There is an intriguing Chapter in Wilhelm Roepke's 1948 book, The Moral Foundations of Civil Society, in which he writes about those nineteenth century thinkers who anticipated the crisis of the twentieth century. According to Roepke, "It appears that in all great crises of world history most people utterly deceive themselves as to where they stand, just as if Providence had drawn a veil over the impending disaster." Though a society inwardly crumbles, an "optimistic self deception" prevails -- attended by "that astounding superficiality of diagnosis with which so many of us have judged the state of the world" in the past...