Recommended: The Myth of America's Decline

Josef Joffe, a German educated at Swarthmore and Harvard and now a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute and the Freeman-Spongli Institute for International Studies, has written an interesting book about the perennial America angst about oncoming doom. As he points out, the history of of predicting America's downfall starts before the America revolution, and has continued ever since. Sputnik, the so-called "missile gap", Vietnam, the malaise of the Carter years, the predicted rise of Russia, then Japan, and then China as global powers overtaking us have all been used to justify the recurring prophecy of America's downfall, usually to the political advantage of one presidential candidate or another.

Joffe examines all the usual justifications for these predictions and shows pretty convincingly that on closer examination all show just the opposite - that America is so far ahead of the rest of the world (in economy, education, military power, economic power, demographics, etc, etc,) that our political system can afford to do really stupid things and still not imperil our position as the only superpower. I confess that I myself have expressed some of these worries about America's decline in this blog from time to time.  Joffe's book has made me reexamine those worries.

Coincidentally, I had occasion earlier this week to be part of a panel reviewing new start-up companies in the area for funding possibilities. The experience was sobering - I spent all day listening to one brilliant entrepreneur after another pitch their innovations, and came away thinking that this country has little to worry about yet if there are this many bright, energetic, smart people pushing the  limits of science and technology and starting new companies.

This book is well worth reading and thinking about.