2012: A Tipping Point?

As we countdown the final thirty days of 2012, it is time for reflection.  For much different reasons, Progressives and Conservatives see 2012 as a tipping point - a moment in time at which substantive change has occurred - change so meaningful that there is no turning back.

Progressives in this country see 2012 as the year in which the US shifted its economic framework from accumulation of wealth to its distribution.  President Obama's reelection affirmed for them that the electorate is aligned with the (re-)distributive paradigm.  And, not insignificantly, through the Supreme Court's ruling on the Patient and Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") as well as the absence of legal and meaningful political challenges on several other fronts, they sense that solid legal and political foundations have been laid against future challenges.

Conservatives, not unexpectedly wringing their hands after November, see these matters as tipping points of a much different character.  The economic and the legal shifts (not to mention the President's victory) are regarded as erosion of Federalism in favor of a centralized, statist, America. 

Both sides may be right - yet both sides should pause to consider the permanence of their respective interpretations and reactions.  As Professor Niall Ferguson (Professor of History at Harvard University, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford) writes:

History is like an oil tanker. It does not turn on a dime. Mankind sails forward through time in seas that are sometimes calm, sometimes stormy. At times it seems almost becalmed, at other times it can do 12 knots. Depending on who captains the ship, it veers sometimes to port, sometimes to starboard. When it changes direction, the turn is generally slow.

The things that change suddenly on an oil tanker are the emotions of the crew. Nine hundred and ninety-nine days out of a thousand, they obey their orders and do their work. But very occasionally there is a drama. The men mutiny and the captain is clapped in irons. Or pirates board the ship. Such events are what historians love to study and call “revolutions.” Still, the ship plows onward.

Ferguson's observations are keenly perceptive.  Nations don't rise or fall as the result of one act or one miscue.  Fundamental change comes much more slowly as the result of subtle and profound structural shifts, barely perceptible as they occur. 

In his brilliant book on the ascendancy of the West (meaning Western Europe and North America) Civilization: The West and the Rest, Ferguson posits six fundamentals that lead contribute to the success or failure of nations. 

1. Technological innovation;

2. The spread of ideas and institutions;

3. The tendency of even good political systems to degenerate;

4. Demographics;

5. Supplies of essential commodities;

6. Climate change.

It is necessary to focus on all six attributes to asses the direction of a nation or group of nations.  Ferguson is pessimistic about the future of the West (including the US), seeing challenge for political, economic and global dominance emerging from China.  But, by no means does he suggest that the final chapter has been written.  As he puts it:

The first three essentially explain why the West has lost some of its predominance. But the others remind us that, in that wonderful line often attributed to Bismarck, “a special Providence watches over children, drunkards and the United States of America.”

In other words, Conservatives have reasons to worry but not despair.  And Progressives have reasons to smile but not spike the football.