Thomas Friedman, op-ed essayist, is often caught spectacularly off base — but sometimes (to push the baseball metaphor) he steals home. In his 30 May 2004 New York Times column Friedman comments:

I have a "Tilt Theory of History." The Tilt Theory states that countries and cultures do not change by sudden transformations. They change when, by wise diplomacy and leadership, you take a country, a culture or a region that has been tilted in the wrong direction and tilt it in the right direction, so that the process of gradual internal transformation can take place over a generation.

...

... My definition of a country tilted in the right direction is a country where there is enough free market, enough rule of law, enough free press, speech and exchange of ideas that the true agent of change in history — which is something that takes nine months and 21 years to develop, i.e. a generation — can grow up, plan its future and realize its potential.

_{(see also Barbarism Tomorrow (29 Jul 1999), Common Understanding (8 Oct 1999), Anti-Learning (30 Jun 2000), Deus ex Machina (30 Oct 1999), Social Robustness (17 May 2000), Culture, Memory, Progress (28 Sep 2000), Looming Disaster (6 Aug 2001), Kaplan on Globalization (18 Aug 2001), Invisible Culture (24 Nov 2001), Education of the Youth (1 Dec 2001), Learning and Losing (23 Dec 2001), Knowledge and Society (25 Mar 2002), Invest in Peace (9 Jul 2002), Century Hence (1 Sep 2002), Freedom, Peace Commerce, Education (13 Sep 2002), Personal Responsibility (9 Oct 2002), Knowledge and Public Happiness (29 Jul 2003), National Wealth (17 Jan 2004), Big Secret of Prosperity (14 Mar 2004), Sheep May Safely Graze (23 Mar 2004), ... )}

TopicSociety - TopicOrganizations - 2004-06-01

(correlates: FreeTrope, GovernmentJob, HiddenKnowledge, ...)