The Storm Before the Calm

1

The American Regime and a Restless Nation

On the last day of the Constitutional Convention, right after adoption, a woman waiting outside the old Pennsylvania State House asked Benjamin Franklin whether the nation would be a monarchy or a republic. His answer was A Republic, if you can keep it. The Constitutional Convention invented the American government. It was an invention in two ways. First, it created a government where none had existed. Second, it created a machine, the machinery of government, which had sprung from the minds of the founders. Unlike other governments, it had no past. This government came into existence through design, architecture, and engineering.

The machine was built on two principles. First, the founders feared government, because governments tended to accumulate power and become tyrannies. Second, they did not trust the people, because the people in pursuing their private interests might divert the government from the common good. Government was necessary, and so of course were citizens, but both had to be restrained in such a way that the machinery of government limited their ability to accumulate power. The founders had created such a machine.

The founders were trying to invent a machine that restrained itself, thereby creating a vast terrain in American life that was free from government or politics. They sought to create a sphere of private life in which citizens would pursue the happiness that had been promised in the Declaration of Independence. The private sphere would be the sphere of commerce, industry, religion, and the endless pleasures that were the domain of private life. The most important thing about the machine they invented was the degree to which it was restrained from intruding on the things they held most important, the things that were not political.

It is one thing to invent a machine and another to make it run without extensive maintenance. The solution for this invention was to make it

GEORGE FRIEDMAN is founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures, which specializes in geopolitical forecasting. Prior to this Friedman was chairman of the global intelligence company Stratfor, which he founded in 1996. Friedman is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Next Decade and The Next 100 Years. He lives in Austin, Texas.

"[A] prescient anticipation of our current woe... the book contains real insights.  
--The Wall Street Journal

The vitriol of the Trump era masks crises in our economy and governing institutions that will deepen before resolving themselves, according to this probing and ultimately hopeful diagnosis of America s discontents . . . Friedman offers a lucid, stimulating assessment of which way the wind is blowing.
--Publishers Weekly
 
[Friedman] offers a sharp analysis of American life, especially the roots of the knack for reinvention that allows the nation to start over after crises. Americans invented their country, he writes, and lacking shared history and culture, 'invented themselves.' Friedman also discusses the nation's reluctance to accept its responsibilities as the 'sole world power' and the tensions between its technocratic and industrial working classes. A provocative, idea-filled burst of prognostication.
--Kirkus

"Friedman s well-written book lays out convincing cases for how the institutional and socioeconomic cycles have played out repeatedly since America s founding and how the two patterns will, for the first time, almost converge during this decade."
--Lone Star Literary Life

This book is of obvious general interest but is essential reading for anyone with a role in strategic planning. It combines clear, interesting prose with a thought provoking projection of upcoming challenges and ultimate outcomes.  
--Douglas Duncan, Chief Economist, Fannie Mae

In The Storm Before the Calm, George applies his geopolitical forecasting model to the United States and tells a unique story of American history from our founding to today. The result is a useful dispassionate framework for understanding where we are now and where we are likely going as nation.
--Joe Daly, Gallup Senior Partner