SARASOTA –
“I will plant a lot of flowers. I will be kind to others so they will be kind to others too.”
One-fifth of Americans were born with no memory of the millennial paranoia that enveloped the globe as the curtains fell on the 20th century. Anxiety over potential glitches in digital calendrical transitions triggered fears of nuclear reactor shutdowns, airliners falling from the sky, and collapsing power grids. And end-times prophecies that historically ramp up at the close of each century fed those survivalist jitters.
On the other hand, there was plenty to be optimistic about.
Like the Berlin Wall, the Soviet empire itself had dissolved. The euro had become the coin of the realm that would mitigate ancient European rivalries. The bloody tragedy of Vietnam turned a new page with the establishment of diplomatic relations. Indeed, a political scientist argued in “The End of History and The Last Man” that “the universalization of Western liberal democracy (had b