Reagan's Children
by Hans Zeiger

With the publication of my second book, I know I am taking a risk. My thesis in "Reagan's Children: Taking Back the City on the Hill" is controversial. It says there is hope for the future. There are conservatives who thrive on pessimism. They feed on rantings about everything from immigration to Ted Kennedy to the character of the rising generation.

Well, whatever merit there may be to complaints over Mexican border hoppers and Chappaquiddick bridge hoppers, the rising generation offers more reasons for optimism than its alternative. There is a generational shift taking place in our moment, and we would be fools to miss it.

The late Sixties, as pessimistic conservatives are well aware, was the time of the last great generation shift. Since that time, an elite of left-wing radicals has dominated the key posts of higher education, the media, mainline churches, and many government bureaucracies. Only now is another generational shift taking place, only this one is very different.

This is like the Sixties because it is a generation shift of seismic proportions. It will fundamentally change the course of this nation. The numbers of the so-called Millennial Generation roughly parallel those of the Baby Boom Generation. The 30 million Millennials born when Ronald Reagan was president--now graduating from high school and college, emerging in the world of work, fighting on the ground in Iraq--are a completely different and in many ways opposite sort of generation from their parents'.

What I call Reagan's Children are unlike the Baby Boomers because they are reacting to the Sixties rather than embracing its excesses. Reagan's Children are not a homogenous blob, but we are not a divided generation like the Vietnam Generation. We are highly committed to the restoration of community; we are well-connected with friends and associates on the internet and in our daily lives. We work together to build solutions, and we find value in enduring truths that we have been told do not exist. Relativism is an insufficient explanation for the adventure of living that is before us. While many in our generation have yet to embrace truth fully, but there is a recovery in the offing; reality is the keyword of our time.

Ours is the most aborted generation and yet the most pro-life. Teen sex is on the decline. Home-schooling is on the rise. Whether one visits a state university or a private Christian college, he will find a cohort clean-cut, ambitious, and remarkably respectable.

I decided to write Reagan's Children about two years ago after President Reagan died. It was clear at that time that young people, many too young to remember the Great Communicator as president, had yet to be affected deeply by his legacy. Not only did Reagan profoundly shape the nation, his example as a leader continues to stand out as the best of his generation. That generation has been called the "Greatest Generation." And Reagan was the greatest of that generation.

When we speak of greatness, we do not mean that an entire generation is great. Humanity is sinful, and every generation has failures and mediocrities. But leadership--that quality rare among men and pivotal in the story of a generation--is something badly needed today. The Sixties generation ages, Generation X makes its independent contribution to the course of human events, and Reagan's Children ride what some would call the long-awated swing of the pendulum to the right. It is not just a political conservatism we see in the rising generation, though; it is a moral commitment to what T.S. Eliot called "the permanent things." It points to the pulse of Providence, which is the highest sort of leadership.

As retirement age nears for the Boomers, it is the decisive age for Reagan's Children. A transition is upon us. It is a movement worth joining. Americans of all ages can take part by parenting, praying, writing, teaching, learning, discipling. Reagan's Children who would be in the vanguard must especially seek careers that will impact the way Americans think. We must win the war of ideas.

I cannot know at this stage whether my book will make any difference in our generation. It becomes clear to me, however, that there are new leaders in our generation, and they, by God's grace, will make the difference.

Hans Zeiger is author of Reagan's Children: Taking Back the City on the Hill, published by Broadman and Holman, and he blogs at www.reaganchildren.com

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