Wednesday, April 1, 2009

What I Just Read: The Good Citizen

The Underling doesn't like the cover but why take our word for it read him say it !

Well I sort of read this book, I skimmed it over, read the bolded headings and words that made me feel like I was reading a text book and then came to this conclusion the same conclusion I came to before: Where does an old guy get off telling me what my generation is like
? All he has is numbers taken from a survey that only has relevance if his respondents are telling the truth, and who wouldn't say they like to do good?

I do see his point that less people vote today, but more people do volunteer. Why is that possible? Because America went through a very good economic time period in the in 90's which left many Americans with money to spend on their childrens education and to give them as spending money (also we developed a credit card culture which allows people to go in to debt with out having to work). Result: Children who go to college on their parents dime and don't have to work while in school. What do they do with their free time? Well the noble ones volunteer but not as many as Mr. Dalton would want us to think.

Only a fraction of students volunteer and they all tend to be the same people, I know plenty of college students who only volunteered in high school because it was a requirement to graduate. But that's neither here nor there. Just as what will happen to all those volunteers when they have to start making money to pay for their schooling because the credit market fell apart.

My real gripe with Dalton is him saying voting is not that big of a deal anymore because we all volunteer and are a bunch of do-gooders. I have a fundamental problem with people who complain about leadership and then tacitly support it by not voting. Yes I understand volunteering is like protest and I am all for protest but don't complain about the system and do nothing to change it. The US government is too large and too powerful to work outside of and eventually you are going to but heads with it if you try, so atleast go in and vote for yourself or maybe a third part candidate.

Ok I'm done complaining. For the indefinite future I will only be reading books I choose to read because unfortunatly Capstone is coming to a close.

Maybe I will go read Lennon........

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