by John Bottoms

I admit it.  I'm a sucker for those prognosticators of history, those brave souls who put their reputations on the line to predict the future; not just a few months, but sometimes years or decades.  But I know how cloudy one's crystal ball can become, so I try to be a savvy consumer, too.  I've watched with interest as several smart and convincing writers predicted ten of the last two recessions.  My favorite for a long time was James Dale Davidson's Strategic Investing, but after predicting economic "Blood in the Streets" since 1987 as the stocks went straight up, he finally jumped on the bandwagon and recommended high tech stocks in 1999 . . . just in time for them to tank.  Then there’s Doug Casey and his gold bugs of the early '90s, but enough said about their accuracy.  And while I never took the Y2K-TEOTWAWKI crowd very seriously (unlike a well-known internet essayist who shall remain nameless . . . you know who you are), I did carry a wad of cash and a gun on New Year's eve 2000 just in case.  And Miss Cleo is still my favorite small-time huckster and con artist around, even if the law is hard on her little New Jersey tail. 

Just as my faith in futurists was spiraling into crisis, along came The Fourth Turning.  In this popular 1997 book, sociologists William Strauss and Neil Howe describe 70 to 80-year cycles in American public and cultural life.  Their premise is that natural differences among generations create the cycles, which comprise four nominally 20-year periods called "turnings": the High, an Awakening, an Unraveling and a Crisis. 

The High, following the previous Crisis, is a period of conformity and trust in public institutions.  In our most recent cycle it includes the years 1945-1965, and includes the Korean War, the space program and the start of the War in Vietnam.  The Awakening occurs when society questions the conformity and easy answers of the previous High.  It is a time of optimistic social upheaval and idealism.  Our most recent Awakening spans the years 1965-1985, encompassing the "hippie" and anti-war movements as well as Reagan's "Morning in America."  In the Unraveling, public institutions are poorly regarded, "do your own thing" nihilism, pessimism, and social balkanization are rampant.  Society is increasingly unable to address critical conflicts.  Our recent Unraveling spans 1985 to right about now, with Bill Clinton and political correctness the perfect emblems of the times. 

The Crisis is necessary to resolve a critical problem or contradiction which has been simmering for much of the previous 80-year cycle.  In the crisis of the 1780s, America transformed itself from colonies into a democratic Constitutional Republic.  In the turbulent 1860s, we morphed from a Confederation of semi-sovereign States into a monolithic nation and even a nascent Empire.  In the 1930s and '40s we became the world's premier welfare-warfare state, and now the issue before us seems to be whether we are headed for a de facto one-world-government, headed by the USA. 

For their ability to accurately predict important social trends,  Strauss and Howe get my personal Crystal Ball award.  Steven Yates presents a detailed and well-written review of their book. 

It is only with the perspective of hindsight that we can know for sure that we've moved from one turning to the next, but with only 6 months of history behind us, 9/11 seems to fit the bill for the start of a Crisis.  The authors make no claim to predicting specific future events or their outcomes, only the process of social change.  If the American colonists had lost their bid for independence in 1776, our history would have been markedly different, though the authors imply that some crisis would still have erupted in the 1860s and another around the 1930s, but that these crises might have had very different flavors from our War of Southern Secession and the Great Depression followed by WWII.  Nor can we know the outcome of our current crisis, but we can start to recognize the nature of the conflict to be resolved. 

After pussyfooting around the issue for decades, it seems America's elites are finally starting to admit that our nation really is and ought to be an empire.  Add to that the US military bases that are being built or contemplated around the world and the blatant aggression and arrogance out of Washington.  This Crisis is shaping up to be about world hegemony (and de facto one world government) by the USA.  Like previous American crises, the issue is increasing centralization: yes or no. 

Based on Strauss and Howe timetable, this Crisis should be resolved over the next 15-20 years.  If our government succeeds we can expect more of the same for the foreseeable future: brutality, loss of freedom, socialism and its inevitable economic stagnation.  Only if they fail, and big government, centralization and empire are discredited, will the door open to more humane, rational and libertarian alternatives. 

Keep your fingers crossed.