Twilight of Authority

This text was first published in 1975, shortly after the resignation of President Richard Nixon, which revealed, according to Robert Nisbet, the extreme and corrupt manifestation of a democratic royalism that has its roots in several preceding administrations. Nisbet argues that the political community in the West had broken down after two centuries of ascendancy. He believes that the West has entered a twilight age that will be characterized by political and cultural crises similar to those that preceded the fall of Rome. He foresees the displacement of traditional, liberal society by centralized, collectivized power - what he terms the war society, driven by the rising power and expense of a hugely scaled military. Nisbet offers no prophecy of inevitable decline; rather, he means to call attention to the problem of finding the means generating a social order within which the individual can live and derive a spirit of initiative.