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The points made in the article deserve consideration, not as omens of inevitable decline, but as challenges to be met in a spirit of hope and practical optimism. History repeats itself, but it is also a succession of singular events and causes.

Rome's decline is instructive for us, but it does not mark our destiny. We have a great capacity for self-renewal. I feared the worst for this country when I was young and experiencing the 60's, the Viet Nam War, the Cold War, and the Carter years of stagflation, economic and military decline, and national failure. But then came Reagan and an American renaissance that continues still.

In eras of great danger, the American and British peoples seem to call forth the leaders that they need, finding them in improbable form: Lincoln -- an Illinois lawyer with negligible education, poor spelling, and the manner of a rube; Reagan -- a retired B grade actor with a common touch and disarming personality that hid a sharp political mind and a passion for reading in history and politics; Churchill -- a widely disliked parliamentary hack with an excessive fondness for brandy and his own voice; Thatcher -- a sharp edged grocer's daughter with training as a chemical patent lawyer and a dislike of the aristocracy.

Disparaged by the elites of their day, they all nevertheless came to power through the good sense of ordinary people and led their nations out of mortal peril. Perhaps, one day, we will rank George W. Bush among them, with others yet to come forth against dangers that we now see but dimly. We are equal to the challenges we face if we will that it be so.

We have a great capacity for self-renewal. I feared the worst for this country when I was young and experiencing the 60's, the Viet Nam War, the Cold War, and the Carter years of stagflation, economic and military decline, and national failure. But then came Reagan and an American renaissance that continues still.

John Kerry, Ramsey Clark, and others who are behind this current division were behind the 1960s radical separatism as well. They inspired their followers to burn down armories, recruiting centers, assassinate law enforcement officers, and plotted to kill elected congressmen. Same vicious circle.

Those same radicals (who are brethren to the bomb throwing communists and anarchists of the 1920s in America) would look on 12 years of Reagan-Bush as a low point of 25 years of American politics.