Underage drinking: According to this image from the Advertising Council, it’s apparently either the quickest way to a one-on-one with the Holy Spirit, or what kids do when something really scary is dangling above their heads.

There are, as I see it, two types of law: The ones designed to keep society functional and docile (no murder, no stealing, etc.); and those crafted in fits of populism, whitewashing problems whose real solutions are too nuanced to be politically popular. The second category makes for fascinating reading. It’s Malcolm Gladwell explaining why our approach to managing homelessness is wrongheaded, and elsewhere it’s just about anyone showing how abstinence-only education does more harm than good. On Sunday, Parade took up a rather old standby of this field: The debate over whether the U.S. drinking age is keeping kids from harm, or (as I see it) an overrun, head-in-the-sand law that inadvertently encourages alcohol abuse.

Parade, as is its duty, doesn’t rise to any particularly contemplative occasion here, but instead just lays out some facts, asks a few tired and cliché questions (“If a man is mature enough to serve on a jury or risk his life in a war halfway around the world, isn’t he also mature enough to drink a beer?”), and then makes way for Howard Huge. But the comments left on its website tell a more interesting tale: Together, they’re a profile of the support behind this kind of law. Here’s a particularly insightful comment from someone calling themselves jlg17:

Here, in my opinion is a list of the people who want to promote youth drinking: Kids who want to get high, hopefully increase their chances of having sex, and who just want to do something that’s forbidden because forbidden things are more fun; … Parents who wish that their children would die so that they could go back to being irresponsible children themselves, living their lives without having to worry about supporting anyone else; Adult pedophiles and statutory rapists who just love the idea of providing alcohol to young people in the hope that they might get lucky sexually, and People who unscrupulously make big money off of pretending to treat alcoholism, and who wouldn’t want to see a source of revenue dry up.

It’s tough to decide which is more telling: The accusation that parents who let their kids drink before the age of 21 secretly want them to die, or that alcoholism is some sort of hocus pocus whipped up by treatment centers. Either way, you get the point: Here’s someone not especially interested in recognizing the distinction between a law’s intent and its actual effect. For jlg17, you either make a law based on how you think the world should work, or you’re endorsing “adult pedophiles and statutory rapists.” (By the way, are there any pedophiles that aren’t adults? Wouldn’t that just be, uh, kids who are sexually attracted to people their own age?) And thus, Plato gets it wrong.