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It does not matter what you invent if you culture is dead and you no longer progress through time. If you have not learned how to endure, you have failed. This goes for the United States if we fail over time. All cultures cycle and failure has been the history for most of them. The rubble of their cities is all over the planet. It is either earthquake, small bugs, or ego of leadership that takes them down. The piles of cities litter the earth and the failure is displayed in those piles. Some get a second chance but in the movement of time they are still young cultures. There is a reason for the continued fall of man's cultures but Libertarians will never understand why. They think science is the center of the universe. They think if the material items and their information endures so does the culture. These old cultures have some success but their cultures are dead and have failed to endure. Their cities are in rubble and their science will never save them.

The United States is not permanent (long, long may it last). The fact that NO culture lasts forever doesn't make them failures, any more than our personal mortality makes us failures as human beings.

Here's another figure of merit for you: the Sumerian empire lasted for 1600 years. The Babylonian empire lasted for 1400. Our nation has lasted for 228. I'd say we have some catching up to do.

The fact that we are here and the Sumerians are not does not make our culture superior; it just means that our culture came later. North Korea is still around; does that make it our equal?

I'll further point out that the culture of Greece and Rome was manifestly better than what came after; there is no reasonable standard by which a European in 1000 AD could have called his culture "more successful".