The United States has long feared a decline and fall, a fear modeled on the Roman Empire and amplified today by factors like:

Geopolitical tensions and surging debts.

Challenges to free trade and the rule of law.

The notion, expressed by Xi Jinping, that “the East is rising while the West is declining.”

Historical Patterns of Decline

Historians offer numerous explanations (210 for Rome alone), but no single cause exists for the fall of dynamic civilizations (e.g., Athens, Rome, Abbasid Baghdad).

Major calamities (war, plagues, natural disasters) are often overcome, as cities are rebuilt and knowledge is retained.

The fatal factor is a subtler shift: a loss of confidence and a change in cultural mentality and intellectual atmosphere.

Athenian vs. Spartan Mindsets

The Greek historian Thucydides identified two mindsets critical to a civilization’s fate:
Mindset Characteristics (Associated with Golden Ages) Characteristics (Associated with Decline)
Athenian Eager to venture out, open to merchants, migrants, and new ideas. Requires tolerance of pluralism and institutions to restrain arbitrary power.
Spartan Intent on staying home, guarding what is already held. Leads to control giving way to curiosity, and the populace longing for strongmen and scapegoats.

Example: Modern China’s rise was Athenian (Deng Xiaoping’s opening up), but Xi’s crackdown is a threatening Spartan shift.

Ominous Signs in the West

Since the turn of the millennium, the Western mentality has shifted from Athenian to Spartan due to terrorism, wars, economic turmoil, and social media polarization.

This shift manifests as a backlash against trade and migration, threatening to cut off the West from global talent and technology (recalling the stagnant Chinese Ming dynasty’s ban on international trade).

Two reactive forces have emerged—a hard nationalist right and a radical illiberal left—united by:

An obsession with identity politics.

A dream of sameness, seeing alternative ideas as threats.

An ambition to enforce one idea on everyone, which creates a zero-sum game that fuels conflict and tribalism.

Choice for Revival

Great civilizations do not end by fate or old age; they end—or revive—by choice (e.g., Song China’s response to invasion, post-WWII Europe’s choice for common institutions).

The U.S. retains unique strengths, including independent courts, freewheeling media, and relative geopolitical safety.

The outcome depends on whether the exhausted majority speaks up and wrests back control from the extremes.

As Abraham Lincoln warned, if destruction comes to the U.S., “we must ourselves be its author and finisher… or die by suicide.”

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