The year 2020 will most certainly be remembered as a year that tested the grit, will, and resolve of the American people. The "pandemic" created a culture of fear and retreat at first, somewhat reasonable, given the unknown threat of the virus. However, as contradictory independent data and treatments from medical experts surfaced, many began to see the requests for governmental shut-downs and masks and their profound crushing economic and psychological threats as tyrannical edicts. The independent and anecdotal experiential data just wasn't squaring with what was coming from D.C. and other controlling institutions. A divide re-emerged, a divide between those willing to accept governmental and/or monopolistic dictates and those who yearned for the kind of Liberty proposed in our Constitution.
Notably, as independent data and evidence began to unfold, it was simultaneously censored with terrifying and coordinated precision by the media, Big Tech, our government, many in the academic community, and some in the medical community—raising questions about what games were being played and why. Some Americans emerged or re-emerged—as is the case of the two authors whose book is discussed here—to expose and fight against the governmental edicts and the seemingly coordinated media-driven narratives. Many now perceive the imposed mandates to have been mere excuses for control.
Tyranny Mask/Bellacan Website
2020 was and continues to be a seminal precipice—a crisis—that could determine whether we, as a people, choose between the "animating spirit" of "Ordered Liberty," and constitutional law represented by the People or Transnational Law and a move toward Globalism and even Marxism, organized by the Coastal and big city Elites—Hollywood, academia, the Deep State, Big Government, to name a few. It is often said that "politics is downstream from culture," and culturally, a fundamental choice is emerging; a choice between societal constructs based on the "rights of the individual," and the other, a cultural shift that dogmatically prioritizes "the needs of the Collective."
Two Liberty-minded, history-loving authors, Bob MacGuffie and Antony Stark, analyze the adopted phrase "Ordered Liberty" and other concepts discussed above in their new 289- page book called "The Seventh Crisis: Why Millennials Must Re-Establish Ordered Liberty.'' Their book is a "Signal Call to action for younger generations to help restore our country to its founding principles."
The Seventh Crisis
UncoverDC spoke with the two remarkable men, both in their late 60's, who have a storied history of carrying the torch for "Ordered Liberty" as promoted by our country's Founders and the magnificent document called the Constitution of the United States.
Both former leaders in the Tea Party movement, they had already "cut their teeth challenging the Leftist version of American history by aggressively pushing back" in their classes at Queens College in NYC in the early '70s. The authors were also active participants in the 2010 writing of the widely circulated Tea Party Nation Declaration of Independence, a document whose purpose was to distinguish their mission from the Democrat-Republican Duopoly. The monolithic Duopoly has been, in great part, responsible for the condition of our country today. "Big Government," they conclude, "will not resolve the Seventh Crisis; Big Government is the engine of the Seventh Crisis. Moreover, those who serve it have no interest in resolving it, but rather their interest lies in making it worse."
It is important to note that MacGuffie and Stark posit that the period of the Seventh Crisis probably started around 2001 with 9/11. For them, the exact date is not important, but rather, as Stark explains, "The Seventh Crisis can be anything, we saw recently it could be a health thing, like with Covid. But it's how do you face it..."
While anyone would benefit from reading their material, MacGuffie and Stark believe that the approx. 72.1 million Millennials (individuals born between 1981 and 1995) may well be the generation that could "take inspiration from our nation’s Founders to form an 'animating spirit'" in the midst of this crisis "to guide them as they engage [with it]. That spirit, Ordered Liberty, was strongly advocated by Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, and Edmund Burke and was put into full practice by our Founders."
The authors maintain that Ordered Liberty is not the same as Freedom. In fact, in a recent appearance on Episode 865 of Bannon's War Room, Stark explains their perspective on Millennials and what they mean when they use the term "Ordered Liberty" and its partner term, "animating spirit." Stark's summary explanation below best captures the raison d'etre of their book:
"We believe that Ordered Liberty serves to be an "animating spirit" for the Millennial generation. We found that too many people our age, younger than us and GenX, have written off Millennials—have said that they're too lazy, they're brainwashed, they're dumb, and we don't buy that. We don't buy ceding this entire generation to their enemies, to the people who want to destroy their prosperity, destroy their history, to destroy their country. ...[ British Historian] Arnold Toynbee harkens back to this idea of an "animated spirit," which he claims is picked up from a previous period.
And, the animating spirit that we focused on was one that was always within America's history but has been lost. It has been forgotten about. And that is the whole concept of Ordered Liberty. To us, freedom is not the same as liberty. Freedom is the absence of responsibility. Charles Manson is free, he's free to run in the desert and kill people and do whatever he wants because he's under no law and under no order. But that's hardly good.
So, what liberty does is liberty is the shouldering of responsibility. And liberty is shouldered in certain forms...Capitalism as opposed to Socialism..belief in traditional value systems, belief in Judeo-Christianity, belief in our own history, our own myths and our own heroes, a belief in our own nation as opposed to a kind of Globalist or TransNational view of things...the Millennial generation has been deliberately denuded of the type of critical thinking skills they need to fight and face the Seventh Crisis...and we want the Millennials to realize that, in order to face it, they have to take an inner spiritual experience and externalize it and turn the Seventh Crisis into a heroic experience... The fight is a heroic experience.
They have to get to their own...Warrior..their own Amazon and fight what's coming against them. You look in the streets today, and you see BLM. You know what they want. They want to fight YOU. They don't want to discuss it with you. They want to take things away from you. They don't want to give you anything. They want to destroy what you have. So, if you are going to become a political warrior and defend what you have, you must have an animating spirit...
Ordered Liberty is that animating spirit. It defends freedom and allows the divine creative force of freedom to be protected from becoming license and anarchy and chaos. So, we are trying to get to those Millennials, and there are many of them...we owe it to them. Boomers have done a lot of damage to this country..professors and teachers who have stripped Millennials of their ability to critically think, forcing them into their devices, watching things online rather than living life in reality. We want them to take that out and bring it out into the fight."
The title of the book, they state, "is taken from the central thesis of the book, 'The Fourth Turning,' written by William Strauss and Neil Howe in 1997...who view Anglo-American history through a generational lens [which] organizes Anglo American history into seven repeating cycles starting in the late Medieval, 15th century period." Those cycles are each "referred to as [a] saeculum, a Roman term for a long human life...eighty to one hundred years."
The Fourth Turning is a concept that speaks to an identifiable cycle with four phases within those saecula that reoccur in future saecula with remarkable predictability. In other words, four generations that span those 80-year spans unfold with their own characteristic phasic quality identified by four terms; the High, the Awakening, the Unraveling, the Crisis.
"Prophets [are] born in a High, Nomads in an Awakening, Heroes in an Unraveling and Artists in a Crisis," MacGuffie and Stark explain. The Fourth Turning describes our current saeculum as the Millennial saeculum. The Millennial saeculum was preceded by the sixth Saeculum or "Great Power," with its "Unraveling of the 1920s leading to the Crisis of the '30s, [climaxing] with WWll." Thus, the stage was set for the seventh, or Millennial, saeculum.
As written in their March 27 American Thinker article, MacGuffie and Stark explain that the “High” started:
"In the post-war era and [was] followed by the “Awakening” of the ‘60s and ‘70s. An 'Unraveling' begins circa the mid-1980s and slides into Crisis beginning in the early 2000s. History is not linear, and we believe an inflection point was reached following the turn of the twenty-first century. The current generational configuration consists of Baby Boomers born during the post-war High; Gen-X born in The Awakening, 1965 to 1983; Millennials born in The Unraveling, 1984 to 1996; and Gen-Z born from 1997 onward. We have now entered into a new crisis, a Seventh Crisis, which will set the stage for the future by forcing Millennials to make the consequential choices affecting the fate of the American Republic for good or ill."
The authors gird their audience with the essential historical and cultural underpinnings that remind Millennials of their foundational birthright and legacy as provided by American generations who have preceded them. Covered are a variety of subjects that span the history of our country—from our Forefathers, through world wars, roots of Nationalism and Patriotism, historical events like Watergate, various Presidents and their influence on history, movements like Antifa and BLM, the impact of the Coastal Elites and eras like the '60s, technological advances, and their profound influence, and cultural phenomena like social media—to name a few. It really is a primer that, if digested as intended, can serve to, at a minimum, awaken the mind and spike one's intellectual curiosity and, at best, help to turn ideas into action.
These authors, however, provide for their readers information that many who write such books do not always provide. In the last three chapters, they deliver specific action items, or "marching orders," to be used as a "tactical guide" for Millennials. "We did not want to leave our Millennial brethren with only an analysis or polemic. But also provide a tactical guide so every reader can go forward, take action, and get traction in the great effort to return our Republic to the foundational principles which served it so well...we owe to those who come after us to warn them not to be seduced by the siren call of the Left, as so many Boomers were, much to the detriment of our Nation and Culture."
The chapters are a startlingly thoughtful collection of the agendas to fight, the mindset needed, and specific action necessary to animate the spirit of Millennials to again find the Ordered Liberty they will need to preserve and protect what is foundationally near and dear to the American people.
An Op-Ed written for UncoverDC in November of 2020 by one of the more courageous leaders of our time, General Michael Flynn, reminds us all why this country is one whose founding principles we all should work earnestly to preserve:
"We are a nation founded by leaders who fought tyranny and oppression to ensure that all American citizens be treated fairly and equally across this land. These constitutional and God-given rights should never be denied or disguised behind false prosecution or political persecution out of fear, hate, or an opposing voice. Those who scowl at the very core of our Republic and act from vengeance or revenge against one of us threaten the safety and security of all of us."
The Great American Experiment, envisioned by the fathers of its Constitution, requires recognizing the roles we each play concerning the self-governance of our country. The Seventh Crisis is a book well worth reading. It can serve as a call to action to educate and inspire younger generations to carry forth the torch of Ordered Liberty guarded so well by the breathtakingly courageous generations who have come before.
"The balance between liberty and order may be a gargantuan struggle spanning millennia, but the key to victory is in the hands of every American. Personal accountability and vigilance must be crucial parts of your credo. Take action wherever God has placed you. Each of us has a role to fill, a talent to employ, and a task to execute. The lifeblood of America is “We the People,” and that includes you. Live each day with the knowledge that the balance between order and liberty rests on our shoulders." General Michael T. Flynn for UncoverDC.
*More on the book and the authors can be found at its website: SeventhCrisis.com.
