America’s Decline Never Seems to Arrive Our institutions show an unrivaled capacity for weathering disruptive change. Walter Russell Mead
https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-decline-never-seems-to-arrive-1530572850?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=5&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s
EXCERPT:
“……And yet somehow, the flag has continued to fly. Why does American power look so fragile and remain so resilient? One reason is that the U.S. emerged just as the pace of human history was accelerating. In the mid-18th century, the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution unleashed ideas and technologies that would transform the world. Modern capitalism exploded into being. The social turmoil, geopolitical instability, and technological change now battering the global system are only the latest stages in a long process whose end we can’t yet see.
The U.S. has stood the challenge better than most. Now in its 230th year, the American political system is one of the world’s oldest. But the revolutionary force of capitalism isn’t finished with us. The social and political changes of the 21st century challenge the institutions that humanity so painstakingly assembled in the second half of the 20th. Across the globe, societies must renew themselves as the information revolution reshapes the way people work, think, interact and engage in politics.
This is doubly hard for the U.S., which must not only reform its own domestic institutions but also act as custodian of a world system under strain from globalization, technological disruption and great-power rebalancing.
As Franklin well knew, there are no guarantees that the American experiment will work. Yet he and his fellow Founders designed a system of government to weather the stress and the strain of revolutionary times. The strength and flexibility of Madisonian federalism have enabled the American system to flourish amid more than two centuries of successive upheavals.
But constitutions, however elegant, can’t breathe life into dead polities. It is the union of sound institutions with a strong national spirit—ordinary Americans’ patriotism, democratic faith and enterprising ambition—that has made America such a force in the world.
Noisy extremists on the political fringes notwithstanding, that spirit still rules in America today. As long as it does, the country will continue to astonish the world with its creativity and its capacity for renewal. For now, at least, we can still answer Francis Scott Key’s anxious question in the affirmative: our flag is still there.
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