Defending the Undefendable II: Freedom in All Realms

19.

THE AGEIST

King Canute ordered the waves not to come onto the beaches of his empire. In similar fashion, various levels of government are trying to stem the flow of time and aging—by ordering citizens to disregard their effects. Canute failed to flout the laws of nature, and the government is not likely to succeed either.

Consider the following items:

• A mother of a four-year-old girl argues in a Midwestern court that the local school district which admits children only after they have reached their fifth birthday is discriminating.
• A radio station is ordered by a human rights commission to apologize to an eleven-year-old girl for not allowing her to participate in a phone-in show—discussing male strippers—because of her tender years.
• A major air carrier is found guilty of discrimination for its policy of giving special preference to pilot trainees between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-seven.

There is a great difficulty with the position staked out on age by this “human rights” movement. In prohibiting age discrimination, it flies in the face of reality, nature, and common sense—to say nothing of the human right to discriminate on the basis of age. The desire to age discriminate is pervasive, ranging over all sorts of human institutions and endeavors. The cases cited above are only the tip of the iceberg.

People commonly age discriminate in their choice of marital or love partners. The personal advertisements found online and in our newspapers offer ample evidence. “Woman, age ___, seeks man, age ___, object matrimony” is but one example of this. Further, it is the rare client, indeed, who would voluntarily patronize a dentist, attorney, electrician, doctor, plumber, architect or any other such professional, who was six years of age—even if he were a “child prodigy,” who had passed all the relevant certification requirements. “Doogie Howser” is of course a counter example, but, remember, this was a fictional television program. Nor would it be a popular idea to allow such children to take driver’s licensing exams; some might even pass, and then where would we be?

A furniture store in a West Coast city is yet another blatant age discriminator. Its “ballroom,” a romper room for children, filled with nothing but styrofoam balls three feet deep, prohibits entry to children under four—a loose, dirty diaper would be a disaster—and over nine—they might frolic too roughly and squash the smaller kiddies.

Don’t people have a human right to discriminate in this manner?

So counterintuitive and ridiculous is the prohibition against age discrimination that even the human rights commissions themselves can act sensibly upon occasion when matters of public safety are at issue. But when they do, they must renounce basic tenets of their philosophy.

For example, a human rights commission found that ten airline pilots who were forced to retire at age sixty were not victims of age discrimination. It ruled that the airlines were not guilty because forced retirement of airline pilots at age sixty was “normal practice” in the industry.

However welcome this decision was on grounds of safety and common sense, it was clearly arbitrary and illogical. If “normal practice” can be a defense against the charge of discrimination, then any discriminator can escape being held culpable as long as there are many others who also follow his practice.

Age is clearly a proxy, or stand in, for other human attributes. It is quick, easy, and inexpensive to determine a person’s age, as opposed to tracking and testing mental acuity, reaction times, and skills. If human capacities did not vary with age, there would be little sense in discrimination on this basis, and it is unlikely that it would occur. But abilities do vary with age. The reason we don’t send three-year-olds to school, or allow eleven-year-olds to debate the merits or demerits of male strippers, is because such children do not usually have the maturity to be able to handle these experiences. The reason airlines like to train young pilots and retire old ones is that it usually takes a long time to learn the necessary skills which tend to deteriorate as the body’s reaction times slow in old age.

There are, of course, exceptions to all such rules of thumb. Some three-year-old girls, conceivably, could be trusted to go to school, keep their diapers clean, discuss sexology, get married, drive an automobile or act as a qualified doctor or lawyer. Some seventy-five-year-old men might be relied upon to continue to pilot aircraft successfully. And it certainly is “unfair,” in at least some sense of that much abused word, to prevent such talented people, if ever they could be found, from taking on these roles.

But the point is, shall such exceptional individuals be allowed to thrust themselves upon an unwilling society? The airline companies are, in the final analysis, only the agents of the flying public. They will not voluntarily employ even an otherwise fully qualified seventy-five-year-old pilot because their customers will fear for their lives (however irrationally, in these few exceptional cases). Laws which force over-age pilots upon airlines are ultimately a violation of the human rights of the air passengers, as well as an interference with the airline industry.