Generation Q

[piercehawkeye45]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/op...ml?ref=opinion

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.

It’s for all these reasons that I’ve been calling them “Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.

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.

Any thoughts?

I am surprised by the fact that he says we are the volunteering and whatnot in record numbers, all I have usually seen is apathy among my peers since politics rarely gets brought up in conversations. Besides that I agree with a lot of this, it seems like people on my campus are either apathetic or cynical about most protests (I fall under this category) or too idealistic to be anywhere close to reality and very few are in the middle. This combination has a result of people protesting issues they can not change (Iraq) or not protesting at all, very sad and scary.