Not at all. I think that the general conservatism and support for this wartime situation is a direct result of of the type of environment young adults today grew up in. The magazine article I
posted focuses on the upper class extreme, but one of the reasons it does so is that if that's the extreme, the childhoods that they experience are also being experienced, to lesser degrees, by those in, say, the middle classes as well. (Not surprisingly, the lower class involves an entirely different dynamic, at the other extreme).
Having grown up in a middle class home and having gone to school with a range of kids from middle class to upper class, I am quite inclined to agree with the observations of the article (which I will try and summarize a bit in a second, for the lazy or time-challenged
), and many of the discussions and other readings which I have taken part in for my class on political socialization actually address this very question.
So then, the basic point is that young adults today have lived in a time of growing structure and certainty in their worlds. They have no real recollection of a Cold War. The one significant conflict they experienced in their developmental years was a cakewalk - a videogame as some have come to call it. Their lifetime (up until the past few years) was filled with general economic success. On the more specific level, parenting has been more protective than ever. Don't believe it? I just learned this past weekend that, in this area at least, one is supposed to (by law) use a child seat when driving their child up to the age of EIGHT. Children's parents make "play dates," structuring even their recreation time. The entire existence of most middle class children and up has been, to varying degrees, (dare I say it) marred by structure and deferment to authority. They simply never grew up with any real reason to learn to question authority.
That's why I have such an interest in the future high school and especially college students though - the ones we will see 4-6 years from now. These children are experiencing the Iraq war and recession during a time period that can have a profound effect on their political development. So, we'll see. But when I think about the majority of people in college today - whether it be from the lower middle class or the upper class - and I observe people who are all too willing too defer to authority, lack critical thought, and are in love with structure and certainty.