Traditional families are dissolving. Ever since the rise of capitalism, people have been living in ever smaller family units and giving ever more importance to their work compared to their families. In the 20^th century, the growing independence of women has also meant less attention to family and in particular to children in the home. It is neither possible nor desirable to go back to the old ways. The institutions of marriage, child care, and school need to change so that women can retain their independence yet all American children can get the nurturing they need. We need family values, but family values attuned to the new age.
 
 

The information age is revolutionizing the workplace. Global competition is transforming the corporate world. There is much to celebrate in the new technologies and the new flexibility they give companies and workers. But too often flexibility in the workplace translates into more options for companies but fewer options for workers. Too many young people are entering this new world as digital illiterates. And when the current boom ends, we will almost certainly see the return of downsizing with a vengeance. We need to empower workers in this new workplace, prepare young people (particularly disadvantaged youth) for jobs in the information age, retrain older workers in digital skills, and maintain employment levels when the next recession arrives.
 
 

Decades of conservative and corporate campaigns have turned the welfare state a dirty word. Yet literally tens of millions of Americans, young and old, depend on the social security, medicare, medicaid, the public school systems, etc. to keep them out of poverty, help them through illness, or prepare them for the future. Even though it has become fashionable to trash the welfare state, the vast majority of Americans support government assistance to the old, the young, the sick, the disadvantaged, and the victims of poverty or discrimination. Certainly the bureaucratic inertia and the occasional perverse incentives of the welfare state make easy targets for ridicule. Yet no one would think of closing down the Pentagon because military contractors sometimes defraud the system or generals try to pad their budgets. Our leaders have lost sight of just how much good has been done, just how many lives have been improved, by the programs of the welfare state. Of course, we must exercise fiscal restraint, but we also need to think creatively how government can deal with issues of poverty, health, aging, and expanding opportunity in the 21^st century.
 
 

The traditional family is dissolving, the relationship between men and women is changing, the workplace is being transformed, the welfare state is stumbling, selfish individualism is eclipsing public spirit, and Americans are losing their sense of purpose as a people. One key to addressing all these issues is the need to create a new sense of community, a new sense of interconnectedness and interdependence. Just as the old family cannot be revived, the old small town community cannot be resurrected. New communities in tune with new families and the emerging information society must be constructed if we are to have any chance of reviving any sense of public purpose. Without such public spirit, our social problems will fester and grow.
 
 

In the U.S. a core of poor people remain left behind even in the greatest boom on record. Someday that boom will be over, and the number of people frozen out of the economic system or left scraping at its margins will skyrocket. At the international level, the vast majority of people have not yet tasted the fruits of the industrial revolution, much less the digital age. Hundreds of millions are hungry or without simple medicines or sanitation. The persistence of mass poverty at home and abroad should be intolerable. Indifference to the poor in the midst of unprecedented prosperity is truly shameful. Trashing the domestic welfare state and the international organizations that are the only systematic way to address these problems is just as shameful.
 
 

The information age has not brought an end to industrial manufacture or to the unprecedented stress it has placed on the global environment. The evidence of global warming only highlights the proven damage done to the environment by industrial processes around the world. If left unaddressed, the problem will only get worse, as rich westerners consume more and more, and industrial technology spreads to less developed nations around the world. Pollution knows no national borders. The U.S. as the planet's leading polluter, needs to take a lead in protecting the planet.
 
 

The global corporation is not new. The industrial revolution created companies with operations across the planet. But the old industrial giants were the rare exception to the general economic activity at the local level. And the old industrial corporations, while operating on a global scale, had a national identity. The were American, or British, or German, or Japanese companies with branches overseas. The new global titans are now truly transnational, in that they exist outside the nation-state, answering to no one but themselves, and with loyalties only to their bottom lines. These global "outlaws" control an ever larger share of economic activity, not only in the West, but around the world. The recent financial crisis in Asia is a warning to how dependent we all are on the whims of global financiers. The transnational corporation must be made to serve the people's interest as well as its own.

In the second half of the 20^th century, the United States has acted not only as the world's policeman, but all too often as its judge and jury as well. In an ever more interdependent global system it is more than anachronistic that a nation with only 5% of the world's people has the hubris to think it should run the world. It is not only foolish but downright dangerous. In the Cold War era, the early successes of American interventionism led eventually to the debacle in Vietnam. The recent American-led wars in the Persian Gulf and the former Yugoslavia appear to have been military successes, but the arrogance they have engendered makes another disastrous military campaign only a matter of time. The American people have clearly indicated that they no longer support policies of global interventionism, even if concerted efforts by the political class can temporarily alter some poll numbers. The United States should stop acting like a 19^th century European imperial power and find a way to live in the 21^st century without going to war over and over again.

The vast majority of Americans believe in democracy. The spread of democracy around the world has been one of the most heartening developments of the 20^th century. But in the global era, democracy should be conceived on a global scale. Most of the world's people are not Americans. The populations of China or India are greater than that of the entire western world. Global democratization should be thought of as much more than the spread of western electoral institutions to the non-western world. It should also mean that the vast majority of the world's people who are now ignored should have a greater voice in a world system not run by the West. That would be real democracy.

Probably the single most important event of the 20^th century was the American nuclear attack on Hiroshima. As Einstein said about nuclear weapons, "Everything has changed, except the way we think." During the Cold War the United States and Russia brought the human race to the brink of extinction. With the end of the Cold War we have sobered up a bit and begun to think about controlling the nuclear peril. But we have only begun to conceive of the kinds of changes that would be necessary to make nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction possible. We have actually done almost nothing. American leaders act horrified over genocide in Kosovo, but retain weapons whose use would make Kosovo seem like a picnic. Meanwhile the nuclear club grows. The recent crises in Kashmir and Taiwan should be warnings to those that think nuclear war is an impossibility. In the post-Cold War era, the American leadership has begun to focus on issues of nonproliferation. But as long as the U.S. maintains its genocidal arsenal, and as long as the U.S. uses its conventional forces to impose its will around the globe, other nations will not lay down their arms or foreswear nuclear weapons or other, cheaper and less technologically difficult weapons of mass destruction. The United States faces a stark choice. It can try to dominate a world with as many as a dozen or more potential antagonists with weapons of mass destruction. Or it can use its leadership to seek a peaceful global system with many fewer weapons of mass destruction. But it cannot have it both ways.

We all know that the American political process has degenerated into an absurd circus. However, we should also be aware that political choices will make the difference between peace, prosperity, and community or war, social stagnation, and spiritual impoverishment. Historically, our candidates and our political elite have failed us. But are Americans themselves ready to demand real political leadership? Or are we content to enjoy our private pleasures and let the country go to hell?
 
 

BACK TO HOMEPAGE