October 1967. During a March on the Pentagon, a protester sticks a carnation in the barrel of a National Guardsman's rifle.

I just finished a column by Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times. He has spent the past few weeks traveling and visiting college students, and has come to the conclusion that they should be dubbed, "Generation Q. The Quiet Generation."

Full column here...

"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."

Friedman goes on to say that he is impressed with many young adults' work abroad with the poor in El Salvador, AIDS clinics and traveling abroad, but...

"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."

QUESTION: Do you agree with Friedman? Is this generation too passive? Do they need to rise up more as the youth was in the sixties and seventies?

---

---