How can America inspire the Slacktivist Generation to action?

The cause of this is fairly clear: Americans are not being asked to serve their country. With the passing of the World War II generation, veterans are just 7 percent of the population, roughly half of what they were in 1970. Fewer than 20 percent of incoming members of Congress served in the military; in the ’70s, more than 70 percent had served.

John Bridgeland, who worked on national-service initiatives in the Bush White House, sees the decline of military service as the cause of Washington’s problems. “The World War II generation that served together had higher levels of charitable contributions, volunteering, voting, social trust, trust in one another,” he told me. “Even the gap between rich and poor was at its lowest levels. This greatest generation had an ethic of service that transcended politics and partisanship and belief.”

Bridgeland’s solution, joined by retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is to expand national service — military and other forms — to 1 million 18- to 29-year-olds each year, up from the current 100,000. While far from mandatory national service, this would be enough to create a social expectation that each 18-year-old would either join the military or spend a “service year” after high school earning a stipend serving in AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps and the like. They figure it would cost about $10 billion in taxpayer money and another $10 billion in private funds.