I stumbled past a local news broadcast last night involving a women who had dropped her baby during an alcohol related incident. Aside from the information that one could drop off their baby for five days with no questions asked somewhere, what stuck me were the comments of the seventeen year old witness. Citing her account of the awful event off camera, she said the mother was basically a good person, but unless or until she attended some parenting classes or alcoholic anonymous she probably should wait to get the baby back. 
Now it may be that the mother is overwhelmed or unsuited for the job. Certainly it was a bad situation. The length of the report and the sensationalism of flashing a baby's bloody head on screen over and over again is questionable. A lot a people may in fact identify with a similar situation that did not involve a 9-11 call and news report. But when a seventeen year old witness starts calling for classes for the errant mother, is it any wonder that certain college presidents are calling for a lowering of the drinking age ? At what point is the line crossed from childhood to adult ? While the state prohibits certain behavior, it also encourages opposite behaviors during a control freak bout of insistence and cool reassurance.
I would submit that biological age is not sufficient anymore and that a certification should be given to the presumptuous thirteen year old or the bumbling twenty-nine year old. Of course that range can be adjusted as we get data about the implementation and suitability of the test.
It's somewhat amazing that the argument over the drinking age revolves around the utility of lowering it and not the outright fraud that it has become. Any American exchange student in high school to Europe will find that the artificial drinking age is barely a blip on the societal radar. It's generally assumed that adult examples of moderation and a general acceptance of an earlier adulthood amongst teens will regulate behavior enough not to cause a need for a flurry of laws because some kid hit a telephone pole after a secret kegger in the woods. Of course restricting driving until eighteen and a wide array of public transportation keep those incidents down too.
The argument about a beer and the soldier makes the most sense to people. I've never heard anyone refute it or question its grounds. Yet mealy mouthed politicians were more than happy to sacrifice basic, fundamental rights for a little highway cash. The externalization of course is a series of generations conditioned to binge drink and hide their enthusiasm to imbibe in the shadows. Likewise the habit of those within that conditioning to immediately point to a state solution when bad things happen.
The spirit of a free America is dying. It beats in a few stalwart breasts, but is otherwise conditioned out of the child at the earliest age possible. Even if a test existed, it would be rife with bogus assumptions and guided to horrific state solutions. We should all be concerned about our neighbors, friends and family, when a big burdensome state dictates the conditions and all aspects of the solutions for personal foibles and weakness it breeds not only a discontent, but helplessness and dependence. The resistance to it is considered anti-social, weird or misanthropic. To a large extent that truth is growing too.
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