The Center for American Progress has just released an interesting and important report on "The Political Ideology of the Millenial Generation," co-authored by John Halpin and Karl Agne.  Generally speaking, the research suggests that Americans born between 1978 and 2000 tend more progressive than their older counterparts and that said generation particularly follows progressive impulses around cultural and social issues.  I don't think this would surprise many progressives, or for that matter many conservatives.  Younger generations have often, if not always, spearheaded progressive causes; what is important in this report is what within progressivism this particular generation gravitates toward. 

The Commonweal Institute's "Modern Progressive Values," which I wrote last year, may offer some useful elucidation of the character of these young American's political intuitions.  In that report, I grouped modern progressive values around three value pairs: Freedom/Security, Community/The Commons, and Truth/Justice.  For the most part, according to Halpin/Agne, the Millenial Generation appears to be far more progressive than people over 30, especially with regard to Freedom/Security and Community/The Commons.  Millenials tend, as you might expect, to be far more tolerant of alternative lifestyles and families, seeing them as far less of a threat to traditional families than their elders do.  I think this tendency reinforces both a more flexible version of family values (Community) and an insistence on individual liberties (Freedom) irrespective of traditional hierarchies, a tendency almost always present within progressivism but particularly important to those who have grown up with openly gay television characters, greater access to open-minded or alternative cultural output, and reduced attachment to religious orthodoxy.

I found the points about economic issues in the Halpin/Agne report more surprising on a surface level and therefore particularly worthy of consideration in light of our 2008 report.  The Millenial Generation, the authors found, is more likely than generations over 30 to reflect early 20th century, FDR-style notions like the idea that the government has the obligation to step in when markets fail and that society has tended to reinforce the power and wealth of the already powerful and wealthy.  What makes this point interesting is that the Millenials also tend to be more conservative than their elders on the issue of Social Security, favoring the option to put aside individual accounts rather than to pay into what they see as a system that will no longer be around when it's their turn to retire.

This finding suggests an apparent paradox.  How could the same generation both acknowledge the imperfections of the free market (implying support for the desirability of Obama's policies to intervene) and yet also prefer a degree of privatization with regard to their own 401Ks?  Part of this paradox seems to have to do with the experience of having come of age in the past decade and witnessing the failures of the free market but also the looming insolvency of Social Security, as Halpin/Agne note. 

On a more intuitive level, however, I think this reveals something I wanted to emphasize in the Freedom/Security value pairing from our 2008 report: progressive Freedom and Security are two sides of the same coin.  Progressives (particularly Millenials) see Freedom as both a lack of restriction on their cultural and social activities and a form of protection in the form of Security: Freedom from economic exploitation, environmental danger, illness, etc.  So it makes sense that these young progressives would both want the government to protect them from the vicissitudes of the free market and yet also want it to allow individuals the autonomy from governmental systems that might eventually fail to provide the very Security they ostensibly promise.  These positions are actually not contradictory at all; both suggest a deep engagement of Freedom/Security as one continuous value. 

Why does this matter?  Why can't we just see Freedom as one thing and Security as another?  The significance for economic, social, and military policy is actually potentially profound.  Many of the Bush administration's policies were predicated on separating the two values, such that to preserve national Security, for example, one had to be prepared, in the wake of 9/11 (as the story goes) to sacrifice certain Freedoms.  But if we see Freedom and Security as intertwined, as after the same sort of liberty but through different means, then we must pursue policies that remove all kinds of obstacles standing in the way of being free -- be they governmental, corporate, or individual.  When we view Freedom and Security this way, as the Millenials appear to, we can no longer accept wiretapping for the sake of safety, or laissez-faire financial policies for the sake of economic liberty.  This framework should help structure all policies related to liberation and protection.