare is that children can stay on their parent's health-care plan until they're 26. That's worth repeating: children.

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Most children are in training; they are takers with little to offer society right now. Many will eventually become productive and competent members of society, but they generally mature less quickly than those who choose to serve. Just contrast the self-discipline of our young military members – who make enormous sacrifices in protecting our national security interests – with the shambolic antics of their cohorts who attend university.

Following President Obama's dozy performance at the first presidential debate, the Rebel Pundit asked University of Wisconsin-Madison students whether Obama should've been allowed to use a teleprompter. Many of the respondents treated this farcical question more like a proposition from 20th century philosopher Wittgenstein. About half suffered through contorted ruminations before eventually concluding it was indeed unfair – unfair, they said – that Obama couldn't use a teleprompter.

It would be comical, if not so pathetic. Let me relieve their cognitive turmoil: Only the moderator, particularly if it's Candy Crowley, should use a teleprompter during debates.

Now, I realize our democracy is not underpinned by the motto, "one [clever] person, one vote," but inexperience combined with ignorance produces a vulnerable persona that readily succumbs to emotional rhetoric like recent non-substantive calls for "change we can believe in" and "hope and change."

Worryingly, UW-Madison was ranked 10th among public schools by U.S. News & World Report. It shares this lofty ranking with another "UW"; that is, the University of Washington. Ironically, these UWs share another misfortune: inane students with opinions utterly detached from the empirical reality that's born of experience.

Here's one blatant example from only a few years ago: Coeds on the Student Senate at UW, many under the age of 21, voted down a memorial for alumnus Gregory "Pappy" Boyington of "Black Sheep Squadron" fame. Two reasons, provided by a sophomore and a junior, were: there're already enough tributes to rich, white men; and that a member of the Marine Corps is not the sort of person UW wants to produce. For the record, Boyington, an incredible hero credited with downing 28 enemy aircraft in World War II, was from a working-class family and part Sioux.

I suspect the brainwashed students at UW might've benefited from a bit more authoritative parenting – I suggest to them that we can do far, far worse than proudly emulating Marine Corp values. Those Marines, along with other service members, are not living in seedy college dorms nor at home with mommy, but are on the front lines, protecting our freedoms. Moreover, they express gratitude in being able to serve a cause greater than themselves. Their service is fraught with huge danger and responsibility, and unlike the coddled, spoiled students at the UWs, they should retain the right to vote at age 18.

After a speech in the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Sen. Obama was told he would have the vote of thinking Americans. In response, he quipped: "That's not good enough, I need a majority." In search of non-thinking Americans, he swaggered into university auditoriums trying to "rock the vote," then recited emotional platitudes from behind a teleprompter. The audience of teleprompter-ignoramuses dutifully swooned in trance-like deference. Sure enough, Obama got a disproportionately larger percentage of the young vote compared to votes from wiser citizens who've been around the block.

Sir Winston Churchill once said: "If you're not liberal at age 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at age 40, you have no brains." To curb society's excesses and appetites, to reduce our national debt and stimulate sustainable growth, the brain has to rule the heart; conservatism has to restrain rapacious liberalism.

Repealing the hastily passed 26th Amendment, while concurrently passing a separate law to allow voting for military members, irrespective of age, will assuage the tyranny of the immature, rapacious teleprompter-ignoramuses.

By the way, Obama removed Churchill's bust from the Oval Office and then had his sycophants try to deny it. If you're 21 or older, please join me in helping to remove the teleprompter-orator-in-chief from the White House, thereby freeing the immature ignoramuses from the yoke of their idol.

Noel S. Williams, a freelance writer, has had columns published at WND and elsewhere. He holds four degrees including a BA in Political Science and a master's degree in Human Resource Management. Originally from England, Williams became a U.S. citizen in 1992 and served 12 years in the U.S. Navy.