The truth is, this generation, which seems not to fit in any neat political category, is more ideologically consistent than either Democrats or Republicans. The conservatism that dominates the Republican Party today is a combination of limited government in some places (taxation and regulation), but bigger and more intrusive government elsewhere (homeland security, military and on social issues). The Democratic Party is just as inconsistent, preferring government to be hands-off on social and civil liberty issues, but large elsewhere in areas like health care and other entitlements.

Gen-Yers see the inconsistency. Weaned on the Internet, they understand what our founders understood and what classical liberals since have preached: that Social Security and the Internal Revenue Service represent big, intrusive government, but so, too, do a massive military, snooping spy agencies and national identification cards. They don’t want the government taxing their Internet purchases any more than they want a government agency assigning them a doctor.