In comparing Iraq and Vietnam:

One of the stark differences is that in the Vietnam era, there were a number of nationally recognized "student leaders" on the college campuses across the country. Although I'm not too keen on the concept of "leaders" and recognize that such positions tend to have a seductive power that is not always (often) positive ..... I wonder ..... are there any similar "student leaders" today? Why, if there are, do we not hear of them, or see the fruits of their leadership? Or, why aren't there any?

Perhaps the lack of a military draft looming over students is reason for some indifference?

Where are the young leaders?

But the catalysts, the more politically aware left "radicals", not all of them youngsters, too easily dominated the scene, imitated by local campus leaders. The generation gap and the gap between the activist college students and career climbers may have been very wide then. Too many today seem to have written off the whole idea of politics. Every generation to me seems to have its own silly sidestepping of what it takes to get the nation working, even in a healthy environment of argument.

We had the urgency of the nuclear standoff, the repressing weight of the Cold War and anger and fear over civil rights to really aggravate basic instincts. The Bush circus has an awful mesmerizing effect at times, but the people are not directly up against it on enough basic levels. Nader seemed to whip up some resurgence of that kind of student involvement but it is not as noticeable as the "good old days".

Not being a student myself I can't say, but from the high school/college age kids I do know it seems that apathy is pretty rampant.

That appears to be slowly changing with each act of stupidity Bush and Co. inflict on the world, tho.

when you could die in short time from the DRAFT or NUCLEAR WAR and the novelty of youth rebellion was inspiring new energy and not imitating school shooters. The imitation and leadership has been coming from skinheads, mammon loving Reagan style money gamers, and truly lost self-absorbed because cut off by the media and a busy, distracted modern life of two wage earning parents...generation. But believe me, hard thought reveals that any given generation or group of humans is exactly the same potentially as any other. It is only the times and circumstances that expose weaknesses and inspire strengths.

Heroes only expose the fact that most people can't and don't act so responsible or well for the common good, for other people.

Only the few do it on their own. Glomming onto their coattails means most are missing the point about that. The strength even of labor unions where people are bound in work and survival and other great things in common for life, even that strength has declined under the onslaught of the "other side" and shortsighted relaxation into illusory affluence.

I don't think we are going to suddenly change human nature even if we revive its best characteristics and push them to the fore. But we have to constantly, constantly do that if human nature is to survive long enough to change- which it must. Its a dynamic- not a an arrival point. The more it relies on externals the more it will fade when the props and stimuli recede. People have to become more personally rooted in their own power and responsibility to do good.

In fact, the other day something rather amusing happened. A group in Participation in Government was presenting their project on the topic of gay marriage, when one of the students objected and started spewing out Bible quotes. My friend asks him, "Do you have any argument NOT using the Bible?" He said he didn't, and my friend replied, "Separation of church and state. Your point is mute."
I loved it.

In the sixties it wasn't just the Vietnam war. There was much to ralley over. women's rights, civil rights, hell even the right to wear levis to school. Most of you are to young to know that in those days a college student could be sent home just because of the length of his hair. Women wore skirts or dresses and on the rare occasion slacks but never jeans or pants. Students were just saying hey I'm a person with basic rights. Mario Savio created the first student sit in in Berkely over the right to dress how they felt not Vietnam. The times were very different.
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!" Mario Savio 1964