# The New American Century

## Metadata
- Author: [[George Friedman]]
- Full Title: The New American Century
- Category: #books
## Highlights
- This is a book that focuses on the underlying process in American history, explaining this moment we are in within the context of our broader history and putting the current passions into context. It will also explain the very real coming crisis of the 2020s–2030s and ultimately show how the United States will deal with the pain and confusion and emerge on the other side stronger and more dynamic. ([Location 173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N4VZB3T&location=173))
- If we step back and take the long view, there are two major cycles in American history, and by understanding these cycles, we can understand the situation in the United States today. One is the “institutional cycle,” which has transpired approximately every eighty years. ([Location 183](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N4VZB3T&location=183))
- The second major cycle is the “socioeconomic,” which has occurred approximately every fifty years. The last shift happened around 1980, when the economic ([Location 187](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N4VZB3T&location=187))
- The most important fact to bear in mind is that the United States was an invented nation; it didn’t evolve naturally from a finite group of people over thousands of years in one indigenous region, as did, for example, China or Russia. More than that, the United States was an intentionally and rapidly invented nation. ([Location 212](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N4VZB3T&location=212))
- 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. ([Location 242](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N4VZB3T&location=242))
- The solution for this invention was to make it inefficient. The balance of powers that were created achieved three important things: first, it made the passage of laws enormously difficult; second, the president would be incapable of becoming a tyrant; and third, Congress would be limited by the courts in what it could achieve. ([Location 251](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N4VZB3T&location=251))
- The moral principles were complex and sometimes at odds with each other, but they had a common core: each American ought to be free to succeed or fail in the things he wished to undertake. ([Location 261](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N4VZB3T&location=261))
- Happiness is the emotional engine powering the United States. It is the only country to make the pursuit of happiness a fundamental right. ([Location 388](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N4VZB3T&location=388))
- American society and the American economy have a rhythm. Every fifty years or so, they go through a painful and wrenching crisis, and in those times it often feels as if the economy were collapsing, and American society with it. Policies that had worked for the previous fifty years stop working, causing significant harm instead. A political and cultural crisis arises, and what had been regarded as common sense is discarded. ([Location 1673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N4VZB3T&location=1673))