These facts and issues simply don't matter to most people. There is an academic-minded "sect" that might consider this blasphemous, but Kabul, the current Secre

These facts and issues simply don't matter to most people. There is an academic-minded "sect" that might consider this blasphemous, but Kabul, the current Secretary of Defense, even the year of WWII, none of these issues come to bear on the daily lives of college students. Older generations love to talk about how politically/globally minded they were and how they fought against the Vietnam War, but the fervence of their objection was only proportional to what they stood to loose through the draft. I see a lot of opinion that generation xyz is stuck to their blackberries/iphones/facebook/myspace/etc. and that not only are they ignorant, but that this is some kind of historically unprecented phenomenom. But I just don't buy it -- they're in college (or high school), by and large their parents are supporting them -- maybe when the time comes for them to support themselves some of these issues will become relevant (at least tax raises and cuts), and many of these kids will "get smart." There will always be those who are diligent and alert -- as long as being so conveys some kind of quantifiable advantage. I don't mean to say that public education isn't important, only that as a society we're no worse off than we were 25 or 50 years ago.