There was a sense of solidarity that went across the usual lines of race and class, a sense of solidarity that you could see in the immediate data. In that context, to start a war by cutting taxes on the rich was a horrible, horrible civics lesson. This is the first time we have cut taxes on the wealthy as we entered a war. That says we are not all in this together. Some of us have to make sacrifices and others do not. Some of us send kids to fight in Iraq and others do not. Cutting taxes on the wealthy was a terrible civics lesson.

Is it going to stick? That depends in part upon people in their twenties and depends in part upon whether the 9/11 generation “sticks with it.” The sustainability of the 9/11 effect depends also on what lessons are taught by my generation. The renewed civic interest following 9/11 is a kind of a spark, and we have since spent much time mistakenly dousing the flame.

What research or data substantiates theories on the sustainability of the 9/11 generation?

The underlying hard data comes from two annual long-term national surveys. One is a survey of college freshmen that has been conducted since the 1960s. Among the questions asked: How interested are you in public affairs? How important are the following things to you: making a lot of money, serving my country, finding a mate?

Until 9/11, the long-term trends were very clear and very distressing: a long, steady rise in the importance of making a lot of money and a long, steady decline in the importance of public affairs and public service. In the 1960s, five times as many college freshmen thought that public service was important as thought that making a lot of money was important. By 2001 six or seven times as many people thought that making money was more important. Those trends turned in 2001, and interest in public affairs has continued to rise since. That is the evidence that I would cite as good news.

The other long-term data series, paid for by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), goes back to the 1970s. The purpose of the survey is to generate statistics on drug usage among high school seniors. Among the questions in that survey are some about political interests. Those experienced an upturn after 2001, but in the survey of 2004, political interests began to go back down again. There is evidence in both directions.

Are the types of social networks being formed in the United States post-9/11 of the right type? On a national level, are they "bonding" social networks, which you define as bringing together similar people, or are they "bridging" social networks, which bring together different kinds of people?

There is another element to the trends in civil society discovered last year. Ask, how do these trends in volunteering look if you break them down by the social class? What was discovered is, first of all, that most of the upturn that I have described in volunteering is concentrated among kids of the upper middle class, not among working-class kids. The upturn may be due to resume building, to kids who want to go to Harvard and are volunteering more—not the kids who know that they are going to end up working in Wal-Mart. There is strong evidence that over the last 20 years among high school kids, there has been a growing social class gap in many aspects of their lives.

If you look at upper-middle-class kids over the last 30 years, they are becoming more involved in society, more likely to go to church, and more likely to volunteer. They have more trust in other people, more social capital, more civic engagement, more interest in politics, more self-confidence in their own academic ability, and more self-confidence in their general lives compared to people just like them 30 years ago. Among working-class kids—including working-class white kids, as this is not a matter of race—all those trends are sharply down. They are much less likely to go to church, much less likely to be involved in social activities, much less likely to trust other people, and much less likely to be self-confident about their own academic abilities. Working-class kids have lower aspirations.

The gap in volunteering is parallel to the income gap, the growing gap between rich and poor. The income gap is being inherited here. We are more and more two Americas.

What can be done to mitigate or reverse the class divide in civic engagement?

A lot lies in the hands of educators, not so much university educators as high school and grade school educators. The trend, class gap in civic engagement, highlights the importance of finding ways of building bridging social capital among young people. There has been a structural change in US society so that we are increasingly living in two separate worlds. That is driven in large part by the trends we have talked about, a growing gap between rich and poor, and partly by increasing class segregation, residential segregation. Increasingly, middle-class people do not live around working-class people. The solution will require hard work on economic policy. The remedy begins with politics and preaching.

Can theories of civil society be applied to the international community? Can civic society within nations contribute to the strength of an international governing body such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) or the United Nations?

International civil society operates on a much longer time scale. One can imagine long periods of several generations building a kind of international civic society that would begin to have serious effects on international politics. I am distinguishing international civic society from what is sometimes confused for that, which is a couple of NGOs with members in various societies and in various countries getting together. This is sometimes thought about as an emergent international civic society but affects only a tiny fraction of people worldwide.

I am skeptical of claims that international relations will be quickly and powerfully affected by the building of large numbers of deep, strong ties among the peoples of the world. That kind of idea has been around for 100 years. People thought, if we just get together, if we can all just get along, we will not have wars. I am skeptical of that. Even in the case of a relatively specific area, like Western Europe, those ties are not as strong as you would have expected after 50 years of the European integration movement.