Can Golden Ages last? Comparing the U.S. to Rome | In Focus

Published 1:30 pm Thursday, June 18, 2026

“The United States is in a period of decline similar to that of the Roman Empire in its last days.”

This is the stance of a friend who is constantly writing me emails or providing YouTube videos to prove his point. Is he correct, or is he just pessimistic?

In the last days of the Roman Empire before its collapse to invaders in 476 A.D., corruption, high national debt, inflation, and the inability to defeat enemies were problems that plagued the Empire. There are several books and broadcasts available that take this perspective.

The Washington Post quoted the conservative think tank, the Cato Institute, on October 12, 2025: “Next year [2026] marks America’s 250th birthday. Few golden ages have lasted that long — and unless Americans adopt a new outlook, ours could soon be over, too” (https://www.cato.org/commentary/it-americas-fate-decline-fall-heres-what-history-says) .

The alternating view looks at American history as that of an invented nation with an invented government structure embodied in the Constitution. The Constitution is a unique document created to avoid two extremes: Dictatorship and oppression on one hand and the concern about anarchy on the other.

America fought a bloody eight-year war against the British and won. Under the Articles of Confederation, Americans saw the government of Massachusetts threatened by overthrow by angry farmers led by Daniel Shays. These farmers were losing their farms because the U.S. government did not support its continental currency, and was allowing the poor to be oppressed by a corrupt and uncaring state government in Boston. Shays, a revolutionary war hero, led a rebellion in 1786-7. Shays and his army were defeated.

This attempted revolution in a state caused the wealthy elite to come together to create the Constitution partially in order to protect their property rights. That government and our nation have seen tough times and endured many tribulations: The Indian wars, the Civil War, the Jim Crow Era, World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, the Korean War, and the Civil Rights Movement. We fought and lost wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. From each of these crises we have emerged, chastened and changed by our experiences, yet, surprisingly, we have also adapted and gotten stronger each time.

Part of our ability to adapt is due to the checks and balances created by the Constitution. Part of our reinvention came because of the natural geographic blessings our continent possesses: vast natural resources, more rivers than the rest of the world combined, a temperate climate, and two oceans that isolate and protect us. We have two neighbors to the north and the south who are weaker and who pose no real threat to us.

Yet, ironically, these natural advantages are being threatened by climate change. We have been plagued by twenty-year droughts and rivers drying up in the southwest and wildfires across the west, hurricanes in the south and east, and melting ice that now threatens our coastal cities with flooding. Yet, during the Great Depression, we endured the Dust Bowl and recovered.

We have allowed ourselves to become burdened with a national debt nearing $40 trillion and increasing yearly.

The question is whether the weather and/or national debt will destroy our resilience and reinvention, or whether we will again emerge from this time of political, economic, social, racial, technological, and demographic changes, or whether we will succumb to the inevitable decline of all previous empires.

We are standing at a crossroads. The answers to these questions will be determined by resourcefulness or discouragement, or some as yet undetermined and unforeseen catastrophe like the bombing of Pearl Harbor that united the country against common foes.

Perhaps Trump’s unpredictability, his corruption and lies, his desire for retribution, his impulsiveness in dragging us into unwanted wars will actually save us from ourselves. We have become complacent and need some terrible crisis to force us to decide to unite.

Whatever our views: Decline and destruction, or resurgence, reinvention, and resilience, will be determined by “We the People.” Enjoy the ride, or shrink in terror.

As the Bob Dylan song from the ‘60s states, “The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.”

It’s up to us. We will get to, or perhaps have to, find out in our lifetimes.

Richard Elfers is a columnist, a former Enumclaw City Council member and a Green River College professor.