From my experiences at Ars Technica, I'd say that the younger generation is anything but stupid and lazy. The big problem from what I can discern is that they are simply lacking quite heavily in role models. Their parents all work too hard, their aunts and uncles often live nowhere near them, their teachers are idiots, the cops treat them like criminals, unless they are jocks, and then they get treated real great by the cops(at least around here, no offense to the non-idiot LEOs here). Kids have one big mentor, television, and now to some degree the internet. Few people that I see in my generation that use the internet really do much actual learning with it and much actual thoughtful discussion. Most of them spend 18 hours a day talking about girls/guys on Instant Messenger and watching TV that fills them with sensationalist hype. Don't blame the media though, it's hardly their fault alone. If you look in history, the media has had some truly respectable heroes and intellectuals among their ranks. The problem, as with the government, is that the media draws from the general population for it's labor pool, meaning they get a lot of the people who have grown up in the post-Vietnam culture of America, which is quite frankly, pathetic. I think Vietnam was a cause and a symptom that fueled this. Vietnam was a great betrayal of public trust, a great abuse of power, and a great lesson for the people of this country that you should never lose faith in your country, but you should always hold a short leash on those you elect to run it. After Vietnam people started questioning things, and the hippie movement gained more steam as a result of that war. I think maybe people had gotten into the habit of being discontent and protesting everything, so much so that they began to neglect important things, such as repairing the social damage of that war. I think the biggest thing Vietnam destroyed was America's sense of itself, our unity. It attacked out belief in each other as a nation, but the reaction has largely been a foolish one. People have forgotten what really caused Vietnam even if they are still being affected by it. People now want to give more and more power to the government and less and less to the people. They are creating the same circumstances that lead up to Vietnam, only this time around they want to marginalize anyone that might not support the regime.
This is the problem with hippies and why I hate them so much. They aren't willing to solve their own problems, or often aren't even able to, so they seek for someone to do it for them, and they resent individuals who can do things for themselves. They got active and protested the war, then most of them probably didn't even bother voting half the time. They basically spent the late 60s/early 70s fighting against the government having too much power, and now they are fighting against the concept of the people having any power. They are a group of poeple who have no idea what they want or where they stand, and for whatever reason mainstream media, and a good share of the democratic party, has latched on to thier message of peace and hope, but have failed to discern there is no cohesive or logical plan behind any of their message.
To pinpoint what's wrong with this country, or what's wrong with this generation is very hard. It is a broad range of things, but Vietnam was the core around which these things wound, and they have formed a magnet to draw in more problems, and even to create new ones. Look at the timeframes of social breakdown, look at them and learn from it, then the best you can do for this generation is to teach them why that is. Knowledge truly is power.
-ps if any of this only half made sense please forgive me as I am extremely tired
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I twist the facts until they tell the truth. -Some intellectual sadist
The Bill of Rights is a document of brilliance, a document of wisdom, and it is the ultimate law, spoken or not, for the very concept of a society that holds liberty above the desire for ever greater power. -Me
to 13. Every single one was alert, intelligent, and safer than most adults I see at the shop.