Going around my feeds and podcasts was a recent poll on if Americans would fight if the country was invaded.

From National Review

As part of a recent survey of attitudes toward Russia’s execrable invasion of Ukraine, the polling firm Quinnipiac asked Americans whether they would stay and fight if the United States were invaded by Russia. The results make sobering — and often disgraceful — reading. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans said that they would “stay and fight,” with 25 percent indicating that they’d run away. Among independents, those numbers are 57–36. Among Democrats, they’re in negative territory, at 40–52. Among 50- to 64-year-old men and women, the stay/leave numbers are 66/28. Among 18- to 34-year-olds, they are 45/48. Or, to put it another way: A majority of the prime-aged Americans whom the United States would need were such a crisis to arise imagine that they would flee if that crisis ever came.

There’s been a lot of hay being made on how few 18 to 34 year-olds said they would stay and fight. Most of the ones I read/heard talk about “failure to instill respect of country”, “nothing at stake”, or “doesn’t understand the importance”. Some of that’s probably true, but there’s one theory I haven’t heard. Deferment to authority.

We’ve been telling kids for a generation to let the grown-ups handle conflict. Don’t do it yourself, but wait for the proper authorities. Could that have bled into letting the proper authorities fight? Particularly in a society that keeps stressing letting only those trained to do a specific task? That you need credentials to do something?