ABSTRACT
This chapter underlines the public attitudes about collective obligations and that help determine the success or failure of efforts to defend or attack them. It suggests that these debates will involve tradeoffs between providing floors below which no one should fall without imposing ceilings that limit the maximum benefits anyone can have for their own family. Politicians and parties do not introduce programs to educate the public or to build a consensus on what is good for America, despite pious claims to the contrary. New media have altered the way that collective obligations are exposited and maintained by making it easier for small groups of politicians and activists to circumvent political gatekeepers and build their own constituencies. The obligations politicians will choose to promote, and the ways that others will attack them depends upon how the obligations threaten or strengthen party coalitions.
