Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

It wasn't a total war of destruction, but they tried to wage it that way and failed. They didn't choose to fight a near-motionless trench war endlessly, it was the result of a peculiarity of technological evolution that gave the defense a marked advantage over offense for a time.

When I said it wasn't a total war, I wasn't referring to the fact that it bogged down in trench stalemate, or that the combatants (especially the French) had such a poor understanding of what war with rifles, machine guns, and rifled artillery would involve (hence the appalling casualty rates, reminiscent of the American Civil War). I meant only that it lacked the all-encompassing aims of World War II or the Napoleonic war. Hitler wanted to subject France to German rule forever; he wanted to carve up half of Russia, depopulate that half by starvation and working to death, and make it a huge German colony, breeding a vast German nation that would then dominate the world. Japan wanted to create a vast empire in Asia and the Pacific, even going so far as to conquer China. The Allies responded to Hitler with a call for "unconditional surrender." No such aims existed in World War I.

You actually pointed this out, I assume unintentionally, in your discussion of the German peace feelers and the Allied responses to them.

If we do assume WWI was a 4T war, that makes WWII a 1T war, and that I really don't see.

If we assume that the Napoleonic Wars were a 4T event, then World War I came at about the right time to be a 4T event, even a bit late

I don't see this. WWI started almost exactly 100 years after Waterloo. Treating the intervening period as one saeculum rather than two (which I imagine is what you mean to imply) that was some 40 years late, or two whole Turnings, and it should have been an Awakening, not a Crisis. It should be about 60 years from the end of one Crisis to the start of the next one.

Eh?

We disagree here, I frankly don't believe in the 60 year theory, I tend to think the Cycle is 70-80 years today, and used to be longer than that. Even the period from the peak of the ACW (call it 1863) and the peak of World War II (1943) is 80 years, and that was just the last Cycle.

Brian and HC68, you two are arguing over the war/hegemony cycle. That's not exactly the same thing as the saeculum and the global war phase of it rarely coincides with a 4T.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I don't see this. WWI started almost exactly 100 years after Waterloo. Treating the intervening period as one saeculum rather than two (which I imagine is what you mean to imply) that was some 40 years late, or two whole Turnings, and it should have been an Awakening, not a Crisis. It should be about 60 years from the end of one Crisis to the start of the next one. But if we regard the 19th century, which for Europe as for America was a period of rapid industrialization (though England went through this process a bit earlier than the Continent), as a time when the saeculum was foreshortened, it makes sense to chop this mostly peaceful period into two saeculae. That would give Europe a 4T in the mid to late 19th century, same period as America's or slightly later. You can see this for Germany, France, and England, though it's less clear for other European countries and may not wash outside those three countries.

Brian,

I agree with you that WW1 was a 3T event for Europe; it was a 3T event for Australia and Britain. Here in Australia WW1 was a very political divisive war in a way WW2 wasn't, there was a sizeable minority of socialists opposed to a capitalist?s war and half of the nation opposed the conscription of troops for some reason. Very much reminds me of opposition to the Gulf War and the recent war in Iraq.

WW1 had that typical unravelling pattern, lots of enthusiasm at the start, however little patience. These people expected the war to be a very quick one indeed, very different to what people at the start of WW2 thought.

The soldiers who fought it on all sides, were not the least bit like Heroes, they were Nomads. They saw this war initially as great adventure, also they were deeply embittered by the experience and came home to societies offered them little praise. The huge number of WW1 memorials in Australia does not celebrate the soldiers who fought in the war; the mood of the memorials is very sombre. This is very different to the WW2 memorials in the USA.

On the European saeculum, I am trying to link up the Saeculum in Australia with that of Britain and ultimately with that of Western Europe as a whole. I count back 60 years from 1929/30 when the last 4T started here, that goes back to 1870 when roughly the previous 4T finished.

Given the sort of events happening in Europe during the 1850's, 1860's and maybe the early part of the 1870's suggest a 4T mood. You see the wars of unification in Italy and Germany, the Paris Commune. In Australia you saw events like the Eureka Stockade (a tax revolt more of less), which transformed the institutions of government in the colonies, which would become Australia to allow for universal male suffrage and secret ballots. Also during the 1860?s and 1870?s there were moves towards more labour equity, high wages and less hours worked and also a lot of institution building and transformation.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

We disagree here, I frankly don't believe in the 60 year theory, I tend to think the Cycle is 70-80 years today, and used to be longer than that. Even the period from the peak of the ACW (call it 1863) and the peak of World War II (1943) is 80 years, and that was just the last Cycle.

Hopeful Cynic,

Brian actually meant, that is usually 60 years from the end of previous fourth turning to the start of another fourth turning. The modern saeculum cycle is about 80 years for all four turnings.

Exactly. Beginning of one 4T to beginning of the next is approximately 80 years; end of a 4T to beginning of the next is approximately 60 years.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

I think we're seeing a political manifestation of the fact that while the Euroelectorates don't know (or can't make up their minds) what they do want, they know precisely what they don't want. Unfortunately, the things they don't want are pressing in on them from all sides.

Hard to say how much of the European population want Europe to become a super nation. It is probably a small, but political powerful minority. However there is a large minority who believe in at least greater integration and co-operation between EU nations. It mirrors the Nationalist versus Internationalist debate going on in both Australia and the USA. It is part of the culture wars of the Unravelling that the western world is going through right now.

Originally Posted by Tristan

and boundaries of whole ethnic groups and nations were changed permanment, that did not happen after WW1.

:lol: Wanna bet?

There was a lot of that sort of thing at the end of World War I. When they carved up the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, they created a bunch of new, at-least-theoretically sovereign states almost out of thin air.

It was at the end of World War I that Wilson floated his tragic principle of 'ethnic self-determination'. At the time, his own Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, said of it, "The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives."

Make that hundred of thousands, minimum, as of 2004.

Wilson himself came to realize that Lansing had been quite correct, as he admitted to the United States Senate, "When I gave utterance to those words (?that all nations had a right to self-determination?), I said them without the knowledge that nationalities existed, which are coming to us day after day? You do not know and cannot appreciate the anxieties that I have experienced as a result of many millions of people having their hopes raised by what I have said."

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Exactly. Beginning of one 4T to beginning of the next is approximately 80 years; end of a 4T to beginning of the next is approximately 60 years.

But I didn't say I thought the Euro-4T I have come to suspect occurred about then started in 1914. I'm not quite sure when I think it did, actually, but I think 1914-1918 was the culmination, not the beginning.

In what Turning would you place World War II, then, H.C.?

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

In what Turning would you place World War II, then, H.C.?

That's the weak spot of my hypothesis, as I noted above. World War II fits perfectly in America's Fourth Turning, but if World War I was a 4T war, then World War II becomes a weird anomaly for Europe.

I frankly don't have an answer to that aspect of it (i.e. what caused whatever we classify the inter-war period as, and why). That's why I'm not totally convinced of my theory.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

In what Turning would you place World War II, then, H.C.?

That's the weak spot of my hypothesis, as I noted above. World War II fits perfectly in America's Fourth Turning, but if World War I was a 4T war, then World War II becomes a weird anomaly for Europe.

I frankly don't have an answer to that aspect of it (i.e. what caused whatever we classify the inter-war period as, and why). That's why I'm not totally convinced of my theory.

I can see why HC would be inclined in many ways to see WWI as a 4T conflict. But, like Brian, I just can't get passed the 20's, 30's, and 40's looking very unlike a 1T.

And yes, if Weimar wasn't a 3T on steroids, what would be??

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

:lol: Wanna bet?

There was a lot of that sort of thing at the end of World War I. When they carved up the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, they created a bunch of new, at-least-theoretically sovereign states almost out of thin air.

True, however there was little change in the ethnic map of Europe after WW1. After WW2 there was a massive change in the ethnic map of Europe, mostly in Eastern Europe, millions of ethnic germans in Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czech Republic and Romania were expelled and fleed to Germany, also there were large movenments of Russians, Poles and Hungarians.

The result of WW1 lacked the finality that is part of a 4T war, Germany was defeated, however she wasn't occupied by enemy forces like she was after WW2 and its institutions did not have a radical overhaul.

Who was it that had the theory that WWI was 4T for Russia and the Ottoman Empire but 3T for Western Europe and the US? Would that reconcile some of the debate about WWI?

Originally Posted by Hermione Granger

Who was it that had the theory that WWI was 4T for Russia and the Ottoman Empire but 3T for Western Europe and the US? Would that reconcile some of the debate about WWI?

John Xenakis.

Originally Posted by Hermione Granger

Who was it that had the theory that WWI was 4T for Russia and the Ottoman Empire but 3T for Western Europe and the US? Would that reconcile some of the debate about WWI?

WW1 was a 3T event for Russia, dunno about what turning it was for the Ottoman Empire, I would be guessing late 2T, early 3T. Brian Rush did some commentary on the Russian saeculum in this regard and I find it hard to disagree with him.

Here are my rough opinion the turnings for Continetial Europe for since 1930. It seems to fit with Strauss and Howe's commendtary on Britain and Continent Europe's generations. The Awakening on the Continent started no latter than 1968 and may have started a year earlier, see the Prague Spring epsiode.

The turnings on the Continent seem to match exactly that I have observed in Australia. Not suprising since Australia has kept closer contacts with Britain than America has, through common cultural influences and millions of migrants from Britain and Continental Europe. I doubt there has been a Turning or Generation, Australia has not shared in common with Britain's at least until the Last High.

Crisis 1930-1950
High 1950-Late 67 or Early 68
Awakening 1967/8-1988
Unravelling 1987/8-2007/8

1908?-1926 Hero
1927-1946 Artist
1947-1964 Prophert
1965-1985 Nomad
1986- Hero

I am wondering if that fits in with any of your observations of generations and turnings of Britain and Continential Europe?

Here is one view of the recent Euroelections, that caught the governing elites off-guard. Make of it what you will.

Lunatic Mainstream


The lunatic mainstream had better start worrying fast
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 15/06/2004)


Well, they may be Little Englanders, but they're getting bigger, and the big parties are getting littler. In Sunday's results, the only two governing parties most Britons have ever known couldn't muster 50 per cent of the vote between them.

In a functioning party system, you're never going to agree with your party on everything. You might, for example, be opposed to wind farms or in favour of toppling Robert Mugabe. But, even if you are, it's unlikely to be the big political priority in your life. So you vote on the economy and Iraq and healthcare, and accept there'll be a few disagreements by the time we get to page 73 of the manifesto. That's why parties like to talk about themselves as "big tents".

But, as Peter Oborne pointed out in last week's Spectator, poll after poll shows that up to half the British electorate wants out of the EU - i.e., their disaffection goes a little deeper than mixed feelings about insufficient subsidiarity in sub-clause XXIV(b) of the new constitution. This isn't a peripheral issue, but the central question facing Britain today - and the views of 50 per cent of the voters are not reflected in the country's big three parties.

By "big three", incidentally, I'm referring to last week's rankings: when Charles Kennedy says that next year's election will be all about "three-party politics", he's overlooking the fact that in England and Wales on Sunday he didn't win, place or show. On Europe, the three parties failed to notice their big tents are half-empty and there are tons of folks milling around outside with nowhere to go. That's when UKIP pitched up.

In the East Midlands, UKIP was in a statistical dead heat for first place. The "lunatic fringe" - UKIP, BNP, Greens, Respect, etc - won 40 per cent of the vote. And the so-called looniest of the lunatics, UKIP and BNP, pulled 32.6 per cent. Between them, Labour and the Lib Dems got 33.9 per cent. What, other than the blinkers of the media-political Westminster village, makes 32.6 per cent the fringe and 33.9 per cent the mainstream?

Indeed, the real problem in Britain would seem to be a lunatic mainstream, set on a course of profound change for which there is no popular mandate whatsoever. In that sense, what happened last week was not a Little Englander spasm but, alas, quintessentially European.

In the late 20th century sur le Continent, politics evolved to the point where almost any issue worth talking about was ruled beneath discussion, beyond the bounds of polite society. In Austria, year in, year out, whether you voted for the centre-Left party or the centre-Right party, you wound up with the same centre-Left/centre-Right coalition presiding over what was in effect a two-party one-party state. Then J?rg Haider came along.

In France in 2002, the presidential election was supposed to be between Jacques Chirac, the Left of Right of Left of centre candidate, and Lionel Jospin, the Right of Left of Right of Left of centre candidate. Chospin and Jirac ran on identical platforms, both fully committed to high taxes, high unemployment and high crime. Faced with a choice between Eurodee and Eurodum, the French electorate decided they fancied a real choice and stuck Jean-Marie Le Pen in there. Same in Holland until Pim Fortuyn got gunned down by a crazed vegetarian, the first fruitarian to kill a fruit Aryan.

In much of western Europe, on all the issues that matter, competitive politics decayed to a rotation of arrogant co-regents of an insular elite, with predictable consequences: if the political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising certain issues, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable ones. If Britain's historically more responsive politics is now on this characteristically Continental track, well, happy the land whose foaming demagogues are as benign as Robert Kilroy-Silk and Joan Collins. For the moment.

Yet already Britain's lunatic mainstream is lapsing back into its customary condescension on this issue. If your views on Europe don't fall between the broad parameters from, oh, Neil Kinnock to Chris Patten, you must be barking mad and we need pay you no further heed. The political class has refined Voltaire: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death my right not to have to listen to you say it. Are you still here?

This is unworthy of a democracy, and more to the point deeply unhealthy. One reason why the Eutopian dream has fizzled across the Continent is because the entire political class took it for granted no right-thinking person could possibly disagree with them, so they never felt they had to bother arguing the case and, now they have to, they can't remember what the arguments were. Those who subscribe to inevitablist theories of historical progress often make that mistake: the lazy Aussie republicans did in 1999, for example.

Almost every Europhile argument is weaker now than it was a quarter-century ago, when the EU - or whatever it was called back then - had a stronger economy, healthier demographics, and the devastating implications of the Continent's social costs were not yet plain. Yet pro-Europeans remain wedded to their ancient arguments: for a good decade and a half Edward Heath in his tetchier moments has airily waved the interviewer's question aside and said all these things were decided in the 1970s and we need to get on with it. Otherwise, Britain will be "isolated in the world" and unable to survive unless it allows its relatively buoyant economy to be yoked in perpetuity to the FrancoGerman statist gerontocracy.

That's why Labour's decline to its pre-Great War vote share is as telling as the hit the Tories took. Neither of Britain's two main parties reflects the real division on the critical issue of the day. In a less diseased political culture, we'd have one party that argues honestly for a highly centralised European superstate - that's the only one on offer - and one party that wants to keep a flat in Spain, sell Scotch eggs and saveloys to supermarkets in Slovenia, saunter along the beach at St Tropez flaunting its wedding tackle to adoring frauleins, and doesn't see why any of these economic and cultural ties require a European public prosecutor or foreign minister.

But the respectable parties aren't honest on this subject, and so a frustrated electorate has loosed strange new forces upon the land. Thus the paradox: in its rejection of Europe, the British electorate was never so European.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

The lunatic mainstream had better start worrying fast
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 15/06/2004)



But, as Peter Oborne pointed out in last week's Spectator, poll after poll shows that up to half the British electorate wants out of the EU - i.e., their disaffection goes a little deeper than mixed feelings about insufficient subsidiarity in sub-clause XXIV(b) of the new constitution.

That's actually a very funny line, if you pay attention to the doings of the EU. It captures something basic about the spirit of Brussels.

In the East Midlands, UKIP was in a statistical dead heat for first place. The "lunatic fringe" - UKIP, BNP, Greens, Respect, etc - won 40 per cent of the vote. And the so-called looniest of the lunatics, UKIP and BNP, pulled 32.6 per cent. Between them, Labour and the Lib Dems got 33.9 per cent. What, other than the blinkers of the media-political Westminster village, makes 32.6 per cent the fringe and 33.9 per cent the mainstream

Hmm...good question.

In the late 20th century sur le Continent, politics evolved to the point where almost any issue worth talking about was ruled beneath discussion, beyond the bounds of polite society. In Austria, year in, year out, whether you voted for the centre-Left party or the centre-Right party, you wound up with the same centre-Left/centre-Right coalition presiding over what was in effect a two-party one-party state. Then J?rg Haider came along.

To the horror of the EU elites, they discovered that the only thing marginalizing traditional right-wing politics does it force that same political energy to travel down untraditional routes. They still haven't really internalized that lesson, though.

[

In France in 2002, the presidential election was supposed to be between Jacques Chirac, the Left of Right of Left of centre candidate, and Lionel Jospin, the Right of Left of Right of Left of centre candidate. Chospin and Jirac ran on identical platforms, both fully committed to high taxes, high unemployment and high crime. Faced with a choice between Eurodee and Eurodum, the French electorate decided they fancied a real choice and stuck Jean-Marie Le Pen in there. Same in Holland until Pim Fortuyn got gunned down by a crazed vegetarian, the first fruitarian to kill a fruit Aryan.

Yeah, but the technocrats took it for granted that the insurgency had passed. Until the last election, that is.

In much of western Europe, on all the issues that matter, competitive politics decayed to a rotation of arrogant co-regents of an insular elite, with predictable consequences: if the political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising certain issues, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable ones.

The trouble is that to the technocrats, any serious disagreement with their agenda is a priori unrespectable.

Yet already Britain's lunatic mainstream is lapsing back into its customary condescension on this issue. If your views on Europe don't fall between the broad parameters from, oh, Neil Kinnock to Chris Patten, you must be barking mad and we need pay you no further heed. The political class has refined Voltaire: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death my right not to have to listen to you say it. Are you still here?

Yep, and as the Euroboomers rise up the ladder of life, that opposition will likely get louder and more insistent. The EU, as currently organized, is almost the epitome of an Adaptive political creation (yes, it was originally founded by GIs and a few Lost, but today it's an Adaptive machine).

Fortunately, in France they have run-off elections. Remind me to import some of that next time I pick up some fromage, champagne, and Serge Gainsbourg records

More on the EU and the 'French factor'. Make of this what you will.

Chirac Testy


Chirac shows little entente and less cordiality


Old rivalries are fuelling new disputes with Blair as French president tries to flex his muscles in expanded European union


Ian Black and Michael White
Saturday June 19, 2004
The Guardian

What is it about Jacques Chirac at European Union summits? He is often in a bad mood, inclined to snap and cause offence as he nurses a beer at the ever-larger and increasingly impersonal summit table.
One central European diplomat in Brussels yesterday explains: "He can't make up his mind to be De Gaulle or Chirac, a statesman or a hands-on politician who never likes to leave a table without scoring over an opponent."

Tony Blair is his natural opponent these days, as smooth as the French president, but 20 years younger and an unapologetic rival for the role of informal leader of the EU.

Little wonder then that Mr Chirac was rude about UK negotiating tactics this week, all those "red lines" to weaken the draft constitution, compounded by a refusal to back the Franco-German candidate, Belgium's Guy Verhofstadt, for the presidency of the European commission.

First of all the French leader said an emphatic Non to the idea that Britain's Chris Patten could become commission president. Then he warned that he didn't like the way things were going more generally.

Yesterday, No 10 retaliated. "We are operating in a Europe of 25, not of two or six or one," Mr Blair's official spokesman said pointedly.

A lot of history lay behind that jibe. In its early days the Common Market helped restore France's sense of greatness. She dominated the EU's inception in 1957; Britain only joined in 1973. French outrage at Margaret Thatcher's tactics to win Britain's rebate has never entirely healed. Mr Chirac feels the present prime minister is almost as obstructive.

For his part, Mr Blair likes Mr Chirac. Since they fell out over Iraq he has wooed him. Weeks ago both leaders helped celebrate 100 years of the entente cordiale between their countries. This week London gave Paris De Gaulle's wartime archives as a present. "Lunches, meetings, phone calls - Blair has sent out so many peace signals," says one UK minister.

The fact is that Mr Chirac is tetchy, partly because he is "old and volatile and gets no consistent advice", as one British source puts it, but France is also still coming to terms with the EU's "big bang" on May 1.

At one stroke the enlargement - championed by Britain under Mrs Thatcher, John Major and Mr Blair - took it from 15 to 25 states, a New Europe to balance the French-dominated Old.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German reunification weakened French influence. The arrival of ex-communist states inside the EU makes matters worse.

Mr Chirac outraged "new Europeans" like the Poles, Czechs and the Baltic states last year when he lectured them for being "infantile" and "missing a chance to shut up" when they backed the US-led war in Iraq.

With French diplomats sniping at "Downing Street-sur-Potomac", there was then an ugly spat when he ticked off a "badly brought-up" Tony Blair for objecting to plans to block reform to the EU's common agricultural policy - so dear to French farmers, who hold a central place in the country's national myth.

Not for the first time, Mr Chirac fell back on the old Franco-German motor, which drove European integration in the 70s and 80s. It has been spluttering in recent years, but Paris and Berlin try to keep it ticking over.

In the ultimate gesture of professional friendship, Mr Chirac stood in for Gerhard Schr?der at an EU summit. When he in turn had to return home briefly on Thursday he left his vote with the German leader, forcing Mr Blair to miss his bedtime in case a trap was sprung.

The bitter joke is that all they really have in common is a shared breach of the eurozone budget deficit limits, which they devised themselves. Paris and Berlin are learning that their joint support for an initiative no longer guarantees success. Nothing frightens the rest of Europe more than Franco-German bullying.

British enthusiasm for "trilateralism" - involving London, Paris and Berlin - is real but it has not yet gone beyond an initiative on European defence.

Language is another problem. The EU now tends to work in English, while the langue de Moli?re is in decline, a fact often blamed on the "Anglo-Saxon" EU reform commissioner, Neil Kinnock.

Mr Chirac insists that the commission president must speak French, as well as hail from a member state that is in the eurozone and the Schengen passport-free area. That rules out the vast majority of potential candidates, including any from the eastern newcomers. "If only the British government had bought Patten regular French lessons," sighs one minister.

"The French have never been keen on enlargement, and for good reasons from their point of view," says Kirsty Hughes of the London School of Economics. In contrast, Germany's position has been strengthened by enlargement.

The newcomers see Mr Chirac as rude and arrogant. On Thursday he annoyed even the Maltese, explaining they would not need a seat on a more efficient European commission. In a further sign of inflexibility, France is also the most hostile to letting Turkey start EU membership talks next year.

"The French have always been fairly concerned about their self-esteem. They ruled the roost for 30 years or so and now it's a little more difficult," Andrew Duff, the veteran British Liberal Democrat MEP says.

Torn between the integrationist traditions of Jean Monnet, the French founding father of the EU, and the nationalism of De Gaulle, Mr Chirac finds Anglo-Saxon obstructionism a convenient scapegoat.

Nice article, HC.

Let me try this. For several years now I have seen "generational location" as an interesting way of interpreting the actions of leaders across the globe. I have come to the conclusion that the Silent generation, like Chirac and Le Pen in France, badly needs to go.
They also need to go in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Both Sharon and Arafat are tarnished by history. I feel that they are simply too old, and too mired in old concepts and ideas, to fully deal with making a move toward a better future.
But, back to Western Europe, this is something I feel needs to happen soon. The European Union is a reality. Even if one member state's ego gets incredibly inflated and some issues remain at impass, a whole generation, perhaps now even two, have grown up with that reality.
There are scores of 30 year old lawyers, and diplomats, and professors, and pretty much every professional that have grown up with that reality.
And even in the new 10 states, it's been a reality for a generation.
As soon as the former communist bloc gained its freedom, EU accession became priority number one.
That has been the destination for all of these countries, achieving parity with their western neighbors.
So I wouldn't see EU chaos as particularly troublesome.
I think our generation is the cement that will hold that union together. And they do. Look at those diplomats. They are all married to some other European. A Norwegian and a Spaniard. A Swede and a Belgian. An Estonian and a Brit. A Czech and a German. That's the new reality. Unfortunately old Silents, like we've seen in our own country, die hard.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Partition of Poland (1772-1793) ought to be a Polish crisis.

Dutch Revolution of 1785 failed, but could it be a crisis?

They could be Crisis era events, the French revoultion certainly was a Crisis era event. However the reign of terror and rise of Napoleon might have been a High era event, similar to McCarthyism.

Originally Posted by Olaf Palme

Nice article, HC.

They also need to go in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Both Sharon and Arafat are tarnished by history. I feel that they are simply too old, and too mired in old concepts and ideas, to fully deal with making a move toward a better future.

I do not think Sharon and especially Arafat belong to a Artist generation, they certainly do not act like Artists, more like Heroes actually. The Middle East, Israel along with it are about 13-15 years behind North America on the saeculum. The last awakening started there in the late 70's, Strauss and Howe noted how the mystical militants there are younger than Mystical militants in the west.

The Air Raid or the Blitz generation as the Silent in Europe are known as, have a very good reason in their heads why they want closer European intergration. They fear a return to the kind of conflict which was a feature of their youth.

Originally Posted by Tristan

The Air Raid or the Blitz generation as the Silent in Europe are known as, have a very good reason in their heads why they want closer European intergration. They fear a return to the kind of conflict which was a feature of their youth.

Indeed. Their fears may well come to pass, too, as the Boomers assume power around the world.

I was talking to Neil about his experiences of living in France and Germany during 1970's and he described very much an Awakening environment. Also he described the mood in Japan when he was there in 1975 as very 'fifties'

This was my question to Neil

Firstly,
Well I wanted to know what the Generation 68' (Boomer peers) were like and
how did they rebel against the Resistance/Wiermarcht Generation (GI Peers)

Secondly how did the Generation of 68 question the deeds of their parent's
generation in WW2.

Neil's Reply:
Finally how highly are the GI peers regarded in Germany and France.
I know in Britain the Few (GI peers) Generation are about as highly
respected as GI's are in America, I have observed a similar, if smaller
pheonemon in Australia.

Well, those are big questions--hard to answer in short compass. Both the
French and German Boomers expressed hostility to an older generation that
had to make huge political commitments that didn't always look very good
with the passage of years. The "generation gap" in Germany in the late 60s
and early 70s was really brutal. My first memory of a German University was
seeing hundreds of students (all of whom seemed to be excellent English
speakers) watching Casablanca and hooting every time those piggish German
officers strutted into Rick's. Many of them were into the whole Eastern
religion-free love-hippie thing; others became real hardline political
radicals. Nearly all of them felt like they were living in a totally
different world than their parents (who, by the way, were generally very
affectionate toward American youths like me--sometimes more so than their
own kids). The emotion in France was much the same--though curiously the
French (coming from the Catholic rather than a Protestant culture) were not
as attracted to the whole "new age" thing. Keep in the mind that in the 70s
new revelations were appearing (recall Ophuls' movie) about how few French
actually belonged to the "Resistance" and how many were complicit with Vichy
and the occupation. Moreover, their bourgeois French parents were getting
fat and happy in an emerging European Community in which Germany was paying
all the bills. There was much complacency to attack.

For all their faults, to be sure, the G.I.s in these countries were
respected--often criticized and attacked, but respected--not just for the
hardships they endured, but for the tough choices they made and the great
achievement of bringing Europe successfully out of chaos after the war was
over. (This was a really amazing achievement in Germany, brought about as
David Kaiser reminds us due to the leadership of Adenauer and others who
were actually a generation *older* than Hitler and most of this Nazi
friends.) Today, their presence is really just about gone. Note how few
were left to say anything good about the Yanks on the recent D-Day
anniversary. The new elders--the Silent "air raid" generation--is not as
respected; they are more a true "committee" generation. And, I suspect,
they are clearly less sympathetic to America; many have written vicious
denunciations of the U.S., in part from their childhood memory (in Germany)
of the allied bombings. The European Silent Generation were old enough to
recall the violence of WWII--but not old enough to understand why it was
necessary. This point has been discussed at length on our forum. And many
of these Silent mentored the new Boomer crop of leaders who are still rising
to midlife leadership posts.

--Neil