Mind - boggling events have taken place since Niebuhr died in 1971: the deaths of Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon's tragic Watergate
crisis, war in the Middle East, rapprochement with Red China and an uneasy detente with Soviet Russia, the
energy crisis, large - scale unemployment, an escalating crime rate in the nation, the erosion of confidence in the leadership of the
Western world, and the emergence of a new crop of politicians on the national scene.
However, they forget that if
Western energy stupidity provokes a world financial
crisis, the global economy will slump and all nations will suffer.