This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Abby Alger, Research Intern for the John Locke Foundation.

A funny thing happened on the way home last week. A radio announcer bemoaned a new study that found American teens lie and cheat at “alarming rates.” He paused for a moment, and then continued to the next subject: Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the now-infamous scandal of attempting to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat.

If the younger generation is learning anything, it is learning by example. What example do we, the young “20-somethings,” have? To be frank, it seems a terrifying and uninspiring one when it comes to civics. The majority of adult Americans have only scant clue what the government is supposed to do, how it is supposed to do it, and who’s in charge of whom — and why that is important. (Ignorance is a natural consequence of an uncaring public: 38.4 percent of eligible voters stayed home on Election Day in a record-breaking cycle.)

But even that statistic is comforting in the face of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s annual Civic Literacy Report. In 2008, fewer than half of adults surveyed could “name all three branches of government.” Nearly 40 percent thought the power to declare war belonged to the president. (It is, instead, under Congress’ purview.) Nearly 25 percent thought Congress and the United Nations jointly authored American foreign policy. Knowledge of the Bill of Rights was similarly dismal: only 27 percent of survey takers knew it “prohibit[ed] establishing an official religion for the United States.”

Advocates of limited government should be troubled by these facts. For if you — the general, abstract you — do not understand why (or even that) the government has limited duties, why (or even that) private action is quite often more preferable and more efficient to public action, or why (or even that) limiting government power is essential to individual freedom, then you will see the government as a giant ATM. For proof, please see the new American bailout nation.

Then please imagine “coming of age” politically in this era. Review North Carolina’s curriculum for economics, 10th-grade civics, and 11th-grade U.S. history, and tell me it is not a little frightening. Remember that health care is now a right and that a Republican proposed a plan to “bail out” homeowners with bad mortgages. Stroll through the taxpayer-funded Capitol Visitor Center, which teaches D.C. tourists that the Constitution is an “open-ended thing that’s up to Congress to decide what it means.” Find a high school teacher or college professor (outside of an economics class) who can quickly and cogently explain moral hazard, tragedy of the commons, and externalities. Good luck.

Lack of a rigorous education in free people and free markets compounds itself as multi-generational misunderstanding of government power, which in turn leads to half-hearted discussions about limiting government and hare-brained schemes from those vying for the local school board on up to the Oval Office. It is no wonder, then, that the under-30 set is a stampede heading left. In the absence of any way to evaluate government action on principle, we would like to get just more and better “nice stuff” (e.g., jobs, health care, and more jobs).

But the good news is that the problem is remedied so simply. Parents and family and role models and mentors, talk to us — especially when we gather in the holiday season. Talk to us, those of us in our teens and 20s who have been told we live in a country of limited government and free markets, but see no evidence of it. Talk to us, those who worry about the plight of the poor and vulnerable, and explain why freer markets produce more prosperous people. But better than that, show us. Vote. Speak out on an issue. Fight City Hall — metaphorically, of course.

Even if we do not admit we are listening or watching, we are learning by your example. Please make it a good one. We desperately need one.