Concentrating on efficient paths to our ends brings us around, soon enough, to deciding what our ends should be. Second is a move to plain speech. In the presidential election already underway, there is a considerable premium on talk that sounds as though it came from a noncandidate. Running not just against Washington, but against the whole language and culture of politics as it is presently practiced, is a natural response to a distasteful politics. However, like calls for pragmatism, it seems sufficient only when our politics is so flaccid that we do not feel compelled to ask what is being said plainly and whether we are for or against it.
Moral pellucidity marks the projects that have attracted young people in recent decades.
Amnesty Inter national, minimovements around Burma and East Timor, and antisweatshop campaigns have all stood out in mainly disengaged campuses, as have various forms of environmental concern. In a time when so much politics seems compromised, these issues have given occasion for an uncompromised position, the kind the culture dimly remembers from the civil rights era. The continuing appeal of a pure stance is a reminder that selfish indifference is not the main obstacle to engagement. Young people also give a good deal of time to direct service, from tutoring and mentoring to establishing innovative private or semipublic social service programs. These activities suggest a bottom-up return to politics, performed gingerly by wary but hopeful people cautious of being burned.