To the editor:

I can’t tell you how many times my parents’ and grandparents’ generation have told me that, “young people these days have no sense of duty to their country.” It’s a common complaint that we’ve all heard growing up, especially if we weren’t in the “greatest generation,” which got us through World War II.

They complain about how kids used to do what they were told, that they “respected their elders,” opened doors and gave up seats for “ladies,” and were “seen, not heard.” Those were the “good ol’ days,” right? But what’s to say they were?

Today’s young people have a different sense of duty, inspired in part by a small portion of their parents’ generation that resisted the Vietnam War. This is a social sense of duty, and it involves thinking globally, not “America first” nationalistically. Many youths today have created their own ways of serving the world, not just the country, and that is by demanding alternatives to war for resources, corporate-led globalization, fighting for fairness in labor and for women, against global warming and pollution, and so on.

The “greatest generations” didn’t care much about those problems, and consider today’s youths’ actions criminal. They were quite proud that young people had “the fear of God” in them, that teachers were able to whip students if they thought too independently, that there was “order” in America.

Well, most youths may have shut their mouths back then, but fortunately, this is a concept most of today’s youths will never understand.

Chris White,

Lawrence