I just spent the past week visiting
several colleges -- Auburn, the Uni-
versity of Mississippi, Lake Forest and
Williams -- and I can report that the
more I am around this generation of col-
lege students, the more I am both baf-
fled and impressed.
I am impressed because they are so
much more optimistic and idealistic
than they should be. I am baffled be-
cause they are so much less radical and
politically engaged than they need to
be.
One of the things I feared most after
9/11 -- that my daughters would not be
able to travel the world with the same
carefree attitude my wife and I did at
their age -- has not come to pass.
Whether it was at Ole Miss or Wil-
liams or my alma mater, Brandeis, col-
lege 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 no-
ticed 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 chan-
neled 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 ideal-
ism, 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 def-
icit and ecological deficit that our gener-
ation 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.
When I was visiting my daughter at
her college, she asked me about a terri-
fying story that ran in this newspaper
on Oct. 2, reporting that the Arctic ice
cap was melting ''to an extent unparal-
leled in a century or more'' -- and that
the entire Arctic system appears to be
''heading toward a new, more watery
state'' likely triggered by ''human-
caused global warming.''
''What happened to that Arctic story
Dad?'' my daughter asked me. How
could the news media just report one
day that the Arctic ice was melting far
faster than any models predicted ''and
then the story just disappeared?'' Why
weren't any of the candidates talking
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about it? Didn't they understand: this
has become the big issue on campuses?
No, they don't seem to understand.
They seem to be too busy raising money
or buying votes with subsidies for etha-
nol farmers in Iowa. The candidates
could actually use a good kick in the
pants on this point. But where is it going
to come from?
Generation Q would be doing itself a
favor, and America a favor, if it de-
manded from every candidate who
comes on campus answers to three
questions: What is your plan for miti-
gating 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
America needs a jolt
of the idealism, activism
and outrage
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 at-
tention rather than just patronize them.
Martin Luther King and Bobby Ken-
nedy didn't change the world by asking
people to join their Facebook crusades
or to download their platforms. Activ-
ism can only be uploaded, the old-fash-
ioned way -- by young voters speaking
truth to power, face to face, in big num-
bers, on campuses or the Washington
Mall. Virtual politics is just that -- virtu-
al.
Maybe that's why what impressed
me most on my brief college swing was
actually a statue -- the life-size statue of
James Meredith at the University of
Mississippi. Meredith was the first Afri-
can-American to be admitted to Ole
Miss in 1962. The Meredith bronze is
posed as if he is striding toward a tall
limestone archway, re-enacting his fate-
ful step onto the then-segregated cam-
pus -- defying a violent, angry mob and
protected by the National Guard.
Above the archway, carved into the
stone, is the word ''Courage.'' That is
what real activism looks like. There is
no substitute.
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