Only half felt newspapers should be allowed to publish stories that did not have the government's approval.

Jesus.

Christ.

I feared the Star Chamber types might get their way, especially as Bush has been laying down the Big Brother Manifesto while in office.

But I never thought we were going to make it this easy on them.

If I had a kid, and s/he felt this way, I would smother it.

This is proof that brainwashing does indeed work. The right wingers and christians have done their work well.

from now on, i resolve to punch every teenager i see.

this is fuking disgusting.

'The two-year, $1m survey...suggested students held a number of misconceptions about the First Amendment...Roughly half the students polled wrongly believed the US government had the right to censor the internet, while two-thirds believed it was illegal to burn the US flag'

Simple ignorance, but then they're teenagers. Teenage ignantz is nothing new, or even recent. Let them spend a few years out of the nest being kicked around, and many will likely take a new interest in their rights. Right now, the constitution is just some crap from social studies. Also, if you hadn't noticed, concerns about privacy, fair elections, the environment, foreign policy and torture are 'gay', at least according to the jabbering tv heads.

Also, if you're a teenager and find ^that sanctimonious, great. I'm happy to contribute to your sense of isolation and loathing. You're right, I don't understand your rage or your poetry, man.

Well, look at it from the kid's perspective, for a moment. They're spoon-fed opinons from day to night through the mass media, many of whom support these types of ideals since it sells. They're being manipulated and responding well to the manipulation, simple as that. True, this wouldn't have flown in the '60's, but this ain't the 60's and questioning authority is no longer cool. Not that I'M going to stop or anything...

Reinstitute the draft, no better yet manditory military service. This will give the fist fuckers a whole new prespective on government and liberty.

perspective

Funny enough, I actually did think burning the flag was illegal. It's just something that goes around enough that you start to believe it.

Frightening. That'll be one of the first big signs of rights erosions, I bet, and all those mouthbreather armchair warhawk fucks who voted for Bush will lean over their cans of Bud, curl their upper lips and bellow AMERICA RULES IF YA WANNA BURN THEFLAG THEN GO LIVE IN FRANCE when it happens.

A generation of kids raised on 'Fox news', go figure.

This is the kind of shit that makes me weep for our future...fucking little Nazi automatons!

The sucking black hole of ignorance which America is becoming, may have reached critical mass. 'Might as well turn in your guns, tomorrows masses won't have the brains or balls to defend civil liberties from the government with anything but a peaceful protest.

.....while I'm talking shit, it saddens me, all the Americans that actually believe America is the pinnacle of democracy and freedom.
With the sum total of self governance amounting to a dichotomy of choice, one of two, A or B (which are more alike than different) Americans have the narrowest range of choice possible. The only way Americans could have less choice is if elections were held more than 4 years apart.

Please make sure those peaceful demontrations take place in the 'Free Speach Zones' which will probably all be moved to North Dakota by the End of this Second Baby Bush Administration.

This is a very frightening thing and we can bitch about the media and government and school system. But maybe we should quit being so deep in denial and put the blame where it really belongs.

On the parents. On us.

If our kids are ignorant of basic rights and freedoms and the importance of defending them without infringment, we fucked up.

i'm not a parent; all y'all fucked up.

Could be, John FUKING Pontius, but I refuse to take responsibility for 'all y'all', you colloquial grammar tool face head man.

This whole ignorant young person thing also appears to be playing out in the current social security debate, with the bushies jumping up and down on the misconception that social security will be bankrupt by the time that the current crop of misunderstood misanthropic angst-rats retire. Not true, by all credible accounts, but it appears that a lot of youngs are more than happy to jump on board, probably because it's easy to parrot the doomsayers on Fox News and makes them feel nice and victimized.

Complacent parents breed complacent children. Putting any percentage of Social Security into the hands of Wall Street is asking for trouble. Bush wants your children to trust the same people who brought us the crash of 1929 and The Great Depression, Enron and Worldcom, etc.. History will repeat itself.

if an overwhelming percentage of the population is a bunch of idiots, then i would expect no less from their children.

Of course they don't understand it, because they haven't lived it. It's one thing to tell them about freedom of speech, but it's another thing to experience it, and in high school your civil liberties are utterly nonexistant and always have been.

More money should go into educating retarded children... whatever is going on with 'normal' kids... it is obviously failing.. bring on the retardededs.

Disgusting and terrifying. Teenage apathy didn't suddenly spring up, though; it'd be nice to be able to put the numbers in historical perspective, but I couldn't find any statistics to compare to.

For those interested, here are the actual questions and results of the study.

i honestly don't think apathy, along with their environment, has anything to do with it. i don't know about you, but there's no way in hell i would have ever have said that newspapers should only be allowed to publish stories that had the government's approval. and i was as repressed and apathetic in hs as anyone.

I hereby renounce my earlier opinion and agree with Mung-Ra, probably because it's lunchtime and I'm hungry. Let's put them all to the sword, dice them into tiny bits and put them in delicious chili.

That sounds like a plan to me!

werd.

I was apathetic in hs too, but, possibly because i went to a private school, they made some effort to teach us to think for ourselves and not believe everything that we are told. The think for yourself element is missing these days.

Thinking for yourself results in disagreement. Which in turn results in not conforming. We can't have that.

hey, i happen to like budweiser

When most of us old (over forty) farts were teens, we did not have a zillions ways to get news and information about the world. TV had three channels ONLY, and the dusty old encyclopedias were the prime source of knowledge about people and places far away. Today we have news from around the world, 24/7 the internet to further enlighten as well as entertain. With all of this information technology it amazes me that many of my younger classmates are tuned only into MTV 24/7. They get their news not from FOX as many of you seem to assume but from MTV. I am not sure which of the two is worse. But in either case, Fox (biased conservative republican bastard news service) and MTV (60 seconds of news to feed the brain) the next generation is aggregating into the mass of pseudo plasmodium cells (otherwise known as a slug) the media and the corporate advertisers have always dreamed of.

Karl Marx was right.
Capital has the might to change everones mind.
Also did B.F.Skinner - conditioning, what i tell you thrice is true for the brain. (And for this, i need capital, power)

But most important: the Buddhists were right with the Yin-Yang sign, the balance of powers, and
the situation right now in world politics (which means basically US politcs) is, that there is a massive amount of Yang around us.

No serious counterculture, we have some demonstrants on the streets - for them mainly its a party.
We have all these internetpeople - intelligent, self-assured, but lacking of ambition.
We dont have musicans with rebellious texts.
We dont have Heros, which are kicking the ass of authority.
We dont have a motto which describes what we want and who we are.

The Hippies did have all of it, everything of which a counterculture consists of.
- The demonstrants, the pawns on the street,
- the internetpeople, the ones which connections and ideas
- the musicans, the ones which made the war crys
- the heros, intelligent and respected people
- a motto like 'Make love not war'

Maybe, people will find a way to connect all this.
Its all mathematics: 2-4-8-16-32-64-128-256-512-1024-......
The most important numbers are the first ones.

I think of them as a kind of nascent techno-serf. Follow instructions, consume on demand, Support the corporate/government structure that provides the bread and circuses.

Pretty frightening.

ignorance or apathy......don't know.......don't care.

DumbSkull:'When most of us old (over forty) farts were teens, we did not have a zillions ways to get news and information about the world. TV had three channels ONLY, and the dusty old encyclopedias were the prime source of knowledge about people and places far away. '

Maybe so, but I still marched in demonstrations for the 18-year-old vote & anti-war/anti-bigotry laws. It made a difference. Now, however, if you are foolish enough to show your disagreement with the current administration, you WILL be investigated & possibly prosecuted for speaking you mind. Just like the McCarthey era, Dissidents will be exposed, chastized, ostricised, and denied equal treatment or justice.Cameras record all, and differing opinions are treated as criminal treason.

This is my America, the country that I fought for, the place that I have always tried to make a better place through public statements and awareness. It has been taken over by bigoted, war mongering, hateful idiots that actually believe that its wrong to think for yourself.

Are we scared yet?

Its just the ebb and flow of culture and society.

To quote John Wayne:

'This getting to be Re-GODDAMN-diculous!!!'

What is going on? Where is this going to end? Makes me want to find a new continent and start America all over again......

Are we scared yet?

yes.

'I weep for the future'
-the principal from ferris beuler's day off

Re: Social Security

What is wrong with letting me control the money I earn? If the system will truly remain solvent, great, but let me manage my money.

I would be a lot more comfortable knowing the slush fund created by social security couldn't be pirated by politicians. If it is true that the money cannot be used by those who never contributed, it would be nearly impossible for the system to crash if managed properly, regardless of the rhetoric of the yahoos screaming 'the sky is falling' .