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Reagan's Children are at the leading edge of the generation. The 30 million of us born when Ronald Reagan was president are the first half of the generational cohort broadly considered to be Generation Y, the Millennial Generation or Generation Next. Though present trends suggest our younger siblings will be more morally conservative than we are, the Reagan's Children cohort is the group that is currently emerging, providing the most important evidence of a national conservative shift.

At the present moment, Reagan's Children are voting for the first time, going to college, forming our worldview ideas and choosing our first jobs. We are the young soldiers fighting the war on terrorism, the first cohort to have been born with MTV and the first cohort to have grown up with the Internet.

The signs of a more actively conservative generation are numerous. Homeschooling has long been on the rise. Enrollment at evangelical Christian colleges is outpacing the enrollment at other colleges and universities, and membership is thriving in conservative youth groups like the Boy Scouts of America. While advocates of abortion go on aborting their children, evangelical Christians are having large families. The '60s generation of radical professors is about to retire, and the rebels on campus aren't all liberals anymore. The video game generation is defying the odds by embracing faith, volunteering in communities across the land and winning a war on terrorism.

All of this may come as a fright to those who've worked hard for the past few generations to tear up the foundations of the American order. Sensing their place on the losing end of the generation, young liberals are appropriately gloomy. "It's hard not to feel that we were born at the wrong time," liberal writer Anya Kamenetz writes. "We're Reagan Babies; the pendulum has been swinging in one direction for most of our lives."

More than a pendulum is swinging, though. Providence is on the move.

Note: This commentary is adapted from "Reagan's Children: Taking Back the City on the Hill" by Hans Zeiger (Broadman and Holman, 2006). Used by permission.

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Hans Zeiger is author of the new book Reagan's Children: Taking Back the City on the Hill. www.reaganchildren.com

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.

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