A Short-Lived Luxury
Decadent societies are terminally ill and do not last. They are overtaken by lean and hasty nations that see their opportunity—like Goths contemplating the Roman settlements on the far side of the Danube, or Latin American crime lords eyeing American metropolises, or Chinese leaders developing space-based "defense" networks while America congratulates itself on its invincible ground and air forces. The chief decadence of decadent societies is their virtuosity in ignoring history and lying to themselves about their prospects.
S. M. Hutchens is a Touchstone senior editor.
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more on history from the online archives
15.6—July/August 2002
Things Hidden Since the Beginning of the World
The Shape of Divine Providence & Human History by James Hitchcock
28.3—May/June 2015
Whittaker Chambers's Lonely War Against Godless Collectivism by Hunter Baker
14.6—July/August 2001
The Transformed Relics of the Fall
on the Fulfillment of History in Christ by Patrick Henry Reardon
more from the online archives
32.3—May/June 2019
on the Implications of Changing the Pater Noster by John M. McCarthy
18.4—May 2005
The Idylls, Idols & Devils That Corrupt the Moral Imagination by Vigen Guroian
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