ABSTRACT
The older generation that waves the flag, that sees America as a country of manifest destiny by saving the world for democracy—are the romantics. The younger generation is by contrast a generation of realists who are not willing to kill and be killed unless the cause is unmistakably honorable. Richard Flacks found that student-activist tendencies were especially related to parents' beliefs that intellectual and esthetic pursuits are more worthy than material success, and that the really important things in life are opportunities for free expression and humanitarian concern. During the 1930s and the 1940s, the effect of a widely revered president and an enemy who symbolized absolute evil was to affirm the United States as the ethical center of the universe for American liberals. Although the rest of the world might have been somewhat skeptical about this status, it appeared to fulfill earlier conceptions of the superiority and "manifest destiny" of the country.
