Amitai Etzioni

One of the world's most quoted intellectuals, university professor, and founding president of the Communitarian Network explores how a good society should operate and what values we must bring to our social interactions if we are to achieve stronger community ties. The subject of numerous media profiles, Amitai Etzioni has worked with both the Clinton administration and Republican senators on social policy.

The last eight years have seen the ascendancy of the political center in American politics.

While applauding this move away from the extremes of both left and right, Amitai Etzioni argues that we still lack a clearly articulated political agenda for the next decade. With both presidential candidates staking their claim to the hallowed but hollow center, the major parties are failing to address in any meaningful way our pressing domestic issues, including gun control, comprehensive health care, and poverty.

Equal parts diagnosis and manifesto, Next issues a bracing call for greater political and community involvement. Arguing that our world-leading economy offers more opportunities than ever to end scarcity and break out of the cycle of materialism, Etzioni reacquaints the reader with the social, cultural, and spiritual values that must guide our approach to public policy questions. Making a strong case for the need for a "moderate counter-culture" to temper the excesses of our stock market-obsessed society, Etzioni outlines a novel domestic agenda for tackling the principal challenges facing us in the decade to come.

Focusing on flashpoint issues such as mandatory HIV testing of infants, encryption of electronic documents, national identification cards and medical records - this book argues that some things should outweigh the right to privacy.