With the modern political landscape in the United States being more divisive than ever, some people are suggesting we expand the right to vote.
They’d suggest we give it to people under 18 and, in some instances, convicted felons. However, this is the wrong way to fix our problems. In the 1920s, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote. This marked a major shift in the course of U.S. history. Previously, only men had been allowed to vote.
Many believe this change was for the better: it gave more people in the United States the right to vote. I believe that the Nineteenth Amendment should be overturned due to its drastic effects on this country.
Since 1920, the world has become demonstrably worse. And this is all due to women. The Holocaust and World War II occurred, two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, and the Cold War happened, leading to some of the highest global tensions in human history.
There were Japanese internment camps and the restriction of immigration on particular racial grounds. More recently, 9/11 and the global war on terror have occurred (leading to nearly a million lives lost unjustly). And even more recently, we had the COVID Pandemic and the near-total shutdown of Earth.
Before 1920 and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, the world was a much safer place. You can’t name one thing the United States did wrong before it gave women the right to vote. (That doesn’t include slavery, the Civil War, World War I, prohibition, Native American genocide, the Spanish-American war, or “Manifest Destiny”; each happened under exceptional circumstances.) That’s because when just men were making the decisions, nothing ever went wrong.
The opinions expressed within this piece are solely the author's and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of North Mecklenburg High School or the Viking Voice.