History teaches that empires are most aggressive, seemingly confident, and reckless just before they crumble. Spain’s desengaño (disillusionment) set in soon after Philip “the Prudent” launched his doomed Armada to conquer England. British imperialism peaked with the massed extravagance of the 1911 Delhi Durbar, which initiated two generations of global retreat. Russia’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan fit the pattern, seeming to herald a fresh level of Warsaw Pact expansion but instead beginning a decade of decline before the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1991.
There is a hint of something similar in the political wind now, as the Left, in its moment of apparent triumph, attempts to push America over the finish line into irreversible centralized control. As Daniel Henninger noted in the Wall Street Journal, Democrats are trying to “cram a generation’s worth of entitlements, taxes, and welfare spending into a single reconciliation bill.” But this is an act of desperation, for the Left knows that it’s the last chance to reach socialist Utopia.
Uprisings all over the world against overbearing governments from Hong Kong to Cuba offer portents for America. But one does not need to cast one’s eyes overseas to see ill auguries for the Left’s empire of lies. People are voting with their feet, leaving Democratic-run cities and states. I have also written here before about millions of ordinary Americans fighting back against the excesses of critical race theory, which, being Marxist in origin, is based on what sensible people know are dehumanizing falsehoods.
Likewise, public approval of President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy is declining as consumers hear him claim his multitrillion-dollar spending agenda “will reduce inflation” even as the index jumps 5.4%, with further peaks coming into view. Voters who gave extra House seats to Republicans in the 2020 elections, and split the Senate evenly, didn’t sign up for rampant radicalism. Foreseeing electoral defeat, Democrats are in a rush to get it done before voters pry the party’s fingers off the levers of power.
So, although the Democrats’ ministrations give the state and trajectory of the country a bleak aspect in the eyes of those who value its traditional principles and ideals, the very excesses we are now critiquing are to some extent signals of hope. The madness cannot go on forever. Conservatives can be inclined to gloom, for they, we, think the world and in particular our own culture, despite being healthier, richer, and better-fed than ever, was better in several ways in the remembered past. This makes the happy warrior attractive.
And there are real reasons to hope that we are in the dark before dawn. As we fight over the direction of the country, remember the title and words of Arthur Hugh Clough’s poem “Say not the Struggle nought Availeth,” especially the last stanza:
“And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.”
