Why do I care?

I get that question all the time: why do I care about the stuff I get all in a huff about? I'm too young to vote, I'm not a minority, a suspected terrorist, etc, etc, so why do I care about all these things? Shouldn't I be doing the stuff that teenagers are supposed to do, and leave the politics to the "grown-ups"?

Well, first of all, the "shut up you're just a kid" approach to the things I say has only redoubled my efforts. When I'm wrong about something, I'll freely admit it, so I don't feel it's out of line for me to be opinionated about things that I don't have a lot of experience in, because if something I wasn't previously aware of comes to light, I'm willing to revise my opinion - something almost nobody else, it seems, is.

Beyond that, though, all these things do affect me and do matter. War with Iran? In a year I could be drafted. Social Security? I have parents, and obviously at some point I will enter the work force, and I don't want anybody I know getting screwed. NSA wiretapping? Immigration? A law in a state I've never been to?

It's the principle of the thing here. I care because I know that these things, if they were to happen to me, would absolutely infuriate me, and since I'm capable of empathy, I will occasionally become infuriated for other people, because certain things are just wrong - they violate the inalienable rights of every human being, or the rights due to us as citizens of an ostensibly limited government.

So that's why I care. That's why I post here, that's why I occasionally send money to various libertarian organizations, that's why I devote so much time to it - because I don't want either me or other people hurt by things that shouldn't be happening.