What Ails Us?

“The loss of faith in America, its promises, and its constitutional and democratic ideals augurs not only American decline, but American collapse.”

Many leading thinkers have begun correctly to refer to our present era as “decadent.” Anomie and alienation reign, and when considered alongside the periodic episodes of intense, tribalistic, bad-faith acting, and violence (like the one that has been on display in Washington as of late), these realities point towards an uncomfortable truth: The American republic is in decline. The causes for our apparent decline—and thus, the potential paths back towards confidence and prosperity—are numerous and hotly debated.

In his recently published book, The Decline of Nations, Joseph F. Johnston, Jr. offers a fairly standard conservative take on what ails America and how we might save ourselves from the throes of decline. In doing so, Johnston’s argument inadvertently highlights both the strengths and the weaknesses of conservative and market-oriented diagnoses of American decline and their related proposals for American renewal.

Lessons from the Past: The Great Powers of Rome and Britain

Johnston grounds his study of American decline in the historical examples of Rome and Britain, and he unearths relevant takeaways: that the economic base of great power strength must not be neglected, that military strength stems from economic strength, that overextension into foreign forays can weaken a nation at home, that the comforts of civilization can leave a nation unprepared and unwilling to put in the requisite hard work and sacrifice that brought it to its great power status in the first place, and that the modern shift in core governing priorities away from national defense and economic growth towards redistribution of a staid economic pie can prove destructive.