It's about more than sit-ins and marches. Cradled all their lives by virtually uninterrupted peace and prosperity, most students have never had reason to think beyond the pile of dirty laundry in their closet. In contrast, those who came of age during the Vietnam War were forced to look outside themselves and outside their national borders. Many baby boomers developed deep political sensibilities that still affect them today. Coddled though they are, many young people sense that they've missed that transcendent experience.
War is a great stage for that dialogue.
People's parents had Korea or Vietnam. By comparison, though, the themes of modern-day activism are numerous and fragmented, Levine said, touching on minority issues, financial aid, and administrative policy, to name a few. And the question of whether sweatshirts with the college's insignia are made by underpaid laborers hardly feels epic. I can't imagine me or any of my friends doing something like that. Ignorant as they are when they arrived in the classroom to study Vietnam, many students end the semester claiming, with some justification, that they understand the conflict more fully than do their parents.