My conspiracy theory on the war.....nothing that would start a fight!

[98goldbird]

This occurred to me a few days back, and I'm sure someone has discussed it before, but could there be another alternative to why we went to war, per se, getting this generation more involved in the voting process/gov't issues. Here's what I mean...

The last 2 elections, and especially the last one, the ratio of the number of teens/young adults that voted was REALLY REALLY small. I know if I was old enough at that time, I wouldn't have voted. I just didn't really care about politics and what not. And I know a lot of my friends and aquaintances weren't/or wouldn't have voted just because.....The mentality was, "Who cares!" But now, regardless of whether the war was justified or not (please don't argue this as this isn't the point of the thread), the number of teens/young adults who more INTERESTED in gov't issues/voting have greatly grown! There's ALWAYS people talking about the war, and the candidates. Could the war been some ploy to get more people active in the political system and to care?

Just my thought [img]graemlins/wavey.gif[/img]

[wilkcamaro98]

I don't think we went to war to up the vote but I do think the events such as 9/11 and stuff grabbed the youth’s attention. Also the media and MTv constantly having vote commercials on sorta been washed into our skulls.

[skorpion317]

i don't think the war was to get young people to vote.

i think the reasons that there are a large number of politically-minded young people are:

1. Sept. 11th. without a doubt, this was one of the defining moments in history for any teenager/young adult. the fact that we had LIVE TV coverage of everything as it unfolded made an even bigger impact.

2. This will be the first presidential election in which a lot of young people will be able to vote. in November of 2000, i was a junior in high school. Now i'm a junior in college. young people want the opportunity to vote! and since there's a large 18-24 population right now, they will be a big factor.

[FirebirdGT]

At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in the year 1787, Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinborough) had this to say about "The Fall of The Athenian Republic" some 2,000 years prior.

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

> From Bondage to spiritual faith;
> From spiritual faith to great courage;
> From courage to liberty;
> From liberty to abundance;
> From abundance to complacency;
> From complacency to apathy;
> From apathy to dependence;
> From dependence back into bondage."


Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the "complacency" and "apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy; with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

[GrigoryRasputin]

Everyone should read Thucydides History of the Peloponesian War and then they should think to themselves if the war in Iraq was actually a good idea.
Particularly how the concept of justice is treated - and how the disregard for justice affected the Athenians. Especially look at the Athenian/Melian dialouge.