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182 9 Truth and the Experience of Epoch in History It is uneasily suspected that we may be living through some sort of grand transition or even epoch in the history of mankind. Since an epoch, like Nessy, is much rumored, seldom seen, difficult to discern in the impenetrable fog of futurity, and—if this really is one—will be the first one directly experienced by the living generations of mankind, what is it and what, if anything, does one do about it? What are its traits, pitfalls, and promises? At the outset a caveat is in order: The word epoch can mean either a brief moment or an extended period of time, longer than an age. Thus, there is inherent ambiguity, which may be just as well. But what might it mean in the present instance?§1. In the period between 1989 and 1991 the Soviet communist empire collapsed, and the Cold War ended. The events of fifteen years ago were even confused with the end of history itself, so palpable was the existential dislocation that had befallen the world.1 A rebirth of freedom , perhaps an American renaissance, was sensed and proclaimed 1. The best-known example is Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992), which has been widely discussed. For a critique see esp. Barry Cooper, The End of History: An Essay on Modern Hegelianism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984) as directly supplemented by Barry Cooper, “The End of History: Déjà-vu All Over Again,” History of European Ideas 19, nos. 1–3 (1994): 377–83. Truth and the Experience of Epoch in History 183 with the flickering hope of creation of just government the unlikely fruit of the travail that had beset the world for the previous half-century. The most resolute of the old idolatries now collapsed or undone in the pinnacles of power, neither putative leaders nor their peoples knew just how to fill the void left in the spewing wake of flotsam that obscured the anomie of the new existence and whose rubble made the shattered dream of universal power’s most fitting monument. The perplexing moment between eras was our precise historic location, then: a horrific past behind us, a daunting array of possible futures lie unknowably before us. This kaleidoscope we call the pluralistic field of human existence , of history in the making. Anyone lulled into believing history was over at the time has since been jolted by the resurgence of radical Islamist jihadism and instructed by the Afghani and Iraqi populations’ electorate founding, amid civil strife, sectarian violence, against all the odds and historical precedents, a constitutionally representative government as the unlikely aftermath of theocratic and secular despotism. Together with the sense of epoch (however defined), there also came a sense of great opportunity if we didn’t bungle it. It was a moment of pivotal opportunity curiously akin to the watershed discerned by American founders in 1787 and expressed by Publius on the first page of The Federalist Papers: [I]t seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis, at which we are arrived, may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act, may. . . deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind. It is instructive to recall that the direct objective of this plea, to persuade the American people (the New York electorate specifically) to ratify the Constitution of the United States, was achieved—but barely so, by the narrowest of voting margins in the key states of Virginia and New York. Yet that document now continues as the world’s oldest existing written constitution still the basis of a national government. 184 REPUBLICANISM, RELIGION, AND THE SOUL OF AMERICA This is just cause for hope and celebration. Yet for reason and justice to prevail in human governance, as invited and exemplified by the American founding, it should not be forgotten that both had to be compromised in order to accommodate diversity of viewpoint and the passions, interests, and convictions that divided the relatively...

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