LOLBertarian is generally leveled at freedom guys who are willing to defend the reductio in the name of "reason" but that are in fact rationalizing their own blue-pill understanding. Unfortunately, it's almost always the pot calling the kettle black, see above exchange. This results in serious thinkers like Thaddeus being rejected outright in favor of a fully emotional narrative. Which of course will only serve to more thoroughly cement the matrix of authoritarian control imposed to avoid hurt feelings in feminists and their allies.
For those unfamiliar with what's going on here, the righteous crusaders against the pedos are making feminist arguments. It's not that children having relationships upsets them, but that adult-child relationships do. Which is essentially an argument of age deltas being bad past a certain point.
Sound familiar? Yes, it's the same sour grapes young loser men and spinster women level at successful 40 year old men nailing 20 year olds. It's the same reason those advocating this position rarely see problems with teachers statutorily raping young male students. Taken to the reductio, if we outlaw pedophilia on this basis, pickup artistry should also be considered rape. The point I'm making here is that the argument used for opposition here is actually quite lackluster.
The reason large age difference relationships happen are usually quite natural and practical. Men like younger women, as older single women are usually single for good reasons; they are not good prospects for marriage. Younger women like older men thanks to their opportunistic-by-default mating strategy. There are also not enough winner men out there to satisfy the bumper crop of spinsters out there unless you accept harems.
Similarly, in the past the reason the commonly accepted age of majority was between 13 and 15 were for entirely practical reasons. Such as the high probability of injury due to intercourse and complications in pregnancy before these ages. Why did this change? Why do these twitter "trads" not want to RETVRN?
The cult of the child, which is part and parcel of feminist thought. It is not a coincidence that the end of child labor was roughly coincident with female suffrage. Similarly, it is the political expression of maternal emotion which has delayed adulthood in many to the point of ridicule. This impulse to "protect the little babies from themselves" extending to adults is the root of our current totalitarian "technocracy".
Thaddeus' core error is in regarding feelings as being relevant. Historically the feelings of the child did not matter, as mate selection resulted in alliances of families. This is obviously too important a matter to leave to hormonal impulses, so the family had the final say.
It is only our current environment of familial dissolution thanks to female headship that makes "age of consent" relevant beyond practical concerns. It is this same dissolution of male headship of the family which has crushed organized resistance to the state, as government is now daddy. As such, defense of this social construct cannot be supported by serious freedom advocates as it stands.
The more important question that remains is what, if any, good argument exists for this position? If electoral victory is the goal, then by all means you will have to placate the feminine. But you will give up 100% of the ground in doing so. This is why I see most people in this position as either grifting to get theirs or useful idiots.
Ultimately the best argument in favor of not fiddling with the age of consent is Mises' general argument against regulatory change. There will be business winners and losers in any new dispensation and a good deal of economic wreckage getting from here to there. We've already paid the costs in spades to get here, so why inflict further pain? It is a much better use of everyone's time to ignore this "lolbert or not" crap and focus on real issues. Like rebuilding something, anything that can put up effective organized resistance to the state.
First, people suffering from depression want the outside world to match the inside one. It justifies their feelings and confirms they aren’t crazy when the world “out there” really is as bad as they feel like it is in their minds. These people believed that the world was ending when Donald Trump was elected; that the COVID pandemic came during his administration only served as the aforementioned verifier that reality really was a disaster, just as they had felt that it was.
Second, because the pandemic came to be such a political matter to that group of people, it has become central to the reality of their identities. Their opponents have said it’s “not that bad” since the beginning. To admit that they’re now right would be to lose the political argument, and perhaps to admit to yourself that the world is not in the existential crisis that for so long your identity has depended on it being in. That’s really hard.
Third, I’d be remiss not to mention that an awful lot of these people are irreligious and have only this material world to cling to. Not that death isn’t a concern for nearly all of us, but it can be all the more terrifying for people who have no hope for anything beyond this life.
