Just in time for the Fourth Turning,

M. Simon, thank you for the detailed list. I would add that behind your reasons 1 through 9 is the looming bankruptcy of the West.

There is an interesting post at zerohedge pointing to events in Pakistan that could be the flashpoint. From that article:

Double murder-accused US official Raymond Davis has been found in possession of top-secret CIA documents, which point to him or the feared American Task Force 373 (TF373) operating in the region, providing Al-Qaeda terrorists with "nuclear fissile material" and "biological agents," according to a report.

Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is warning that the situation on the sub-continent has turned "grave" as it appears that open warfare is about to break out between Pakistan and the United States, The European Union Times reports.

The SVR warned in its report that the apprehension of 36-year-old Davis, who shot dead two Pakistani men in Lahore last month, had fueled this crisis.

The full article is here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/cia-agent-caught-red-handed-aiding-pakistani-terrorism

Obama has been openly critical of Pakistan since he was a Senator. He did not say a word during last year's aborted Green Revolution in Iran, almost as though he is a champion of the Mullahs there. (Do we have a secret alliance with Iran?) He sent a strong signal to Pakistan by his trip to India. (Is this part of building an alliance on Pakistan's eastern border?) He has increased our troop levels in Afghanistan and has stepped up drone attacks within Pakistan.
There are reports that Pakistan has increased nuclear bomb production. Is she worried about something?

Obama threatens to "bomb Pakistan" during Presidential debates in 2008.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23392577/ns/politics-decision_08/

Good article.
One minor quibble though. The line about the old order failing sounds too much like leftie New World Order crap.

That is the problem with talking about a New World Order, nobody really knows what it is. To lefties it means worldwide socialism, to islamists it means a Caliphate, to marxists, worldwide marxism. I suppose you are talking about a new Libertarian oriented world order, which I agree is the best we can hope for.

Enjoy

The Collapse of Complex Societies By Joseph A. Tainter

http://books.google.com/books?id=M4H-02d9oE0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=tainter+collapse+of+complex+societies&source=bl&ots=yMwxaJU7pg&sig=Njcaxa05LlZogeH3Qr8wP_102-E&hl=en&ei=mbxmTaflAsPbgQedw5DLCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

Excellent post. With WWI, the era of kings came to an end, and power went to a new, worldwide progressive elite. Power was in the hands of new masters, yet it was still a ruling class versus the ruled.

The ruled are sick and tired of the piss poor job the ruling class has done.

What's different this time is that those who are ruled can now communicate.

I think that it is far from certain that we're going to have a better replacement. If we get one, it will be the result of a lot of hard fought battles, intellectual development, people in the streets, and the right sort of elected officials.

Keep your powder dry.

Simon,

This morning at 0430 I heard a rabbit outside my window scream like you've never heard a rabbit scream. It had been cornered by a cat. Strange sounds (and actions) emanate from the trapped and dying.

Yes. The old order is breaking down. But as Wisconsin and Libya prove, those sustained by the unsustainable old order lash out in weird, illogical, unpredictable, and even dangerous ways.

Several months ago I posted excerpts from an essay from an army professional course I had recently taken. It's long, but I'm still concerned about the possibility of a second-order effect of the point that you raise: how far will the old order go in its defense to cling to the past?

It's very possible, as you said, that "It will not be pretty here either."

http://www.bobkrumm.com/blog/?p=2281

"The Third Wave"----

surf's up

You may wish to include, _The Ominous Parallels_:The End of Freedom in America, by Dr. Leonard Peikoff.

I'm just, ya know, saying.

you know how i know the old order is changing. I just looked up all of your book references and noticed that they werent available on kindle and I said " damn, I will have to wait!"

not to mention--

In gemeinschaft, your status was ascribed (based on birth); in gesellschaft, it was achieved; and now, in gecyberschaft, it's assessed.

Allison, M. (2005). Gecyberschaft: A theoretical model for the analysis of emerging electronic communities. Dissertation Abstracts International 65 (11A), 4366 (UMI No. 3155725)

The Ominous Parallels: A Brilliant Study of America Today - and the 'ominous parallels' with the chaos of pre-Hitler Germany

While I don't believe I've ever commented here, I have admired your blogging for some time, following links from Instapundit.

Dennis Prager has been predicting for some time that one of three memeplexes will become dominant in the world; America (by which I believe he means red-state America with Judeo-Christian values), the Left, and Islam. Andrew McCarthy says the Left and Islam are allies.

Three isn't a good number for parties in a World War. It usually boils down to two, as in "The Axis Alliance vs. Everybody Else," or "The Soviet Union and its allies vs. Everybody Else," or "Wahhabi Islam vs. Everybody Else." Who are the sides in your world war?

Richard40: The fact that the old order is ending doesn't say anything about what comes next. Nobody really knows. We can draw some structural inferences based on the effect of communications technology, but it's very difficult to tell what the ideological orientation of the new order will be. Everybody of course wants to believe it will be their own, but nobody really knows. "Unreformed progressivism" is just about the only thing I would eliminate entirely, and as that phrasing implies, I would not rule out some form of reformed progressivism that has learned how to say "enough". (That is, after all, what this all really boils down to; the dominant ideology of the day always says more and never says enough, and now there is no more and still they demand more. Wisconsin would not be in crisis if progressivism was not willing to stake its very existence on getting more yet again, at all costs.)

The last 20 some-odd chapters of the Bible are good reading too.

Hopefully the new order will be one driven by reason to lead us to a civil society based on mutual consent, discarding the old order of government coercion masquerading as civil society.

Drink!

I'm not much of an illuminati, but I remember articles from 20 years ago that pointed out that we seem to go thru periods of more extreme unrest every 20 years or so. At the risk of data picking, 1990's was the end of the Iron Curtain, 1968 and all that, 1950's and the anti-colonial movements, 1930's and the fascists, 1910's and the nationalist movements, etc....

Even though America is poorer, it isn't against the wall. Its just that an aging workforce has made labor-intensive government cost prohibitive, whether in education, health, or your neighborhood DMV.

Its nice to know that those good folks in CA, IL, and NY have volunteered to lead in showing the rest of us how government stripped to the bone of employees is going to operate.

The world ends in 2012, right?

Were the U.S. to experience a revolt like Egypt or Libya you can be sure the internet, cell phones, sat phones and GPS would be turned off before the next commercial.

Simon,

Or, to paraphrase your entire post "what can't go on, won't go on." Thank you for nailing so clearly what I've been feeling for the last month.

"The old order changeth, and giveth way to new/ and God fulfills himself in many ways."

Tennyson, Idylls of the King

What the world might want to avoid is a slide into genocidal attacks using biological, chemical or nuclear weapons on civilian population centers. MAD is a policy best used only in the abstract, as a deterrent.

I pity the home country of the first group to explode a dirty bomb or launch a nerve gas attack against the western world.

Informed, strategic thinking. Very much deserves a wider audience.

The history of civilization is the uneven but inexorable march of personal freedom and political liberty. Marx mistook this. Stalin and Mao are in the dustbin, soon to be joined by Castro and Kim Jung Il. President George W. Bush made the point, but deluded leftards everywhere leapt to dismiss his principled insight, still hoping to grab something for nothing.

Now the Middle East despots are confronted with reality, and Americans are beginning to realize that the Democrat Party, with their ludicrous, snotty dictator in the White House and their contempt for the law and the will of the people, are fascists in all but name. Like tyrants everywhere today, however, they are playing a losing hand.

In many ways, modern history began with the American Revolution, and the rest of the world is catching up. We ourselves took a long snooze. The process of rebirth will be wrenching and bloody, but human nature will assert itself. Man's inalienable rights shall not be denied.

I pity the home country of the first group to explode a dirty bomb or launch a nerve gas attack against the western world.

Precisely why the goal is to utilize "home grown" terrorists to the maximum extent possible.

Take into account two Revolutions. In one, the goddess of Reason gave birth to Madame Guillotine. In the other, a rather cynical view of man, as a creature of greatness that had Fallen, yielded the Constitution.

I fear the lack of knowledge. We are far more likely to worship a man-created Vision of Reason than True Reason, and so create a new hell than to do the Founders one better.

That said, a lot of good thoughts here.

We are facing a sort of civilizational entropy. Regions of the globe that were pretty orderly and reasonably prosperous sixty years ago are now sliding into chaos. It is going to spread to areas we do not now anticipate, like Europe. Greece and the Muslim no-go areas in France are the portents. Governments, trying to control too much, are losing the power to control even the basic security of their own countries. A Muslim caliphate is a pipedream (which doesn't mean they won't try for it). Muslim countries can barely keep together the countries their governments now rule. Almost all of them have separatist insurgencies trying to break the countries up into ethnic or tribal areas ruling themselves. The overly centralized governments of other countries are losing control.

It is not true that history invariably goes in a progressive, linear direction to greater freedom and technological progress. There have been at least two civilizational regressions in European/Near Eastern history. We may be seeing the beginning of another regression. Welcome to the new Dark Ages, but this time the barbarians will have nukes.