The British of today no more resemble their stout ancestors than today’s Greeks resemble the Spartans. And we’re headed the same way.
A lot of Britain’s problems date from WWI, when most of their upper classes were wiped out. WWII killed off some more, as well as the stronger of the middle classes, so what was left behind were a majority of weaklings, defectives, and unreliables.
America, on the other hand, was more egalitarian in our fights, and so, for example, after the Civil War, often the poorest and most ignorant had been killed. Both WWI and WWII were draftee wars, and our military command was judicious in how our soldiers were used, so often individual bad judgment was to blame for getting killed. This balanced out the loss of good soldiers who were unlucky.
America’s problems devolve mostly from having better health care. A hundred and fifty years ago, infant mortality was sky high, epidemics were common, and even the strong who survived were often afflicted. Once this mortality was brought down, there was a jump in the number of “defective” offspring who survived. This in turn led to the interest in eugenics after the turn of the century.
When I was a lad growing up on the farm fertilizer was packaged in burlap, 200 pounds to the bag. Most any teenage farm boy could move one even though most boys weighed far less than today. Sodium nitrate fertilizer came in 100 pound bags, this was considered easy handling for any boy of twelve or older. Now fertilizer is packaged in thirty or forty pound bags. We are growing weaker and weaker even as we grow larger and we need weapons for self defense more than ever before and yet the politicians are dead set on taking them away.