Spotlight on the future.

Welfare reform, public safety and family cohesiveness as societal-wide goal-if they are to be achieved- require a number of profound paradigm shifts. There are at least ten over three levels.

Individual:

1. we all must accept, act and commit ourselves to becoming "our brothers'

2. citizen responsibilities can only be fulfilled in the 21st Century by all of us serving as committed volunteers to the non-profit sector in building an "opportunity society";

3. economic integration of poor people needs to be driven by self-motivation, recognizing that this is a dynamic and will deepen over time;

Sector:

1. non-profit sector is transformed back to its historic roles, both externally and internally, but with some new wrinkles;

2. entrepreneurial energies are unleashed of new immigrants and wired youth;

3. unfettered moral center of churches and faith communities is no longer constrained by "separation" dogma;

Societal:

1. primacy of the non-profit sector as the engine for the "opportunity society";

2. continuums of opportunities replaces age-determined phases of education, work leisure and retirement;

3. opportunity society is rooted in the vast demographic changes that are transforming America from a EuroCentric culture to that of the world's first "World-Nation";

4. "third wave civilization" overwhelms the defenders of the second wave industrial society.

Above all else, we need to be ever mindful of what truly is the touchstone in transforming America. The major finding of the Wisconsin State Commission for the Study of Administrative Value and Efficiency is a clarion call: "reinventing citizenship and citizen responsibility are more important than reinventing government!"

An Overview

Newspapers, television and, especially, C-SPAN have provided citizens-to date-with a wealth of information about the numbers and politics of governmental devolution, with nary a word about the larger and more important questions: the specific framework as to how individual people become involved, evolve into a "critical mass" for action, and are organized to fulfill the needs of others. This is just not going to succeed unless an "engaged citizenry" does the major (to use the GOP metaphor) heavy pulling! Likewise, we cannot talk about lasting welfare reform without the parallel revolution in creative job building: Newt's "opportunity society"!