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This article compares the value-orientations and attitudes of cadets at the United States Military Academy (USA) at West Point to those of civilian undergraduate students. By exploring the extent to which young men and women who decided to pursue a professional military career in the mid-1990s are representative of their civilian generational cohort, this analysis allows inferences about the effects of tertiary socialization on social and political attitudes across educational settings. Specifically, this research explores whether there is a civil-military value gap among the members of a generation typically described as apolitical and whether selection (attitudinal differences existing at the time of enlistment) or socialization (increased differences proportional to length of socialization and service) are primarily responsible for attitudinal differences. The study found that, on average, respondents seeking a career of public service in the U.S. military tended to be more conservative, patriotic, and warrioristic than their civilian generational peers. At the same time, members of the military cohort showed less support for global institutions and tended to be less self-oriented.
Civilian institutions were preeminently liberal in character, but no necessary conflict existed between them and professional military institutions, so long as each was kept within its proper sphere. The real problem was the ideological one, the American attitude of mind which sought to impose liberal solutions in military affairs as well as in civil life...
Samuel Huntington (1957:457)
The new tasks of the military require that the professional officer develop more and more the skills and orientations common to civilian administrators and civilian leaders.
Morris Janowitz (1960:9)
INTRODUCTION1
Citizens who come of age during particular periods of history often exhibit distinct attitudes and patterns of behavior. America's post-baby-boom generation is decidedly different from previous generations. During their formative years, the members of Generation X, as this age cohort is commonly referred to, had to contend, among other factors, with the breakdown of the nuclear family, severe challenges to the educational system, crumbling political and corporate hierarchies, a steady rise in crime, the political, economic, and social ramifications of the Cold War, the legacy of the unpopular Vietnam War, and the absence of war or any other major social or political upheaval that could have formed a collective outlook. In addition, Gen Xers experienced...