“You can’t connect the dots looking forward… you can only connect them looking backward…”
— Steve Jobs
In their influential 1997 book, The Fourth Turning, historians William Strauss and Neil Howe illuminate how the past 500 years of western European history has consisted of a series of saeculums of approximately a generation’s life span (80-100 years), with each saeculum being comprised of four generational phases (“turnings”).
There is evidence of similar turnings in the history of other civilizations.
We are now in a “fourth turning” — a perilous time of “crisis”. No one can predict what this crisis will entail, or what our culture and society will look like after we pass through the crisis. But “looking backward” can suggest what can happen.
Previous fourth turning crises included WWII, the American Civil War, the American Revolution — and the French revolution which led to the Napoleonic Wars.
Fourth turnings are usually accompanied by war.
World War II began in Europe, then in Asia. There is now a European war (Ukraine) in which the United States is already financially involved. American reserve troops are being activated for potential deployment to Europe in addition to U.S. troops already there.
The United State is re-opening closed bases in the Philippines in response to Chinese provocations.
“Cry ‘Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!“
Fourth turnings are preceded by a third turning “unraveling” that includes economic turmoil. Roman government spending on “bread and circuses” required debasement of their currency, which lead to inflation that preceded its collapse.
In the United States, the financial Panic of 1857 occurred at the end of a third turning. It contributed to the fourth turning Civil War.
The post-WWI German Weimar Republic created a social-welfare state that could only be supported by profligate government spending, and printing of currency not backed by gold to pay for that spending. The resulting hyper-inflation exacerbated the unraveling that brought Adolph Hitler to power and lead to the crisis of WWII.
The United States government is now printing trillions in currency that is not backed by gold (fiat currency). You don’t need to look back to see that our government’s overspending and printing of fiat currency is causing inflation — just go to the grocery store and look at the price of food.
Throughout history, government overspending always causes inflation — and government officials always try to deflect the blame to others. Weimar officials blamed the signers of the Versailles Treaty; Joe Biden calls it ‘Putin’s inflation’.
Another commonality of the collapse of Rome, and Weimar Germany, was the unraveling of traditional sexual morality and gender roles. There is a lot of scholarship discussing the contribution of a sexual immorality to what happened in both. Following the unraveling murder of Julius Caesar, and the ensuing civil war, Caesar’s nephew Octavian became dictator for life. One of his goals was to curb what he portrayed as sexual licentiousness. He decreed the first-ever government regulation of sexual conduct.
Public displays of homosexuality in the Weimar Repbulic contributed to Hitler’s rise to power.
In the United States today, we have public ‘Gay Pride’ parades.
Third turning unravelings include the decay of established government process. When President Barack Obama was unable to get some of his progressive agenda enacted, he sought to end-run Congress by use of Executive Orders. He famously said, “I’ve got a pen to take executive actions where Congress won’t”. .
Two months after Adolph Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany he announced the “Enabling Law” which empowered him to enact laws by decree without the need of getting approval from the Reichstag, and that those laws were not limited by the German constitution.
In June the United States Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional for President Biden to use an Executive Order to “excuse” student loans.
Civil liberties also suffer in unravelings. In one of his first decrees Hitler used his pen to issue an order suspending civil liberties that declared in part “Restrictions on personal liberties, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of freedom of assembly and association; violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephone communications; as well as restrictions on property, are permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”
Does that sound like government-decreed COVID restrictions? Or government coerced censorship of social media that has been revealed by the “Twitter Files”, and the sworn testimony of a Facebook executive?
Or disregard of the First Amendment in the name of restricting ‘hate speech’?
The third turning unraveling has reached its apogee in 2023 United States. We are entering the fourth turning crisis. What form it will take, or when and how it will end, is anyone’s guess.
I was born in the first turning “post-crisis high” after the end of the last fourth turning crisis – WWII. I’ve now lived through the other three phases of this saeculum. At my age, I doubt I’ll live to see the next first turning post-crisis high — even if humanity doesn’t destroy itself with nukes in this impending fourth turning.
…you can connect the dots looking backward…
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.