September
11, 2001:
The Day the Crisis Arrived?
1.
With
Tuesday’s nightmarish scenes of the crumbling towers of the World
Trade Center and the burned-out section of the Pentagon still fresh
in our minds, it might be useful to revisit a book that created
a stir when it first appeared in January of 1997: The
Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, by historians William
Strauss and Neil Howe. Strauss and Howe did not predict anything
as specific as an assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
But they did predict that something shocking would happen
to this country early in the 2000 decade, and the result would be
a seismic shift in the country’s overall mood.
The
Fourth Turning offers a cyclical account of U.S. history. As
a theory of history, it isn’t perfect, and would never satisfy those
who need exactitude. But it is worth pondering. Strauss and Howe
make use of the indisputable fact that our history has been punctuated
by crisis-precipitating events that occurred an average of just
over 70 years apart. A period of crisis followed each event, and
the country emerged changed. In 1787, a group of men convened in
Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation. They emerged
from behind closed doors with a different document: the Constitution
of the United States of America. A battle ensued over the acceptability
of the new document, with battle lines drawn between the so-called
Federalists who favored ratification (James Madison, John Jay, and
so on) and the so-called Antifederalists who believed the new Constitution
gave the federal government it created too much power (Richard Henry
Lee, for example, or cohorts such as George Mason). Out of that
battle emerged our Bill of Rights.
Fast-forward
to December of 1860. That was the month and year South Carolina
signed its Ordinance of Secession. Early in 1861 – several other Southern
states followed South Carolina out of the Union and established
the Confederate States of America. This triggered the next major
crisis – regardless of what we believe caused the devastating war
that followed, or who was right. Note the number years elapsed:
73.
Fast-forward
again. In October of 1929, the bottom fell out of the stock market.
The effects immediately snowballed, and several economies were traumatized.
There were cases of people losing everything and committing suicide.
The whirlwind of exuberance that characterized the 1920s was shattered.
The stage was set for the Great Depression and, eventually, the
Second World War. Again, the country was transformed. As before,
we are not here discussing who did what to whom, or who was responsible;
we are only observing the time span: 69 years.
The
number of years between the stock market crash to September 11,
2001: roughly six weeks shy of 72. Do the arithmetic. Either this
is an amazing coincidence or it reflects a pattern, or system.
2.
According
to William Strauss and Neil Howe, each of the cycles of history
is divided into four smaller units called turnings, each
turning lasting anywhere from a dozen or so to 20 years and each
characterized by its own distinct mood. Transitions from one turning
to the next can be propelled by a nasty jolt, or a turning can yield
to its successor smoothly and almost unnoticed as old preoccupations
grow stale and are replaced by new ones. The first turning in any
new cycle is a High. The second turning is called an Awakening.
The third, an Unraveling. Crises are actually the fourth turning – from
which The Fourth Turning derives its name.
Highs
begin when the country achieves a given self-definition. According
to Strauss and Howe, they are periods of strong institutions, identification
with them by individuals, respect for the "tried and true,"
and cultural optimism. They offer the period 1947-1963 as exemplifying
our most recent High. Awakenings begin when something occurs to
call the institutions and values into question. Our most recent
Awakening no doubt began with the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy. There can be no doubt that this event jolted the national
consciousness. It is amazing how many people can remember where
they were and what they were doing when they received word that
the President of the United States had been shot (including myself
even though I was only six years old). This sense of shock transcended
party loyalty; one did not have to agree with Kennedy’s policies
to have sensed that the country had been changed overnight. If the
mood of a High is shattered, however, its cultural optimism tends
to be carried over and recast in the form of various sorts of extreme
idealism, even Utopianism. Consider the period that began in 1964
and probably ended in the early 1980s. It featured civil rights
activism, feminism, environmentalism and so on. These movements
challenged the dominant institutions and values of society, but
presumed an unbridled optimism about human nature that held out
hope for transforming every institution in society.
An
Unraveling begins when not just the old institutions but the new
movements run out of steam. The utopias have not materialized; people
have grown cynical and indifferent, and optimism is replaced either
by pessimism or escapism. Many people saw in the Reagan era a resurgence
of national honor and a repudiation of the excesses of the late
1960s and 1970s. The problem was, the resurgence was more cosmetic
than substantive; it was more exemplified in movies such as Rambo
than in substantive national achievement. While the economy arguably
improved and Soviet Communism disintegrated, our culture also deteriorated.
The excesses of the two previous decades merely went underground,
and would reappear with a vengeance during the 1990s. Movements
that begin during an Awakening display their darkest tendencies
during an Unraveling (the transformation of civil rights and feminism
into identity-politics, political correctness and thought control).
Awakenings may yield important and useful ideas and movements – for
example, the Libertarian Party started during 1973. It is, in this
view, the product of an Awakening. But during an Unraveling, the
best of such movements may seem to lose their momentum, their concepts
of rights translating (at least for some adherents) into I-have-a-right-to-do-as-I-please,
a notion more likely to yield chaos than freedom. A stale cynicism
and latent hostility permeates the culture.
Bill
Clinton was the perfect person to preside over an Unraveling. Here
was a man driven by the need for power and recognition, his primary
concern being his "place in history." He will be remembered
for his lust for female staffers, his cynical manipulations of the
military (e.g., bombing Sudan to remove attention from Monica Lewinsky’s
testimony) and his tortured rationalizations ("It depends on
what the meaning of ‘is’ is."). His unholy Regime deepened
public cynicism and helped propel the country ever deeper into a
materialism as vulnerable to Fed-manufactured booms as it was complacent
about its ability to control the entire world.
Finally,
according to Strauss and Howe, an Unraveling ends with a bang: that
is, with an event that sends shock waves through the entire country – and,
perhaps, the entire world. The mood shifts into Crisis mode. During
that Crisis, old preoccupations are suddenly irrelevant, and new
alliances formed. As the Crisis progresses, it may be punctured
by additional shocks, e.g., the attack on Pearl Harbor which we
now know the tyrant Roosevelt knew was coming. But we also see acts
of tremendous heroism (e.g., in World War II). Crises, unlike the
other four turnings, may at points seems to challenge the very survival
of the country. When they end, the country has a new conception
of itself – for better or for worse.
3.
Three
additional points are worth making. First, it should be clear that
we are discussing tendencies here, not absolutes that apply to every
person or institution. Turnings are actually very complex, and generate
subcultures of their own. There were Beatniks during the 1950s and
Young Republicans during the late 1960s and 1970s. But both were
essentially outsider groups; they did not define or dominate the
mood of the period. Arguably, William Whyte’s The
Organization Man did more to spell out the former era’s
philosophy of life than Jack Kerouac’s On
the Road. Hippies and rock and roll defined and dominated
our most previous Awakening. Genuine conservatives (which manifestly
did not include Richard Nixon) all but disappeared; those
whose thinking hearkened back to the "happy days" that
preceded the Kennedy assassination were simply ignored. Finally,
politicians like Clinton and Janet Reno will forever be associated
with the 1990s; the so-called Christian Right slowly fell apart.
Second
point: this cyclical tendency is not unique to our own history or
times. Strauss and Howe believe they have traced the cycles and
turnings of history all the way back to the 1400s. They offer the
details in pp. 123-38 of their book in the form of a chart. They
do not dwell overly on the cycles and turnings that precede modern
history, because although it constitutes supporting evidence for
their vision none of the events involved help make their argument – and
warning – relevant today.
Third
and final point: no turning is either all good or all bad. Consider
Unravelings. The term has a negative connotation, but the systemic
"unfreezing" that occurs during an Unraveling allows for
innovations of all kinds, the most important being technological.
The Unraveling that began around 1914 and ended in 1929 gave us
the automobile. Our own period has given us the Internet and the
World Wide Web. News and commentary sites on the Web have proven
to be the most formidable means of countering the power-hunger and
stale cynicism of the Clintonistas and other statists. On the other
hand, of course, the past several years have arguably achieved new
heights (or depths) of materialism. Academe has disintegrated
into a collective orgy of political correctness, and getting ideas
related to this country’s founding principles have often seemed
like pulling teeth. While there are signs of religious revival,
and while a number of Christians have remained somewhat visible
critics of the Clinton-era status quo, by and large our society
1984-2001 was driven by secular preoccupations: technology, the
economy, and special-interest political agendas.
4.
The
Fourth Turning predicted at the beginning of 1997 that something
would happen in the then-near future that would send shock waves
through the country. I recall thinking, as I watched the horrifying
events unfold on television Tuesday morning, that now might be a
good time to dig this book out. A couple of people who knew of my
interest in it patted me on the back, telling me I had been right.
Actually,
I would prefer not to have been right. Strauss and Howe have a vision
of history that is disturbingly fatalistic, suggesting that because
of broad tendencies there might have been little we could have done
to prevent what happened on September 11, 2001. Their theory incorporates
a kind of generation-based sociology holding that different turnings
produce different kinds of generations. A Hero generation is born
during an Unraveling and comes of age during a Crisis. Those who
fought and won World War II are certainly candidates for Heroes
in this sense. A Silent generation is born during a Crisis and matures
during a High. Think again of the "organization man,"
the "man in the gray flannel suit" who existed in the
shadows of the Heroes. A Prophet generation is born during a High
and comes of age during an Awakening. Think of the hippies, rock
stars, civil rights activists – and also the founders of the modern
Libertarian Party. The Prophets – Baby Boomers – are indeed a diverse
lot, but all shared a vision that the world to come could be better
than the world that was. And finally, a Nomad generation is born
during an Awakening and comes of age during an Unraveling. Nomads
tend to find their own self-definitions, whether it be trying to
found a high-tech software company or joining the goth subculture.
While many are very creative, others have no goals or larger vision
of society and find themselves simply drifting through life. A few
embrace violent and nihilistic philosophies; the result is a Columbine
massacre.
How
do these differences emerge? Each generation, according to the Strauss
and Howe, is shaped in large part by the times in which it grows
up – and by the attitudes of its parent generation. The Heroes, having
come of age during the Depression and then being sent off the fight
in World War II, had a sense of the precariousness of human life.
Freedom and prosperity were not givens; they were not entitlements
but had to be earned through specific courses of action. Even though
they never read Mises, the Heroes absorbed enough basic economics
by living in the world as it is to be able to craft the society
of the 1950s.
However,
they also tended to overprotect and spoil their children: the Prophets – or
Baby Boomers. The latter grew up with a sense of entitlement instead
of precariousness – a dangerous mindset, if we want a generation capable
of maintaining a free society. The Prophets, because of their nonchalance
about life’s precariousness, began to underprotect their
own offspring, the Nomads – today’s "Generation X." Having
grown up without firm rules, many of the latter have remained single
or treated marriage as merely one "lifestyle choice" among
many – hence the breakdown of the family and the sense of many youth
that they are on their own. Again, these are tendencies and do not
describe everyone; there are many strong, stable families out there.
Now,
of course, many of today’s Nomads have children of their own, and
the oldest of those children are starting to come of age. The children
of Nomads become Heroes. This is indeed an important generation.
Strauss and Howe predict that those who began to be born around
1984 and whose leading edge is now moving through the high schools
of the country, will have to shoulder the enormous responsibility
of pulling the country through the next Crisis – as did the
Heroes who fought and won World War II. Their latest book addresses
Millennials
Rising: The Next Great Generation.
5.
Let
us attempt to apply all this. We have said that The Fourth Turning
predicted that something like the attack on the World Trade Center
towers and the Pentagon was going to happen. Our most recent Unraveling
included the irrational foreign policy of the past two presidential
administrations and helped create the conditions for the attacks
by fomenting resentment against this country. Our materialism, our
"liberated" attitudes about women (for example), combined
with U.S. economic prowess and military might, also add up to a
perceived threat to an Islamic fundamentalist culture. This helps
explain why the Iranians who ousted the Shah of Iran back in 1980
called our society the "Great Satan." People fear and
tend to demonize what they do not understand.
This
does not, of course, justify the horrible attacks that occurred
last Tuesday, and it does not mean that some kind of response isn’t
called for. But any response by our fearless leaders had better
be thought through very carefully, because actions have consequences
and matters could end up being made worse. We have an enemy that
manifestly does not think like we do or wage war according to our
rules. We have fought and won wars on open battlefields, but missiles
and armies are ineffective against guerrillas and underground cells
such as those directed by Bin Laden who provide no clean targets
to hit. So what can we do? One thing we should do immediately is
abandon interventionism as a foreign policy. The means no longer
attempting to force "democracy" and "Western values"
(often those of secularism and materialism) on peoples who don’t
want them. It means resurrecting George Washington’s warning against
"foreign entanglements." We should also do more to protect
our borders. We need to realize that our individualism has been
both our strength and our weakness. We alone as individuals can
(up to a point) define ourselves and find our own way, whether as
entrepreneurs or as philosophers (or both). This has unleashed the
greatest prosperity the world has even seen. But because of it we
(especially American whites) lack the kind of ethnic identity that
characterizes most other groups in the rest of the world. We alone
see ourselves primarily as individuals without realizing that most
of the rest of the world does not look at people this way. This
makes us vulnerable, because by treating people as individuals we
have made it easy for those who wish us harm to gain access to our
soil. This simply has to stop. I believe we will have no choice
in the upcoming months except to engage in what liberals call discrimination.
We need to say it: no one who wasn’t born here is entitled to
be here. This calls for protecting our borders, instead of opening
them to people who not only know nothing of individualism and Constitutionally-based
republican values but might wish us harm. Other peoples of the world
will likely have to discover a Constitutionally-based republican
form of government for themselves, or not at all. The United States
simply cannot carry them on its back; and even if it could, if indigenous
peoples do not want our help then our efforts will only generate
resentment and hatred.
6.
There
is a still more ominous warning embodied in The Fourth Turning,
and Strauss and Howe seem not to have noticed it: during each previous
Crisis period, the central government increased in power. The federal
government created by the U.S. Constitution was larger and more
centralized than that of the Articles of Confederation, and this
was what bothered the Antifederalists. Then, as Jeffery Rogers Hummel
was able to show in great detail in his masterful Emancipating
Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, what emerged after 1865 was
more a powerful state than had existed in 1860. It was vulnerable
to forces already at work that would serve up still more centralization,
in the form of a central bank, the IRS, etc. No one seriously doubts,
finally, that the Crash of 1929 set the stage for the rise of the
welfare state under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s policies
were those of a Crisis.
Crisis-precipitating
events are fundamentally destabilizing. Instability is easy to exploit.
What truly jolting events do, in the hands of politicians and master-manipulators
both behind the scenes and in the mass media, is create a sense
of panic in the minds of the public that can be assuaged only if
"we all pull together and trust our leaders." We are already
seeing this in the sudden outbursts of patriotism visible everywhere,
with people putting American flags on their cars, wearing them on
their lapels at work, etc. Everywhere, though, too, one hears renewed
concerns for public safety. This makes us ever more vulnerable to
those who would take away what remains of our liberties. A number
of polls all show that the majority of the public will sacrifice
personal freedoms in order to feel safer! Therefore, there is now
a danger that the American public might serve itself up on a silver
platter to a New World Order regime that would emerge at some point
in the ensuing Crisis, leaving us in the hands of a full-fledged
police state. This regime would be a de facto dictatorship
of superelites that might even be identified with by the majority
of people when it arrived! The next High would be far less free
than any of its predecessors. Unfortunately, all too many people
prefer safety to freedom, and they trust the government more than
they should.
The
country’s shifting into a Crisis mode will doubtless propel enormous
changes. These changes will be as difficult to predict as any historical
specifics. They might propel a revival of religious conviction,
as opposed to the materialism that has characterized the most recent
decade; this might lead to a long-term trend toward private, Christian
education and against failed "public schools." The changes
might also vault into prominence movements that have been dismissed
out of hand in the "mainstream," such as those favoring
the secession of various states or groups of states from the central
government in Washington, that government’s blunders having had
a hand in precipitating the Crisis. Crises are periods of great
danger and destabilization. No doubt the question will soon be floated:
could the federal government and the international superelites have
known in advance that an assault somewhere on U.S. soil was coming,
in a manner similar to Roosevelt’s having known in advance about
Pearl Harbor. Is there a behind-the-scenes effort underway to foment
a major war in the Middle East, with the full cooperation of Washington
elites? Wars, after all, help elites consolidate power. Time, hopefully,
will help answer such disturbing questions, and if the answer is
Yes, this could engender a sense that secession from the Washington
government is our last, best hope for liberty.
Our
current ace in the hole is that with this cognitive machinery about
cycles, turnings, and their advantages as well as dangers, we have
the potential to control the changes ahead instead of allowing them
to control us. That would be an enormous and unprecedented achievement,
because in this case, out of this Crisis could emerge for the first
time in over 200 years the first new culture that is freer than
its predecessors. That would be a High worth celebrating! But only
if we are willing to do what is necessary to ensure it. This includes
ensuring that we value liberty more than mere security, and agree
to acknowledge the legitimacy only of a government that knows its
place and recognizes that one of its legitimate functions is the
protection of our borders.
September
15, 2001
 Steven
Yates [send him mail]
has a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is the author of Civil
Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (ICS Press,
1994). He is a professional writer at work on a number of projects
including a work of political philosophy, The Paradox of Liberty.
He also writes for the Edgefield
Journal, and is available for lectures. He has started writing
a novel and also set up a small freelance writing business, Millennium
3 Communications, in the hope that one or the other will eventually
lead to an escape from underemployment. He lives in Columbia, South
Carolina.
Copyright
© 2001 LewRockwell.com
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