There are certain moments in the history of a nation when the choices made define the decades to come.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There are always decades that interest people. For me, that's the Roaring Twenties.
Every generation is obsessed with the decade before they were born.
There's that thing about the '80s, the '40s and the '60s, and the '30s, the '50s and the '70s. Something about those odd decades in this century that weren't too pleasant.
The latter 1940s and early '50s were a time of tense, explosive conflict, in the world at large and in the politics of our nation.
The fate of nations is intimately bound up with their powers of reproduction. All nations and all empires first felt decadence gnawing at them when their birth rate fell off.
The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.
In every era, there are only one or two moments when nations come together and reach agreements that make history, because they change the course of history.
The vision of a nation formed from many different peoples bound together by a common love of freedom was staked out long before our lifetimes or even our parents' or grandparents' lifetimes.
A nation's life is about as long as its reverential memory.
The way we experience history and time in all its forms shifted quite massively between 1989 and 2001 - to the point where contrivances like decades are now kind of silly.