The Fourth Turning's Neil Howe Warns: We Are In The 1930s, "Winter Is Coming"

Via Mauldin Economics,

From the Balkans to the US, walls are going up, not down, according to demographer and The Fourth Turning author Neil Howe.

Speaking to a packed crowd at Mauldin Economics’ Strategic Investment Conference in Orlando, Howe said we are reliving many of the same trends and changes of the 1930s.

Faith in Democracy Is Fading

“Worldwide, people are losing trust in institutions,” he said. “Trust in the military, small business, and police is still there. But trust in democracies, media, and politicians is dropping.”

“When was the last time we saw these changes and the rise of right-wing populism?” he asked. “The 1930s.”

Howe’s statement is borne out of a June 2016 Gallup poll. When poll takers were asked how much confidence they had in institutions in American society, the results were troubling.

Just 15% said they had a “great deal” of confidence in the US Supreme Court. Banks trailed behind at 11%, followed by the criminal justice system (9%), newspapers (8%), and big business (6%).

Meanwhile, just 16% expressed a “great deal” of confidence in the presidency, with that number plummeting to 3% for Congress.

What Does This Mean for the Future of the West?

In his keynote, Howe shared his forecasting logic:

“My method is to step back and realize one thing: There is something we know about the world in 20 years’ time. The people who live there will be all of us, 20 years older and playing a different role. I call this ‘looking along the generational diagonal.’”

The critical thing to remember about the current crisis period is that what comes next will be an era in which there is a new order.

According to the Strauss-Howe generational theory, as this new order takes root, individualism declines and institutions are strengthened.

“History is seasonal, and winter is coming,” Howe has said. But after winter, comes spring.

As the American Revolution was followed by calm, as the Civil War was followed by reconstruction and a gilded age, and as the Great Depression and World War II were followed by an age of peace and prosperity, so too will this crisis period be followed by a calm, stable era.

It’s simply a matter of time.

This is Why the Left is so Scared of Judge Gorsuch

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Judge Neil Gorsuch after nominating him to the Supreme Court during a ceremony January in Washington, DC. (image: Getty)

(The Real Agenda News) Democrats and Republicans agreed on one issue after the election: the most important thing at stake was the Supreme Court.

The most prominent reason why Democrats, Liberals and other left-leaning people are so scared about confirming Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court is that he is the closest to an ‘originalist’ when interpreting the US Constitution.

People who read his opinions and know the way he thinks explain he won’t attempt to adapt the meaning of what is written on the founding document and instead will rule as the founders who have ruled when the Constitution was drafted and approved.

Judge Neil Gorsuch will be the tilting vote on issues like abortion, immigration, rights for members of the LGBT community and the environment. According to pundits and experts, Gorsuch is as close as it gets to late Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, who passed away last year.

After being nominated by Donald Trump on Tuesday to fill the ninth court seat as soon as he is approved by the Senate, Gorsuch will join the conservative wing over the next few decades and help decide some of the most important matters in recent years.

Some of those issues will be studied this year and range from abortion to the environment or immigration and in the near future, the court may address issues such as the regulation of the Second Amendment. These are the key rulings that the Court will be looking at as early as April.

Trump’s executive order which installed a temporary ban on immigration from seven countries just 10 days after arriving at the White House has been denounced before federal courts. The Supreme Court is ultimately responsible for deciding whether it respects the US Constitution or not.

Opponents to the Executive Order issued by Trump argue that this type of veto is illegal and that it violates constitutional principles.

Current immigration laws prohibit discriminating against candidates for travel to the US because of their country of origin, according to an analysis by David J. Bier of the Cato Institute, but the Trump Administration can challenge that before a conservative majority court. Also, there is no constitutional right for foreigners to gain access to the the United States as a visitor or as a refugee.

On women’s issues, one of Donald Trump’s electoral promises was the election of a judge willing to revoke the 1973 ruling that recognised the right to abortion.

In recent years, several complaints have advanced through the judicial circuit against the restrictions imposed in many states governed by the Republican Party.

Opponents say that the arrival of one of them to the Supreme Court would be the first opportunity in decades to cut the rights of American women.

The issue of whether a woman has the right to abort her baby is surrounded by a lot of hypocrisy. While women’s groups argue that a woman’s body is hers and that the decision to abort should be hers and hers alone, these groups also demand that government provides tax payer money so that they can pay for their abortions or that the government finances places like Planned Parenthood so that women can have abortions for free.

If having an abortion is a decision that women should make all by herself, without coercion from anyone else, shouldn’t women also be responsible for the costs of such procedure as opposed to having tax payers subsidise it?

Another important issue that the current Supreme Court will deal with is that of environmental regulations. The court will examine the lawsuit filed by an employers’ association against the Clean Water Act, which seeks to eliminate the regulations approved by the Barack Obama because they believe they interfere with commercial matters.

When it comes to education, the Obama Administration decided that public schools must recognise the gender identity of their students. However, a complaint states that federal law interprets the obligation to give access to restrooms “according to the sex” of students and that in that definition it refers exclusively to the sex assigned at birth, not to the one they have chosen later.

This issue has to do with the ability of schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms according to the their later choice and not to the definition on their birth certificate. If the Obama decision is upheld, schools would be forced to build special bathrooms for transgender students or in many cases allow men to use women’s bathrooms and vice versa.

A conservative Supreme Court can opt for this interpretation, curbing one of the demands of the transgender community, which seeks to extend the civil rights frontier in the US. If, on the contrary, it establishes that schools cannot prohibit access to a bathroom based on gender identity, it will be the first great judgment in their favor.

As an originalist, judge Neil Gorsuch will most likely interpret the US Constitution as it was written by the founding fathers before ruling on any of the issues presented above, which may mean, Democrats and Liberals say, the end of important civil rights for women and members of the transgender community.

Before that happens, though, Democrats in the Senate have promised to obstruct and delay judge Gorsuch’s confirmation as much as possible because according to Nancy Pelosi, they see his nomination as a “hostile” act by President Trump.