Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
Peter Robinson ·
Oct 4, 2010 at 4:43pm
Victor Davis Hanson, taping Uncommon Knowledge half an hour ago:
When Rome collapsed in the fifth century, its enemies numbered only a fraction of those the Romans had defeated in the Punic Wars five hundred years earlier. Decline is a choice. It always is.
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Jul '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
With all due respect, and I do enjoy Dr. Hanson's work, that is bordering on delusional. The decline may not be inevitable, but the choices leading up to the decline are. He's a historian. What empire has lasted all these thousands of years?
May '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
And that's why its called the "Roman decline" and not the "Roman defeat". They got tired of being great. It's hard work, y'know.
Still they had a pretty good run.
Jul '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
Aren't all things temporal... temporal?
May '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
Michael, how is it that the choices leading up to decline are inevitable?
Jul '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide." John Adams.
Jul '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
This is exciting news Peter. Is Professor Hanson coming out with another new book soon?
Jul '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
Rome made the same mistake that the Athenians made following the defeat of Persian at Salamis, they began to diminish the value of citizenship by the wholesale import of foreign labor including enlisting non-citizens in their military. Roman citizens fought and died against the onslaught of Hannibal, but they never gave up until he was finally defeated. When they became an empire and their citizens allowed others to fight their battles for them they lost a vital sense of what it is to be a responsible for citizen who knew what he was fighting for. The more distant individual Romans came from the responsibility to maintain the city-state the less they cared about Rome and the more they cared about their personal comfort. The Caesars fed into that with their circuses, etc. After WW2 Americans began going through the same transition. No one who fought for this country would have voted for an Obama. No one who fought against NAZI Germany and Japan in WW2 would allow the bureaucrats to take apart the Constitution. But people grown fat and lazy willing to allow recent immigrants to fight their wars certainly would.
May '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
Michael Tee, "inevitable choices" is an oxymoron if ever there was one.
Perhaps you meant that choices have inevitable consequences?
I agree with VDH in opposing fatalism. We are still free; we can still fight. Nothing human is over till it's over.
Jun '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
Is not the question, does the political system contribute to decline or does it counteract the tendency?
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
Well, I'm choosing to go on fighting for our Constitution until I shuffle off this mortal coil. Who's with me?
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
George, count me in. And while I agree that choices are not inevitable (otherwise they would not be choices), it would be foolhardy not to observe that there have been noticeable trends in the choices that democracies have made. And those trends have yielded now predictable results. If we are truly exceptional, we will buck the trend. Like you George, I'm betting on the good guys.
Jul '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
I am: win, lose, or draw. (That was a great impression of Theoden, by the way, George)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXFHu5ukko8
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
You know what? That is just beautifully put.
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
You know what? That is just beautifully put.
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
Before the shoot, Victor and I had lunch, Byron, and he explained that he's immersed in a new departure: a novel. Set in Sparta, the story uses actual historical events as a point of departure, then--takes off. Victor has completed a 500-page draft, with the result, as he put it, that he now faces 500 pages of rewrites.
Me? I can't wait.
Sep '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
Peter Robinson
Before the shoot, Victor and I had lunch, Byron, and he explained that he's immersed in a new departure: a novel. Set in Sparta, the story uses actual historical events as a point of departure, then--takes off. Victor has completed a 500-page draft, with the result, as he put it, that he now faces 500 pages of rewrites.
Me? I can't wait. · Oct 4 at 8:23pm
Curse you Robinson, the last time you had Dr. Hanson on I ended up buying not only, "The Father of Us All." but an annotated Thucydides (introduction by VDH), three volumes of Procopius, and Xenophon's account of the Persian expedition. Now this.
May '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
Yay! I love historical novels! I have backlog of books though. I hope the publishing date is far enough in then future that I can make a dent in the pile. I vote for an iBook (I just took my iPad on a month-long trip, as my only device, and was very happy with it, including the thirty or so books loaded on it). Sometimes I look around at my contemporaries (I am 48) and I feel sure their laziness and selfishness will drag us down. Then I look at my 15-year-old daughter and think there is hope for us. To honor her I am with you in the fight.
Aug '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
Isn't the question of choices vs inevitability one of identifiable, concrete choices vs collective, cultural choices?
For example, expending your society's blood and treasure on a costly war is a specific choice traceable to a single leader or assembly, and if it's costly enough it can lead to decline. The job of the historian or economist is then to show how a major, singular event was a direct cause instead of a symptom.
But if, per Mark Steyn's America Alone, an entire society simply stops reproducing and hits a downward population spiral, is that a "choice"? Sure, it's made up of many individual choices, but it was not a conscious choice by an identifiable body. The closest you can say is a specific policy may have affected the culture-wide tendency--like legalizing abortion, or taxing large families, or China's draconian one child policy.
I don't have an argument ready to say unconscious, collective actions by a culture are necessarily inevitable. I do think the question of "choices" being available (as a conscious or reversible decision) is, at least, controversial.
Feb '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
An interesting and different take on historical cycles, inevitability, and the choices of entire generations of people-- as well as how trends ebb and flow, and how crisis periods alternate with periods of peace-- can be found at www.generationaldynamics.com.
In particular, read the online book Generational Dynamics for Historians to get some background on the theory.
The recent movie Generation Zero was loosely based on this theory.
Sep '10
Re: Victor Davis Hanson on the Non-Inevitability of American Decline
I have read (and partly understood) the first two of the six books of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and what I was struck by was how destructive the Roman potilitical system was. How often one horrible dictator was murdered and replaced by another.
Our Democracy is not perfect, but I can easily see why a citizen in a democracy would fight for his country and I can easily see why a Roman might think "Is this Visgoth a worse dictator than what I have?"