Generation Q

[question everything]

October 10, 2007
OP-ED COLUMNIST; Generation Q
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I just spent the past week visiting several colleges -- Auburn, the University of Mississippi, Lake Forest and Williams -- and I can report that the more I am around this generation of college students, the more I am both baffled and impressed. I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be.

(snip)

Whether it was at Ole Miss or Williams or my alma mater, Brandeis, college students today are not only going abroad to study in record numbers, but they are also going abroad to build homes for the poor in El Salvador in record numbers or volunteering at AIDS clinics in record numbers. Not only has terrorism not deterred them from traveling, they are rolling up their sleeves and diving in deeper than ever. The Iraq war may be a mess, but I noticed at Auburn and Old Miss more than a few young men and women proudly wearing their R.O.T.C. uniforms. Many of those not going abroad have channeled their national service impulses into increasingly popular programs at home like ''Teach for America,'' which has become to this generation what the Peace Corps was to mine.

(snip)

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country's own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they're just not paying attention. And we'll just keep piling it on them. There is a good chance that members of Generation Q will spend their entire adult lives digging out from the deficits that we -- the ''Greediest Generation,'' epitomized by George W. Bush -- are leaving them.

(snip)

Generation Q would be doing itself a favor, and America a favor, if it demanded from every candidate who comes on campus answers to three questions: What is your plan for mitigating climate change? What is your plan for reforming Social Security? What is your plan for dealing with the deficit -- so we all won't be working for China in 20 years? America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That's what twentysomethings are for -- to light a fire under the country. But they can't e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won't cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn't change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way -- by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that -- virtual.

(snip)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A07E2D71E3DF933A25753C1A9619C8B63&n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Columnists/Thomas%20L%20Friedman

[Demeter]

1. But That Would Be Dealing With Real Life

Not bopping around as a child without responsibilities to oneself or one's country!

[question everything]

2. This "virtual" interaction has always bothered me

We have millions around the globe who click and nod but rarely go out to the streets (another reason why we need a military draft, or any kind of draft.)

When a student was purposely became obnoxious at a Kerry meeting recently and was tasered, someone on DU actually saw him as the symbol of that generation!