The Question of Privacy in Public Policy

This study examines the role of privacy in American political thought, specifically, the rise, implementation, and consequences of the conservative social policies of the Reagan-Bush era as they relate to the question of privacy. In particular, the work focuses on some of the high-profile social issues of that period: the War on Drugs, so-called family values, abortion, sexuality, and discrimination. Sadofsky concludes that privacy-invasive public policies such as were initiated in the Reagan-Bush years are expensive, defy the Constitution, and actually cause dysfunctional social behavior. He also suggests that social behavior in the 1960s did much to create a wave of intolerance in the 1980s, and that progressivism requires a return to the morality of tolerance.