William S. Lind

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William S. Lind (b. July 9, 1947) is an American expert on military affairs and a pundit on cultural conservatism.

1 Education
2 Military Expertise
3 Cultural Conservatism
4 Mass Transit
5 External links

[edit] Education

Lind graduated from Dartmouth College in 1969 and from Princeton University in 1971, where he received a Master's Degree in history.

[edit] Military Expertise

He is most widely known as one of the originators of Fourth Generation War (4GW) theory. This theory states that the state has effectively lost its monopoly on warfare, and seeks to address the new challenges posed by this situation. The root of this new phenomenon is the "State's Crisis of Legitimacy," which is also linked to Lind's work at the Center for Cultural Conservatism

Lind served as a legislative aide for the armed services for Senator Robert Taft, Jr., of Ohio from 1973 through 1976 and held a similar position with Senator Gary Hart of Colorado from 1977 through 1986. He is the author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook (Westview Press, 1985) and co-author, with Gary Hart, of America Can Win: The Case for Military Reform.

Lind worked closely with US Air Force Colonel John Boyd with whom he developed much of his theoretical work and drew much inspiration from. The OODA Loop primarily used in 4GW was described by Boyd.

With Bruce Gudmundsson, Lind hosted the program Modern War on the now-defunct satellite television network NET. He has been invited to lecture by the Swedish and Israeli military academies.

Lind, an opponent of the Iraq War, has written for the Marine Corps Gazette, and Defense and the National Interest.

[edit] Cultural Conservatism

Lind is the Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation. He advocates a Declaration of Cultural Independence by cultural conservatives in the United States, in the belief that the Federal government has ceased to represent their interests, and begun to coerce them into negative behavior and affect their culture in a negative fashion. The Center believes that American culture and its institutions are headed for a collapse, and that cultural conservatives should separate themselves from the calamity it foresees. It supports setting up independent parallel institutions with a right to secession and a highly decentralized nature that would rely on individual responsibility and discipline to remain intact, but would prevent the takeover of the institutions by those hostile to cultural conservatism's ideals.

As a paleoconservative, Lind has often criticized neoconservatives in his commentaries. While not a libertarian, he has also written for LewRockwell.com.

[edit] Mass Transit

Lind has authored and co-authored a number of monographs on behalf of the Free Congress Foundation attempting to persuade American conservatives to support government funding for mass transit programs. He was a co-host of an NET program on light rail called The New Electric Railway Journal.