Etzioni's main communitarian thesis is that individual rights and aspirations should be protected but they should be inserted into a sense of the community, hence the name of the movement he created, Communitarianism. He argues that communitarian thinking developed in reaction to the "me-first" attitude of the 1980s. He has urged the movement to attempt to establish common ground between liberals and conservatives, thus bridging that division. In his book Radical Middle, author Mark Satin identifies Etzioni as a radical centrist communitarian.[3]
In Etzioni's view, the communitarian movement works to strengthen the ability of all aspects of the community including the families and schools in order to introduce more positive values. In addition, it aims to get people involved in positive ways in all levels of the community and ensure that society progresses in an orderly fashion. These works which have occurred between 1990 and the present have given Etzioni his greatest successes and satisfactions in the public realm.[2] He also articulated an early reason-based critique of the space race (in the book The Moon-Doggle) in which he points out that unmanned space exploration yields a vastly higher scientific result-per-expenditure than a manned space program. Amitai Etzioni also coined the word McJob in an article for the Washington Post in 1986.[4]