What the collapse of Rome can tell us

 Johan Norberg, Washington Post - According to a much-discussed TikTok trend of a couple of years ago, men think about the Roman Empire every day. One reason might be that the fall of Rome is a memento mori — a reminder that we, too, are mortal. No matter how safe, rich and powerful the United States seems, it might all come tumbling down, as things did that day in 476 A.D. when the last Western Roman emperor was deposed.

The American founders consciously modeled their new nation and much of its architecture on Athens and Rome. Ever since, Americans have periodically feared that we are living in the decline-and-fall phase of those empires’ stories.

Today, a mix of factors — from geopolitical tensions and surging debts to the Trump administration’s challenge to free trade and the rule of law — has brought that fear back with force. People are asking whether time is running out for the American experiment, and whether Chinese leader Xi Jinping might be right in declaring that “the East is rising while the West is declining.”

Next year marks America’s 250th birthday. Few golden ages have lasted that long — and unless Americans adopt a new outlook, ours could soon be over, too.

It is always hard to disentangle the causes of cultural decline. In 1984, a German historian compiled 210 explanations historians had suggested for Rome’s fall, from lead poisoning and barbarian invasions to Christianity, moral decline and gout.

After studying dynamic civilizations such as Athens, Rome, Abbasid Baghdad, Song China, Renaissance Italy and the Dutch Republic, I can attest that there is no single explanation. Each golden age had its own character and its own downfall. Often the familiar horsemen of the apocalypse — war, plagues and natural disasters — played a role. But these calamities appeared many times, and civilizations usually bounced back. Cities can be rebuilt, and knowledge is rarely lost.

What proved fatal was something subtler: In the midst of some of these crises, cultures began to lose confidence. Their mentality and intellectual atmosphere shifted. More