Despite all of the talk of the nation’s political diversity and cultural differences, Americans made one decision without debate.

Actually, Americans made one of the largest universal shifts of thinking in generations about a decade ago. Had someone proposed such a change, it likely would have never succeeded. Yet, it happened.

We’re talking about the past decade, year after year, back to 2000. When you encounter a year such as the recent 2009, you likely read it or said it as two-thousand-nine. Not twenty-oh-nine.

You are likely thinking, So? Big deal. Everyone said, two-thousand-nine.

True, but that’s a big So What. Think about it. If you see the year 1973, do you think one-thousand nine-hundred seventy-three? Or do you think nineteen-seventy-three? We’re willing to bet, it’s nineteen-seventy-three because that’s what we did with all of those dates from the past millennium.

It was seventeen-seventy-six that America declared its independence, not one-thousand seven-hundred seventy-six. And it’s still seventeen-seventy-six despite the fact that we moved into a time when we considered a year to be two-thousand-nine, for example.

Think about it. Who said twenty-oh-nine? The only person who immediately comes to mind is Charles Osgood on CBS’ Sunday morning show.

Maybe everyone opted for the two-thousand-nine approach because twenty-oh-nine sounded old fashioned. Maybe two-thousand-nine subconsciously had the ring of a new millennium, a new era in human history.

They both had the same number of syllables whether it was two-thousand-nine or twenty-oh-nine, or two-thousand-seven or twenty-oh-seven. Perhaps two-thousand-nine and all of these past several years rolled off the tongue easier than saying twenty-oh-nine, or twenty-oh-eight.

And maybe it’s simply a matter of words rolling off the tongue that will decide whether we remain a culture of two-thousands or if we will revert to a society that will go from nineteen to twenty. It may not be 2010, but it may be coming.

Come 2011, for example, it will take less syllables to say twenty-eleven than it will to say two-thousand-eleven, and so it will go on into 2012, 2013, etc.

How most folks see those numbers will likely determine the path we take. Do you see them as two-thousand-twelve and two-thousand-thirteen, or twenty-twelve and twenty-thirteen?

Perhaps the subconscious revolution of jumping from twenty to two-thousand is complete. Maybe not. Though it could all well change again in the year 2100.