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 senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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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
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33.2—March/April 2020
An Architectural Sign of Mere Christianity by Michael Ward
33.4—July/August 2020
on Boethius's Consolation in a Time of Plague by Thomas Albert Howard
32.2—March/April 2019
Misguided Mercy & Dante's Infernal Purgation by Joshua Hren
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