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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| I'm David Knight with the Knightly News. | |
| Now, this quote was written nine years before the financial crisis of 2008. | |
| But it came from a book that was written in 1990, had the same ideas from the same authors, 18 years before the financial crisis. | |
| The fourth turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the double-O decade. | |
| About the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a crisis mood. | |
| Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. | |
| Political and economic trust will implode. | |
| Real hardship will beset the land with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire. | |
| The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. | |
| Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II. | |
| The basis of this prediction is a cyclical view of history that Strauss and Howe discovered by going back through American and English history back to the mid-1400s. | |
| And they discovered that just as we have seasons of weather, we have seasons of society. | |
| And just as we don't know the exact date that winter is going to come, or whether it's going to be a harsh or mild winter, we do know that it's going to follow fall, and we do know the approximate time that it's going to come. | |
| We take a close look at the rhythms of American history, and in our book we make the following big prediction, that beginning about ten years from now, America is due to enter an era of crisis, an era of political and social upheaval, That will last around 20 years or so until the late 2020s. | |
| We call this era a fourth turning, and we think it's going to be a big threshold for the history of our nation. | |
| It's going to be something on par with World War II and the Great Depression, or going back the length of a human lifespan before then, the Civil War, going back the length of another human lifespan, the American Revolution. | |
| It could be a time of tragedy or a time of great opportunity. | |
| What they found was that societies will go through four phases of high, awakening, unraveling, and crisis. | |
| Humans go through four phases of life. | |
| Childhood, young adult, midlife, and elderhood. | |
| And they noticed generations where people have shared experiences and attitudes are spaced about 20 years apart. | |
| And generations are shaped by where their childhood falls within the phases of society. | |
| Now this got my attention because I noticed there was a repeating pattern of about 72 years between significant dates in American history as well as some other histories. | |
| For example, if you go from the time the U.S. | |
| Constitution was written in 1789 to the beginning of the Civil War, 1861, that's 72 years. | |
| Another 72 years takes us to 1933, the beginning of the New Deal, another major transformation of American society. | |
| If you go another 72 years, that took us to about 2005, exactly where Strauss and Howe had predicted a major crisis and change would occur. | |
| And in addition, if you look at the Russian Revolution, from 1917 to 1989 was about 72 years. | |
| So it seemed to fit with a life cycle of humans. | |
| In a cycle, four generations, 20 years apart, are shaped by when their childhood falls within that cycle. | |
| And the names they use in their book, The Fourth Turning, come from the biblical account of Exodus. | |
| For example, you have one generation as a prophet generation. | |
| Now, think of Moses calling a generation to change. | |
| The next generation, the nomad generation, wandering in the wilderness, a period of crisis and restlessness. | |
| The following generation would be a hero generation. | |
| Think of the Joshua generation, taking a promised land. | |
| That often involves a major war. | |
| And then finally, an artist generation, the generation that builds a new society. | |
| Well, where does Strauss and Howe think that we are in this cycle? | |
| The researchers see the millennial generation, those born between 1982 to 2004, as the hero generation. | |
| And they see our society entering a fourth turning, a crisis period where society will be fundamentally transformed as it was with the American Revolution, the Civil War, or the New Deal. | |
| And the last time we faced a fourth turning was the Great Depression and World War II. | |
| Strauss and Howe's predictions of 22 years ago now look prescient. | |
| We can see the storm surge coming in our society at our time, just as if a hurricane was approaching the shore. | |
| Now, our government has been undermining the foundations of liberty for a long time, and the question is, will you be a sandbag to help hold up and protect liberty, or will you stand by as it gets swept away and we enter a new dark age of authoritarianism? |
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