As rash, irresponsible and na've young college students, we have probably all been accused at one time or another of having our priorities out of order. And by and large, that indictment is true, however annoying it may be to hear from parents or professors. Fortunately, most of our poor prioritizing will not affect us too much in the long run, and even if it does, it won't have negative consequences for others. But there is one area of life where the out-of-whack priorities of youth like us can have potentially disastrous consequences on our entire generation: politics.

I've always been suspicious about young people's involvement in politics, but the troubling way most younger Americans approach political issues became most apparent to me this past summer.

Like many of my fellow Brandeisians, I spent my summer working as an unpaid intern. Unlike many of my fellow Brandeisians, I worked for the College Republican National Committee. My internship consisted of doing what most interns do: researching and summarizing things for higher-ups. But, of course, whenever I mentioned to a liberal friend of mine that I was working with a bunch of Republicans, the questions and accusations started flying.

"How can someone like you be a Republican?! You're not some crazy, evangelical redneck; you're a smart guy! Their positions on all the issues are so unjustifiable!"

Whenever I pressed a shocked questioner about to which Republican positions he or she was referring, the list was generally a short summary of conservative ideas about hot-button social and foreign policy issues: gay marriage, separation of church and state, the war in Iraq, etc.

What I found so shocking whenever this happened was that almost none of my friends attacked the Republican positions on economic issues. No one mentioned the national debt, federal entitlement spending or even tax policy.

I understand why so few people base their party affiliation off of dry issues like the state of the Social Security trust fund; such issues are complex and don't get nearly as much media attention as the sexier social issues.

But it is terribly unfortunate that so many young people make issues like gay marriage and prayer in schools their top concerns when going into the voting booth. It is one thing for a middle-class baby boomer to be ignorant of economic issues. That type of ignorance may be unfortunate but not wholly irresponsible. But young people, such as college kids, are the ones who will be most adversely affected in the future by poor economic decisions that our politicians make today. Yet we remain unconcerned.

As important as gay rights issues are, there is little the federal government can do to advance the cause of gay rights. Those issues are dealt with primarily on a state level. In any case, the mind of the country is gradually liberalizing on gay rights anyway, and whatever candidates get elected to Congress or as president will likely follow the country on this issue.

Church-state issues are also vitally important to the success of our free society, but neither major party is proposing establishing theocracy in America. No one debates whether or not the United States should have an official religion.

Most of these debates are about nativity scenes in front of town halls or Ten Commandments displays in courtrooms. Whatever the outcome of this ongoing national debate, it seems to me that our freedom of religion will remain relatively strong.

Even when it comes to the ever-important issues of foreign policy, these issues are far less consequential in national elections than they are often made out to be. Putting aside the rhetoric of both parties, both Republican and Democratic presidents generally pursue largely similar courses on the world stage. President Barack Obama is continuing the war in Afghanistan, has praised the surge in Iraq and is going to keep a small number of forces there indefinitely. I am confident in saying that Senator John McCain would have done much of the same.

In contrast to the above issues, the federal government does control the nation's pocketbook. The consequences of poor economic decision making will be far-reaching and affect the very nature of our government. And the two major parties really do have very different ideas about how to solve economic problems.

The current national debt stands somewhere in the neighborhood of $14 trillion. Federal and state deficits are setting historic highs, and it is young people like us who will be stuck paying for the irresponsible spending of both parties. We are the ones who will end up paying higher taxes and receiving fewer government benefits in the future. Should we cut government spending to solve the problem or raise taxes? That is a serious decision our generation has to make.

Federal entitlement spending is another issue that ought to be of top concern to young people. Social Security and Medicare aren't big problems for today's generation of senior citizens, but by the time most of us are ready to retire, those programs will be in dire fiscal straights, and most of us will collect only a pittance of what we are currently paying into those programs. Should we partially privatize Social Security and overhaul Medicare or should we raise the retirement age and lift the payroll tax cap? That is another serious debate college students like us need to have.

At my Republican internship this summer, the people in my office disagreed vigorously about issues like gay marriage, religion and foreign policy. What united us was our commitment to solve America's fiscal situation before our generation faces the consequences of today's government policies.

I do not mean to say that only one party has the answers to these questions. Each party has different ideas about how to deal with these issues, and that debate is healthy and important. -But youth like us seem largely uninterested in this debate even though it affects our generation most directly.

I don't expect anyone to become a Republican after reading this column. But I do hope that some young readers will take a cue from the College Republicans and realize that it's those complex, boring pocketbook issues that should be more important and at the top of our minds when we go to the polls this November.