ABSTRACT
From the perspective of the year 2000 and after, the recent history of the Western world is a scene of paradox. In terms of material success, it has been a time of almost unblemished progress. Internationally, the West’s major challenger in the form of Communism has essentially disappeared, and the economic and cultural ways of the West surge around the world almost without resistance except by radical Islam. Internal politics in the West have become stable to the point of inviting apathy, while the mass media keep the multitude duly distracted. Yet in the intangibles of human values and relationships, a revolution has been going on as deep as any known to history. This revolution, the fourth in a sequence of great transformations in the modern history of the West, has been centered in the most powerful and materially successful country of all, the United States of America.
