“They’ve been told all their lives to wait in line,” former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says. “But they’re of a mind to say, ‘OK, while I’m waiting in line I’ll blow your stuff up.”

You’ve heard the knocks against Millennials. They’re narcissistic, coddled, and lazy, not to mention spoiled. But there’s more to their story. The largest and most diverse generation in U.S. history is goal-orientated, respects authority and follows rules. Millennials are less ideological than their Baby Boom parents (more on that later) and far more tolerant. In addition to famously supporting gay rights, polls show they are less prone to cast negative moral judgments on interracial marriages, single women raising children, unmarried couples living together and mothers of young children working outside the home. While their parents and grandparents preferred to work alone, young Americans are team-oriented and seek collaboration. Wired to the world, they are more likely than past generations to see the globe’s problems as their own. Millennials are eager to serve the greater community through technologies, paradoxically, that empower the individual.

Speaking of technology, Millennials witnessed, embraced, and in some cases instigated massive disruptions of the music, television, movie, media, and retail industries. The most supervised and entitled generation in human history, they have no patience for inefficiency, stodgy institutions or the status quo. Consider what they could do to politics and government.

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The good news is they want to serve.

“The Millennials have arrived, and they could rescue the civic health of our nation after decades of decline,” says John Bridgeland, CEO of Civic Enterprises, a national-service think tank. One of the nation’s foremost authorities on civic engagement, Bridgeland believes Millennials will be the next Greatest Generation, because, like the generation anointed by Tom Brokaw, they are products of an era of economic crisis and war, and are committed to community service.

The path to service usually goes like this: A Millennial’s parents fret that their precocious daughter can’t compete in a global economy without admission to a prestigious university. Volunteerism looks good on college applications, so twice a week they drive her to the local food pantry, where, starting in elementary school, she stocks shelves. When she gets to high school, community service is a requirement, because the superintendent’s appraisals are tied to college-admission rates.

Over time, a funny thing happens: The child actually likes community service. Data shows Millennials continue to volunteer into adulthood. Their reasons range from the practical (“It’s a great way to catch up with friends and help people,” a Concord, Massachusetts, high-school student told me) to the spiritual (“It just makes me feel better about myself,” said a 23-year-old politico at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.).