THE OPENING QUESTION : GRATITUDE: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country <i> By William F. Buckley Jr. (Random House: $16.95; 155 pp.) </i>

Young adults tend not to watch national news, much less read about it; middle-aged adults seem unable to shake the political skepticism they picked up in the ‘60s and ‘70s; teens are happy to hole up in the fantasy land of MTV: It sometimes appears that no medicine can revive our indifferent body politic.

In “Gratitude,” however, William F. Buckley, of all people, champions a government program that might well be the right potion to rouse us from slumber: a “national service” wherein high school graduates spend a year performing various civic duties, from helping old people to protecting the environment and restoring library books. The program, outlined most thoroughly by Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), would entice students by offering them $10,000 (in tax credits, suggests Buckley; in cash, says Nunn) in addition to a low hourly wage.

It is, of course, odd to find the dean of American conservatism backing such a grand federal enterprise, and amusing to hear echoes of Meryl Streep in his call for more education about endangered species, finite fossil fuels and invisible particulates.

“Gratitude,” nevertheless, is unmistakably a conservative book, more concerned with the effect the service would have on givers than on receivers. Through it, Buckley writes, students can pay the debt they owe to the “civilizational patrimony,” a debt they probably haven’t considered, for democracy has brought isolation along with freedom, “depriving us of communion” with our ancestors, with tradition and with other races in our increasingly fragmented culture.

Of course, the service would not rout out the roots of ingratitude--such as an economy that makes it difficult to do good and do well at the same time--but Buckley’s argument for it is eloquent nevertheless, demonstrating that American conservatism still has a vital role to play in the post-Communist world.