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Chapter 15 Public Policy in a Millennial Era As the Challenges Facing America Evolve, the rhythm of generational cycles, reinforced by technological change, generates new ideas on how government should respond. Dissatisfaction with the status quo rises to the point where the public demands a wholesale restructuring of governmental institutions only about once every eight decades, or every “fourth turning,” to use Strauss and Howe’s terminology . But other aspects of public policy require more frequent finetuning to bring them in line with the public’s changing attitudes and beliefs. As Millennials assert their primary electoral role over the next twenty years, the center of America’s public policy debate will shift off its current liberal/conservative, Baby Boomer–dominated axis to focus on finding new ways to balance national purpose with individual involvement and decision making. The fundamental question in American public policy is almost always about where to draw the line, or, more accurately, redraw the line, between the competing values of individual liberty and community and between the desire for both national order and local flexibility. While idealist eras are more concerned with the first tension, civic-era debates tend to focus on the latter.As a result, the expansion and contraction of policies favoring either personal liberty or community coherence have moved in harmony with the dynamics of generational change. These same tensions will frame the debate over acceptable solutions to our country’s problems in the Millennial civic era we are now entering. Old debates over social issues will fade into the background,and new questions about America’s social unity and global competitiveness will move to the forefront. Proposals that are able to synthesize the two competing claims of national priorities and individual flexibility will become the preferred answers to the challenges America will face in the next two decades. 247 Chap-15.qxd 11/23/07 4:39 PM Page 247 Where We Stand Depends on Where We Sit in History The tension between individual liberty and community cohesion has been part of America’s political debate since the discovery of the New World.When the ideologically driven Pilgrims landed in the New World to escape religious persecution, they established a community with clear rules about what would be considered acceptable personal behavior, with draconian consequences for those who didn’t obey. In our most recent idealist political era, Republicans argued consistently for expanding personal liberty in the economic sphere and restricting individual freedom in one’s private life, while Democrats tended to argue from exactly the opposite point of view. Republicans asserted the importance of individual initiative in growing the economy, while Democrats denounced the resulting lack of economic equality and social justice.The outcome was either deadlock in our public policy debate that postponed doing anything about most major problems, or solutions so weakened by the nature of the compromises that they accomplished little in the long run. The second enduring tension in the country’s policy debates has been over where to draw the line between individual and states’ rights, on the one hand, and the safety and security of our public spaces on the other. In the civic era that followed the American Revolution, the Constitutional Convention was convened in part to strengthen the federal government’s ability to impose order on its citizens and thus to counter the chaos that followed the adoption of the Articles of Confederation. The resulting document produced a brilliant system of checks and balances to protect against the possibility of autocratic imposition of too much order by an unconstrained executive. But its adoption was only secured with a promise that the Congress would approve amendments providing strong protections for individual rights as its first order of business . Echoes of that same debate are heard today in arguments over provisions of the Patriot Act that attempt to draw the line between individual privacy and the need to ferret out those among us who might be plotting the next terrorist attack. The events of 9/11 not only heralded the beginning of a new civic era, they also secured both the passage and the reenactment of the security provisions of the Patriot Act—an outcome that satisfied most of the public, if not partisans on both sides of the issue. Th e N e w A m e r i ca n P o l i t i ca l L a n d s ca p e 248 Chap-15.qxd 11/23/07...

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