Is Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America great again” mere campaign rhetoric in the tradition of Barack Obama’s “hope and change,” George H. W. Bush’s “a kinder, gentler nation,” and Ronald Reagan’s “It’s morning in America again”? Or do such renaissances really occur in history?
The Roman Republic and Empire together lasted for more than 1,000 years. Yet at various times throughout this period, Rome was declared finished—like during the Punic Wars (264-146 BC), the Civil Wars of the late Republic (49-31 BC), and the coups and cruelty of the 12 Caesars (49 BC-AD 96), especially during the reigns of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian.
Inflation, revolts, barbarian invasions, corruption, and decadence were seen as insurmountable problems. Witnesses such as Livy, Tacitus, Petronius, and Suetonius all recorded that the Rome of their generation was simply too corrupt to continue. As Livy famously put it in the introduction to his massive history of Rome, written almost 500 years before its eventual implosion, “We can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies.”
In fact, throughout the centuries of these serial crises, Rome usually found ways to bear the necessary remedies. Often, it was saved through the intervention of exceptional generals like Scipio Africanus. Sometimes, stabilizing figures such as Augustus sought a moral revival. Effective rulers such as those whom Nicolò Machiavelli’s called the “Five Good Emperors”— Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius, and Marcus Aurelius—gave the world 100 years of calm prosperity between AD 96-192. The magisterial Edward Gibbon described their century as an era when “the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous.”
Amid radically changing times, with novel internal and external enemies, Roman institutions and culture persisted. The rule of law, transparent administration, and habeas corpus flourished alongside clean water, good roads, sewage removal, and the professionalism of the Roman legions. Rome endured for a millennium as it went through cycles of decline, recovery, and efflorescence.
A millennium-old Great Britain was also considered finished on a number of occasions. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the statism of Napoleonic France seemed the way of the future, destined to unite all of Europe against the British Navy, and to create an everlasting proto-European Union under French soft despotism. Yet the defiant Admiral of the British Fleet, John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent, assured the British sea lords in 1801—who were anxious about a seaborne French invasion—“I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea.” The Duke of Wellington dispelled the remnants of the French army at Battle of Waterloo, and helped usher in a century of relative European peace.
By late 1916, Britain seemed again on the brink. The French and British armies were being bled white at the nightmares of the Somme and Verdun. The German army was considered the most fearsome in history. Russia and France, Britain’s allies, seemed on the brink of surrender or mutiny and rebellion. And the United States had no desire to enter the European meat-grinder of World War I. Yet Britain persisted at great cost. A nearly ruined France rallied. America came into the war. And Germany and Austria collapsed.
A quarter-century later, Britain once more seemed on the verge of being crushed by Germany. After June 1940, Britain was the only major free European country left as Hitler occupied most of the continent from the English Channel to the Russian border. Still, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the British people remained unmoved. The strange little island had turned out replicas of John Jervis and the Duke of Wellington in the form of figures like Churchill and field marshalls Bernard Montgomery, Alan Brooke, and William Slim.
After the war, during the 1950s and 1960s, Britain gave up its empire, nationalized most of its industries, and suffered from dismal economic growth. It was largely written off as a neo-socialist, post-imperial, hopeless relic. Yet after the reforms of Margaret Thatcher, the London of the 1990s once again became the financial capital of Europe, as British cultural influence reverberated throughout the world in film, television, literature, and music.
Throughout all these challenges, British parliamentary government persevered. There were no coups or revolutions. An attenuated Royal Navy kept its traditions of protecting the island nation, even in the age of richer and far more powerful superpowers. British civility, ancestral manners, patriotism, and independent thinking endured. Traditional education and values kept producing men and women of genius when the hour was darkest. Oxford and Cambridge remained at the forefront of scholarship and scientific research. On each occasion of crisis, Britain returned to its roots and reasserted itself, even as its obituaries were being written.
The same holds true of the United States—another flexible republican idea wedded to the rule of law and antithetical to history’s norms of tribalism, theocracy, and sectarianism.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, an exhausted and dissolute America was said to have reached “peak oil” and soon would become near bankrupt, importing all its energy needs. Ronald Reagan, however, claimed it was actually “morning in America” after growing the economy at 7 percent between November 1983 and 1984, and facing down the “evil” Soviet Empire.
During the last decade, experts have declared that the U.S. economy will likely never again achieve 3 percent per annum economic growth, given an aging population, globalization, and the rise of entitlements. Americans were, instead, to adjust to an “era of limits” and to forget ideas that they were an “exceptional people.”
That pessimism was not new, well aside from the past existential crises of the Civil War, two World Wars, the Great Depression, and other financial meltdowns. Postwar Americans had been warned in the 1950s that Soviet-style communism would sweep the Third World and “bury” the West. In the 1980s, Americans were to defer to the superior economic model of Japan, Inc. that soon would take over the world. Then the next colossus was said to be the European Union’s transnational democratic socialism of the 1990s. Now, it is the supposed fated dominance of twenty-first-century communist-capitalist China.
In all of these cases, the flawed assumption was that the U.S. Constitution; a free-market tradition of entrepreneurial capitalism; a multiracial people united through the assimilative melting pot; and federalism under the banner of e pluribus unum were either passé or ossified ideas. People thought the days of an America with a booming stock market, an energized manufacturing and industrial sector, plentiful and affordable gas and oil, and a world-dominant tech industry were over.
Yet as 2018 begins, the United States has become the largest producer of gas, oil, and coal in history. Its stock market is at record levels. The economy is growing at a 3 percent rate—and unemployment may dip below 4 percent, even though some commentators have claimed over the last decade that it likely would never fall below 5 percent again. The auto, steel, manufacturing, financial, agricultural, and high-tech industries are ascendant. The world’s aspiring professionals prefer graduate schools in Cambridge (Mass.), Palo Alto, and New York to those in Beijing, Moscow, or Tehran. The health of a society is still judged by age-old criteria such as the quality of its educational institutions, the stability of its constitution, the moral caliber of its citizenry, and the ability to feed, fuel and protect itself—and on these measures, the United States is doing far better than its peers the world over.
National and collective decline among constitutional societies such as ours is almost always a choice, not a fate. The culprit of inescapable national regression is rarely external causes like war, disease, or environmental catastrophe. Instead, states insidiously whither away from complacence and ennui brought on by affluence and leisure, which often lead to amnesia about the sacrifices and protocols required for prosperity.
Declining states reverse course not so much by reinventing themselves as by returning to the values that once made them singular. Renewal focuses on investing more than consuming, limiting the size of state bureaucracies and entitlements, and avoiding costly optional wars. It also requires preserving the rule of law, enshrining meritocracy, and reinculcating national pride in ancestral customs and traditions while ensuring citizens equity under the law.
In an age of instability—with China ascendant, rampant global terrorism abroad, and increasing racial tension at home—can America return to its economic, cultural, and military preeminence while offering security, prosperity, and a continuation of American values to its citizens?
“Make America great again” hinges on remembering what made America “great” in the first place, but also what has threatened to not make America great at various times in our history. The options are not opaque.
Each generation must choose whether to unite around an ideal that transcends class, race, and regional divides, or to give in to the more natural state of tribal solidarities and prejudices. There is always a choice whether to abide by the Constitution or to warp it. We are always pondering whether to liberate the American economy or to nationalize it, and whether to honor or be ashamed of our icons of the past. Can an often second-guessing, apologetic, and overly litigious America still feel confident that it can be good enough without having to be perfect?
Every nation’s next generation must decide whether to leave behind a country better than the one it inherited. And sometimes, the resulting choices can reenergize or finally put to rest their collective inheritance.
Discussion (12)
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In the part of this essay where you recount the history of Britain you did not include the most recent chapter: the era of Islamic migration. Douglas Murray and Raheem Kassam both write about this and certainly current events (i.e. Birmingham bombing, Rotherham rape scandal, London acid attacks along with a Muslim mayor and Muslim majority population) are significant enough to have garnered your attention in the history of Britain as a place that has endured. Why did you leave this chapter out? How do you think Britain (or maybe England) will deal with this change? Thank you for your time and attention.
Dear Dr. Hanson, I am an avid fan of your writings. However, I am baffled by the example of Great Britain as one country that has made itself great again. Without the aegis of the USA and later NATO, the country could not defend itself in the modern past from its enemies in WWII nor now or in any future engagement with an enemy from continental Europe, if one ever materializes. However much I admire the history and people of that nation, Great Britain is an example of a country that is still independent by chance and good fortune. It is a shell of its past glory. It does not have natural resources. It does not have a rich diverse culture. Its historically excellent higher educational system suffers from the only thing that can kill it, being British. Thus it produces graduates who are exceptionally bright but weighed down by British overthinking. Meanwhile the world moves ahead faster and faster. Finally, Britain's claim on being the financial capital of the world is one tax law or BREXIT vote away from vanishing. The USA with its vast naturally protected lands, temperate climate, rich resources, diverse population, and a set of laws that are still based on a Judeo-Christian foundation is a perfect one-off example of a country that has and can continue to re-invent itself to better glories. Will it ever produce the landmark achievements in human thought or noble statesmanship that signal greatness as Greece, Rome, or even Britain has done? Given more time, the answer has to be yes. The Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Washington, and Lincoln are a good starting point. Even with its current temporary faults, of which other countries are also afflicted (in some cases even more so), it is hard to imagine a world without a powerful USA in it for the long foreseeable future.
A very interesting article, as usual. But isn't it 'Antoninus' Pius, rather than 'Antonius'? You will be aware that he had built the 'Antonine Wall', across the centre of what is now Scotland, and there is definitely a second 'n' in there ;-)
Superb.
Oh yeah, Britain and the U.S. fought so hard for freedom and then turned the West into a multi-cultural sh*thole that wil turn pretty soon into a mono-cultural caifat, great achievement.
Bravo!! Things are almost never a s good or bad as the seem to be. The campaign slogans of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump have succeeded because they've inspired the American public to do what they've always done -- to make the country even better. Fritz Steiner Huntsville, AL
Outstanding essay, Mr Hanson. Thank you for your inspiration and faith in America. Americans are constantly beaten down by the media and pop culture to the brink of losing hope in ever regaining our Liberty, and your lessons from history have given us some perspective. Revival is going to be a battle royal, though. The decline of America is by design.
"In fact, throughout the centuries of these serial crises, Rome usually found ways to bear the necessary remedies. Often, it was saved through the intervention of exceptional generals like Scipio Africanus." Perhaps Trump and those to follow can save America, if they can preserve our American demography. Culture matters. "British civility, ancestral manners, patriotism, and independent thinking endured. Traditional education and values kept producing men and women of genius when the hour was darkest." Culture matters. Do we still have these inherent American characteristics, do we still have an American culture, or has our culture changed through unassimilated immigrants and we have not yet realized it? While we rose from past impediments, we had not then a 20 trillion debt, a huge and growing unassimilated population, unsustainable entitlements, questionable military preparedness, and a corrupt political class. Correcting these cracks in our armor will require great changes, great sacrifice. Will this require a revolution, a civil war? You suggest not. I am pessimistic.
We can learn much about Trump from studying Caligula; but not from the standard interpretation of Caligula. Caligula was apparently not the degenerate ruler falsely depicted by Roman historians, liberal Hollywood movies and tabloid novels. To Suetonius, Caligula was insane. To Seneca he was a "mad beast". Philo of Alexandria speaks of Caligula's "insanity". Pliny the Elder and Flavius Josephus mention his absurd behavior and "madness". Tacitus said he had a "troubled brain". Cassius believed he had "lost is head". Sound familiar to what is being said about Trump? The problem with all these historians' accounts is that they were paid propagandists (fake news of their day). This is all detailed in Aloys Winterling's eye opening book "Caligula: A Biography". Caligula wasn't a debauched ruler who had incest with his sister, turned his palace into a brothel, forced others to worship him as a god, and was a megalomaniac mad man. That image comes from the paid propagandists of the Roman Senate Suetonius, Cassius, Seneca and Josephus, who were Caligula's adversaries. Why did the Roman Senate and its paid propagandists and sophists hate Caligula? Because he changed the status quo and used temperamental speech and double talk. Caligula restored free speech, he decentralized Roman government from one man rule and gave back some power to the Roman Senate, he increased pay to the Roman military, he reinstated elections, he allowed the poorer Plebians to attend chariot races (which he participated in), and he mocked the conspicuous luxury of the Patricians. The chariot races were the Reality TV of their day. Caligula famously built a palace for his horse who was doted upon by servants to ridicule how the Roman Senate had only become concerned with their own luxuries and patronage. But for building this mock temple he was called a madam. Caligula's Horse Palace is the equivalent of Trump's Fake News Awards. More importantly, Caligula used what historians Aloys Winterling and Mary Beard call satiric "double talk". As Mary Beard writes in her "Confronting the Classics", it was Tiberius, not Caligula, that was unsuccessful at ruling for failure to understand how to speak double-talk: "the politics of Empire were founded on double-speak as much as on military force; no one said exactly what they meant, or meant exactly what they said...successful emperors after Augustus were those who managed to exploit and double speak and turn it to their advantage; the unsuccessful were those who fought against it. Caligula's predecessor, Tiberius, 'never grew into' the role. He took it all at face value, refused to master the game of 'ambiguous communication, and in the process repeatedly revealed the autocratic reality underneath the carefully constructed democratic veneer of the Augustan system...Ultimately, relations between the emperor and the traditional governing class broke down so badly Tiberius spent his last decade of his reign on the island of Capri, governing Rome from a distance...". Are those who currently oppose Trump the modern day equivalent of the propagandists against Caligula? Civility of speech and behavior won't save the republic because that was thrown out the window with the Obama Administration. Civil speech will be restored when the rule of law is restored. As for a renaissance of American industry, is it any surprise that the first president in US history from the Business Class has become booster of business and industrial production instead of a continuation of Presidents from both parties that continued redistributive policies of bleeding business?
Well said. I need encouraging thoughts like this. I live in a community just south of Seattle, and we recently lost control of our city council. The Democrat machine targeted us, and with some massive in-kind donations ... Patty Murray's Campaign Manager volunteered for duty as campaign manager for a candidate fittingly named Krystal Marx ... and the "nonpartisan" King County executive held a government-union-supported rally to lend credibility to the machine candidates' claims that their opponents were "white nationalists" despite the fact that two were traditional Democrats, and the other two were moderate Republicans ... they carried the day. We now have at least four years of rule by socialists who take their marching orders from Seattle. They are delusional, and I expect that things will start to unravel in the next few years. Drugs and homeless issues like contagious diseases spread by feces will become major public health problems, "safe" injection sites will draw in more and more problems, and small businesses will seriously consider moving a few miles to safer locales. But the relative wealth of their core supporters, my neighbors, will allow them to persist in their beliefs long after the real damage has been done. Much along the lines of your talk about turning California's gold to dust last summer. I think it will be necessary to suffer some major blows before we turn the corner. The article by Admiral Roughead speaks to the issues confronting our Navy. But he is not nearly critical enough. The ships that were involved in the collisions were running with their radar transponders turned off, sort like in war time. But they were steaming at high speed (20 knots) through radar controlled traffic lanes, and the watch standers weren't aware of those lanes. The point of being invisible to radar is to increase your survivability against missiles that travel at speeds above 400 knots, with the next generation traveling at hypersonic speeds. The time to react is measured in seconds against these threats. But these watch officers couldn't avoid colliding with vessels going 20 knots or less. They were just as delusional as the socialists who have assumed control of my little city.
amen
EXCELLENT!