Penna Dexter
Normal Americans are repulsed by the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. This was a bridge too far even for people who buy in to careless “threat to democracy” rhetoric from Trump’s opposition. Their recoil reminds us that we must take care to preserve our constitutional republic.
Our system of government is meant to help our nation avoid political violence. Under constitutionalism, we have systems that allow differences of opinion on government policy to be handled by negotiation and at the voting booth.
A prominent constitutional scholar says the escalation of political violence in the last 15 years has tested the bounds of constitutionalism “pretty aggressively.”
Yuval Levin (Yoo-vuhl Leh-vn) is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and  Editor at National Affairs and The New Atlantis. In an essay for The Free Press, Dr. Levin says the nearly-successful attempt to take out “a once and perhaps future president“ is far from a natural next step from the violence and threats of violence against public officials we’ve been seeing in recent years. He says “this moment feels like a sharp break” that “gave us a terrible glimpse of what it would be like to live beyond the bounds of our constitutional republic.”
Within a constitutional republic our differences may be stark, but there are institutions in which those disputes can be settled “through competition and negotiation.” Dr. Levin points out that, in a constitutional republic, there’s a prevailing assumption that our political victories and defeats are temporary and that the people on the other side of our political disputes “aren’t going away.”
Step outside of constitutionalism and you have “a realm of violence and pain” where “there is no expectation that the people we disagree with today will be here tomorrow and have to be accommodated somehow.”
As Dr. Levin points out, Our constitutional system exists to help us “disagree well.” We must put a stop to its degradation.

Kerby Anderson

We can see some cycles in history. Yesterday, I talked about a political/cultural cycle. Today I want to talk about a technological cycle and a financial cycle.
There appears to be about a fifty-year technological cycle, in which we see important technological revolutions. In the 18th century, we saw the beginnings of what today we refer to as the industrial revolution. Fifty years later was the age of steam and railways that changed the world significantly. Up until that time, we had manpower and horsepower. Now people could move faster and carry heavier loads.
Fifty years after that we had steel and electricity. Fifty years after that we had oil, automobiles, and a revolution in mass production. By the 1970s, we came into the age of information and telecommunications. Today, we find ourselves in a world of fast computers and artificial intelligence.
Some of the financial cycles parallel the technological revolutions. America moved from an agricultural society to an industrial economy to an information society. If you look at the wealth cycles of nations, you notice something interesting. The financial superpower changes over time, with an average of about 100 years. Perhaps you have seen a chart that shows those changes from Portugal to Spain to the Netherlands to France to Britain to the US.
As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, this country (along with other countries around the world) are experiencing a debt crisis. But this is happening as all three cycles (the political, technological, and financial) are converging.
What is on the horizon? I think we are likely headed for a massive change in the future. We should all be in prayer for our leaders and prepare ourselves for possible turmoil ahead.

Kerby Anderson

Are there cycles in history? Yes, even though there is a linear trajectory in history, there are generational cycles we can observe. No doubt you have heard the phrase: “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.” Or you may have heard: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” And you may have heard the phrase “the fourth turning” that predicts a crisis at the end of a four-fold cycle.
Today and tomorrow, I will talk about three often quoted cycles: a political/cultural cycle, a technological cycle, and a financial cycle. And I might mention that all three seem to be converging today.
There appears to be about an eighty-year political/cultural cycle (which averages out to about 84 years). Go back to 1848 and you have Karl Marx publishing the Communist Manifesto and other works. The political and social impact of his Marxist perspective swept through Europe, changed the political structure of many countries, and is still an influence today.
Another important political change happened 84 years later in the 1930s. In Europe, you have the rise of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In this country, you had the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt who signed into law a significant number of New Deal programs that vastly expanded the scope of government and are influential in our lives today.
If you add another 84 years, you come to 2016. In Europe, you have the political battle known as Brexit and the beginning of some populist uprisings. In this country, you also had the rise of populism as illustrated by the election of Donald Trump.
Tomorrow I will show how this cycle coincides with the technological and financial cycles.