Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Tuesday, January 5th, 2021.

I am John Puthhord, the editor of commentary magazine with me as always associate editor Noah Rothman.

Hi Noah. Hi John.

Senior writer Christine Rosen. Hi Christine. Hi John.

Executive editor, A Greenwald. Hi Abe. Hi John.

And joining us today, one of my oldest friends, pundit, businessman, consultant, Daniel Cass. Hi Dan.

Hey good to be with you, Dutch. So Dan, you published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday in which you posited in a fascinating way that we in 2021 are we are enjoying the 50th anniversary of the modern world that even though if you look if you consider the calendar and you think about milestones.

1971 does not appear on any calendar as a milestone year. You know, there was no there was no men didn't walk on the moon for the first time, you know, the internet didn't open.

You know, the polio vaccine wasn't found World War II didn't end the Vietnam War nothing all of that like it's not you don't look at it and say, oh 1971 that was really the year that everything changed but according to you, kind of it was the year everything changed so can you laid out for us.

Well, thank you very much and it's good to be here. My theory was to write something at the beginning of the new year and look 50 years back at what happened I've actually been thinking about 1971 for a while.

I'm always suspicious when people try to ascribe extreme profundity and importance to any given year because if you look at any of these Google timelines what happens it is amazing what happens on any given year.

But I can 10 1971 was different and different for lots of reasons I could go into but in that article that you mentioned I mentioned five things that not only were important in their time, but actually became more important in time and over the past past five decades you keep coming back to it and I'll just mention them quickly.

One was Kistensures trip to China in secret which opened the doors to China. The weather was another one was an FCC decision that allowed MCI a company nobody had heard of to actually introduce competition into long distance telephone calling and challenge AT&T.

A third was the opening of Disney World something now everybody knows about then but at the time was uncertain what it would be a fourth was the creation of Intel's 4,000 and 4 chip a tiny market technology but was really the beginning of the computer age.

And the fifth was the decision by President Nixon to end the Bretton Woods agreement something hardly anyone remembers every time but it was the governing rule of international finance that allowed any country to exchange gold for American dollars or American dollars for gold.

And that was closed and it was considered in many ways afterwards the biggest economic disaster move ever made since the Great Depression all those things happen in 1971 I can discuss more of them in detail but my theory is there are very few years where you see five decisions each of which had enormous 50 consequences.

So let's unpack this a little bit because I think arguably given the list that you enumerated there it was it was this weird combination of Intel's chip and the MCI and the decision to allow MCI into the federally mandated monopoly on long distance telephony.

If you put those together that's the modern world right that's the computer the personal computer combined with the opening of telephony.

I think I think when you said long distance telephony you probably lost half your audience I think this is all about growth, globalization, the role of government and the role of the innovator and whether it's Walt Disney or the engineers at Intel or the idea that China could be a big deal.

The idea that China could be a partner of us all of those still by the way seen as either controversial or only one point they all laid the seeds for something a lot bigger.

Now again you can go to any other units and say well this happened in 68 or this happened in 1995.

I'm an amateur historian when the emphasis on amateur I have a kind of conspiracy cluster theory of history that things happen in short bursts of time and in 71 it is kind of weird that all this stuff was crammed together by the way there were other things nasty start the first star box open.

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