I see no reason to believe the American civilization is in decline, but am concerned about the current American state.
I've been reading “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and we may have entered a phase similar to that of the Roman Empire circa 0-200 A.D. It's a difficult read (written over 200 years ago in the scholarly lingo of the day) but it does describe some parallels. Religion and its stabalizing moral influence was dying out (even “religious” people just went through the motions), increasing centralization of power as the last vestiges of the Republic die out, corruption and marginalization of the Senate by the Dictators to the point the Senate could no longer function, and the loss of national identity as the coveted title of Roman citizen was bestowed large numbers of people who had little or no loyalty to the state. By 400 A.D., the massive and sprawling Roman Empire couldn't even muster a tepid response to a invasion from the north. The floodgates opened and the end came quickly (in historical terms).
With the compressed time lines of the modern world, we may be stepping through these phases quickly. Assuming a similar development, our next phases would include individual governors declaring sovereignty over their territories, outlying territories attempting to declare union with foreign powers, and a formerly fiercely loyal military corrupted by a growing sense of entitlement (encouraged by politicians vying for their support) beginning to wrestle with the civilian authority for power and control.
Based on this and other historical examples, Jefferson and others may have been right that republics may at best be temporary things that must periodically be refreshed and renewed from the ground up or they devolve into tyranny.
I agree there is significant decline and a troubling penchant of a significant portion of this country to be more concerned with entitlements than responsibility.
What perhaps troubles me more is one or two of the reponses to my post, however. They reek with a pessimism that doesn’t seem to have any bounds. Makes me wonder what would have happened Lexington and Concord had the participants been so filled with it.
“...Jefferson and others may have been right that republics may at best be temporary things...”
Plato nailed it almost 2000 years before Jefferson. I reccommend everyone read Plato’s Republic. The book provides a lot of thoughtful insights into the “lives” of governments.