“The Fourth Turning”, by Strauss and Howe, presented evidence for a major historical cycle (Saeculum), which repeats with a period of roughly a century (four generations). The cycle is ultimately based on the nature of childhood rebellion. Each generation displays a distinct predictable personality (based on rebellion against their parent’s generation), which, as that generation moves through childhood, production, leadership, and death affects the character of the culture.

Essentially, the cycle begins with two sequential generations moving progressively toward more irresponsibility, and the following two generations moving progressively back toward more responsibility to complete the cycle.

Feminism introduced a variation to this pattern. The generation that normally would have been born to the women who put career ahead of childrn will be delayed by almost a generation.

This produces two consequences. One upcoming generation will be smaller than normal and likely with an atypical class distribution. The following generation will be in conflict with itself because it will represent two distinctively different philosophies.

It isn’t clear what effect these two unusual generations will have as they sequentially assume control of the culture.

My guess is that the progression toward a more responsible culture will be delayed. This will diminish our culture’s ability to responsibly react to the cultural crisis which normally occurs at about that point in the cycle.

It is a great source of pride to me that my blog is a place for such civil debate. To me, this kind of debate is the essence of the marketplace of ideas, a site where people explain and defend their own beliefs, rather than shouting down others.

John Milton was after all an enlightened kind of guy for his century, but we have even more enlightened men in the here and now. The point Ross made, of course, is that successful men usually are trying to find a someone to start a family with, and youth matters given the biological clock.

Book, I believe your desires would be better served via a fifth branch of the military, called the homeguard corp. Why? Because, it is a good compromise between universal service and of course the professional military. Since people only in it for 2 years are… not going to be there long enough to become a “professional” (that takes about 10 years more or less), we don’t want them fighting our wars. If only because more of them will die, by making mistakes they cannot avoid. And of course, pushing children into wars to mature them, is perhaps unethical on its face, unless everyone is facing annihilation or slavery.

By having a Fifth Branch of the military, we combine such things as the Peace Corps with such things as military discipline, because after all who will be the ones training the Home Guard? Active military, they will be the trainers, until the HG produce their own people, which should be just as potentially good if we get SF/Marine trainers, i.e. Iraqis being trained.

Perhaps as a reward for the best unit, we may send their regiment overseas to the war front, or the lesser rewards would be to be sent to other countries, at peace. Since they are not there to “keep the world wide peace and stability” as the Army and Marine Corps do, they are kept separate as an entity, just like AF is kept separate from Marine Corps. Why? Because the Marines serve different functions than the Zoomies. And so do the HOme Guard serve different functions.

You do know, Book, that this is a variation on “war solves all things” right? By militarizing such things as the border and border recruitment of illegals, we take the lessons learned from the active military to apply to the civilian sector. Many people are uncomfortable with this. Or even if they are not, and are just lying about being for a draft, they still don’t know how to do it in the most effective manner.

I think to do it right, requires building an entire institution from the ground up. Since I tend to think the military institution we have now isn’t broken, so they shouldn’t try to fix it… especially since it would be the government trying to fix things.

Do you often have to police rantings and ravings in your comment section by removing them or editing them?

I think by then the problem would have gone beyond the ability to handle. I am most reminded of Neo-Neocon and her problems with abusive commenters. I think when you create an environment of “leniency” and “freedom” (1st Amendment), that in order to sustain it, you must be required to lay down the iron fist of law and order. Don fullfills this requirement of being the enforcer in some ways.

But primarily, it also has to do with what commenters come here to do. Do they come here to start arguments, and to argue? Or do they come here to read, discuss the comments, and await for Book’s next post?

Because if you have too many people, and then on top of that, too many people who argue for argument’s sake… well it kind of snowballs. Arguers, attract more arguments and more people who like to argue. So I think if Neo had been more forceful at putting her foot down and crushing some people (which Bush is similar to also), peace and tranquility could reign supreme.

Which is why also classical liberals like Neo, who believe in freedom of speech, letting everyone have their say, and so forth… also need barbarian warriors to enforce the law, to enforce the order, from those who would wish to use the graciousness of the host(s) to disrupt the peace.

It is why the West currently needs the US military most of all. To fight brutal people, because the values of the West (liberty, prosperity, freedom) are no match against the Islamic jihad without the brutality and ruthlessness of less civilized people.

Bookworm Room is a very scaled down model of macro politics and climes. Even the internal matter of US law is a scaled down model of the sheer chaos in the rest of the world, it just isn’t as scaled down as a blog. As you go down the scale, order is more easily imposed and maintained, and less easily disrupted. Because there are less people involved, less variables to control and remember. A direct democracy may not work for 300 million, but it would work for say.. a couple of tens or hundreds on a plane in deciding what they will do about the hijackers.

But still. Neo is a good example of what occurs when you allow people to think of you as weak, and an easy target. Or allow vulnerabilities to crop up. One of the most important factors, after all, is the vulnerability of your commenters. If they are emotional, hysterical, or prone to mindless prejudice, bad things can happen even without a systemic campaign of revolutionary upheaval. If they are tranquil, full of tranquilizers, and are not easily disturbed or provoked into a reaction out of anger, then the vulnerabilities will be less easily exploited.

But of course, I must be fair to Neo. Her choice of titles… (Neo-Neocon) was perhaps the red flag in front of the bull so to speak. Whereas Book with the “Bookworm Room” is perhaps… not the cup of tea of most political advocates and partisans. Given their interest in partisanship… and not reading. I’ve noticed that many times when Neo has replied to one commenter or another…. those who criticize Neo simply does not know how to read, because what they are reading is not Neo’s words but their own mental distortion of what they are seeing.

I agree with many others who post comments here that your articles are well thought out, such that there is often little of relevance to add! But as you can see, sometimes we will add comments.

I enjoy your site tremendously because it is an oasis of relative calm. Do you often have to police rantings and ravings in your comment section by removing them or editing them? Or rather is it your own courtesy and thoughtful approach - rather than the baiting we see elsewhere - that leads to the simple civilized approach that I see here? I’d like to know. I ask because the comment section is remarkable for its courtesy and thoughtfulness.

On the specific topic - feminism and child-rearing - I believe that the current state of Western civilization is one that treats child-rearing as secondary. The traditional society we came from is a society where women were expected to assume the role of mothers and child-rearing as their primary occupation. The rigid roles for men and women have been discarded. I am not advocating either a return to those roles nor an acceptance of the status quo.

It is not capitalism that has caused this; birth rates for Europeans within Westernized culture have plummeted and they’re hardly capitalistic. Men and women have discarded the traditional roles and are now living lives where a focus on having and raising children is simply seen as irrelevant or not worth the burden. Establishing a career and advancing it is diametrically opposed to establishing a family and advancing it.

Until we find a way to ESTABLISH A CULTURAL NORM wherein it is possible for a man and a woman to establish and advance their careers and also establish and advance a family, we will continue to struggle with this. And the raising of children in a healthy Westernized society will continue to be a significant problem.

Incidentally, this isn’t just a kind of emotional NIMBY view, one that I espouse because I’m too old for a national draft. I already thought it would be a good thing when I was back in high school, having seen what a useful social tool it was in Israel. I certainly wouldn’t mind it for my own kids.

Nevertheless, I was also still a little girl in my own mind because I always felt as if I was just pretending to do all these grown-up things. I always felt that, when I got into an elevator full of lawyers - and this is after I’d been lawyering myself for several years — that they’d all turn and yell “Aha! We know you’re just pretending.” My feeling looking back was part of this sense that my life as an adult was a giant charade was because I knew that I could always just step off the stage, and become a slacker. I had no desire to do so, but the possibility was always there.

Children changed that. There’s no going back. Although my children are finally getting old enough to know it’s not so, for many years I was an omnipotent being to them. I constantly felt like Spiderman (”with great power comes great responsibility”). There was no getting off this stage. My children had affixed me permanently to the grown-up pedestal. The only way I’m going to leave it is when I’m old enough to enter my second childhood.

So Deana, I think you’re making the absolute right decisions (probably because they’re the same ones I made). However, for me, I never stepped into the reality of my maturity until I felt that it was irrevocable.

Robotics because it will create more free time by compressing what needs to be done by humans into a small segment of the time slot. Advanced and either semi-conscious dumb AIs or fully conscious intelligent/wise AIs, is the direct counter-part to robotics in the field of mental work, as robotics is to physical work.

By making people more productive, efficiency is achieved, and through efficiency, many more options are open. Of course with advances in bio-technology, nano and robotic technology, as well as software programing, eventually these 3 fields should all meld together to form the man-machine datalink, which allows human beings to directly communicate with the machines that work with us.

But all this will not make someone desire to have children. It will just make it more feasible. Economic feasibility is part of desire, but I don’t tend to think that having a good economy or career (Europe) automatically makes people desire to have children. Perhaps it is the high tax, the notion that no individual is free to plan his future or invest his wealth… Freedom, there is little of it, and when there is little of it… people don’t tend to take risks like the Oregon Trail. And children are definitely are a risk.

My spouse and I made significant professional sacrifices so that we would be able to spend time with our kids. But, SOMEBODY has to do those jobs that we opted out of.

All this has quite serious ramifications - Japanese worklife is not conducive to having two working parents, for example, and their demographic profile is a disaster. Ditto for Eurabia. So, what’s the solution? Personally, I don’t know the answer.