Date posted: 08-18-2026
Estimated Reading Time : 6 Minutes
As Americans contemplate the significance of our country’s 250th birthday, we should reexamine the past and consider the future. How did we become the greatest nation in human history? How do we stay on the path of freedom and prosperity for our people while retaining our superpower leadership in the world? John Bagot Glubb studied eleven empires over a 3,000-year period. In his groundbreaking 1978 essay “The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival,” he concluded that 250 years tend to mark the end of great nations.
He sets forth seven “internal factors” that lead to their demise:
Pessimism. Glubb suggests that when the end is near, great empires experience a complete disintegration of national vision. One would have to be blind not to see these symptoms in our own country. For example, there is nothing more pessimistic than climate change hysteria. During an interview just seven years ago, on January 21, 2019, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?” By her accounting, that leaves us only five years of earthly existence. That is about as pessimistic as it gets. Glubb’s point echoes Proverbs 29:18 (KJV), which says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish…”.
Materialism. The rise of socialism is nothing but materialistic envy masquerading as a crusade for “social justice.” It is another guise for covetousness. “Take from the rich and give to the poor” is not the fantasy of Robin Hood but the obsession of the thief.
Frivolity. This is the party spirit that disregards responsibility to oneself and others. We see the frivolity of teen parties becoming flash mobs and takeovers that disrupt businesses, destroy property, and assault innocent people. We see celebrations of a home team’s championship degenerate into massive violent riots.
Decadence, selfishness, and love of money. These are all part of the mindset of the flesh that poisons powerful nations. In our country, the decadence of homosexuality and transgenderism, the selfishness of killing unborn babies, the love of money that drives corruption, and the materialism that makes things more important than people are the witches’ brew of a nation in decline.
Influx of foreigners. During the Biden administration, millions of illegal aliens invaded our country. According to Pew Research, the foreign-born population of America is the highest in our history—over 53 million and more than 15%. A nation can absorb only so many outsiders before its culture begins to crumble and its social infrastructure collapses under the pressure.
We see the signs of this everywhere. Minneapolis and the federal government were defrauded out of billions of dollars primarily by Somalis gaming the system. The pattern is repeating itself in cities where large numbers of foreigners have figured out how to enrich themselves by bilking taxpayers. The Center for Immigration Studies concludes that as many as 61% of immigrant households are on at least one major welfare program. The welfare state was already overburdened. Out of an annual budget of $7 trillion, roughly $1.6 trillion goes to social welfare. Nearly one-third of the American population is welfare-dependent, not including those on Social Security and disability.
Loss of a sense of duty. As our citizens think more and more about what our nation owes them and less and less about what they owe their country, the sense of duty is lost. When that goes, a nation’s security goes with it. The infamous social influencer Hasan Piker says America deserved 9/11. He echoes the sentiment of former college professor Ward Churchill. Piker has been campaigning with prominent far-left candidates who are only too happy to have his endorsement and support. The fact that he hates America doesn’t seem to matter.
During the Biden administration, recruitment numbers for the police and the military were at crisis levels. Under President Trump, military and federal law enforcement numbers have improved significantly, but local police recruitment is still falling well short of the need.
This is not difficult to explain, given the anti-police sentiment of most city administrations. The calls to defund or dismantle the police can still be heard among urban political leaders. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is also on the chopping block if the Democrat Party has its way. Its agents face protests, harassment, doxing, and threats to themselves and their families. Were it not for President Trump as Cheerleader-in-Chief, their jobs would be an exercise in futility. Under the Biden administration, they were completely demoralized.
Weakening of religion. Our founding principles, rooted in faith, are the single most important factor in making us an exceptional nation.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
These unforgettable words established more than a legal and political justification for separating from Great Britain. They set forth a spiritual and cultural foundation for our nation and the kind of society we would be. If liberty and “unalienable” rights come from God, then we are all accountable to Him. Government is responsible for the protection of those rights, and citizens must be held accountable for how those rights are exercised. We are all stewards of the gift of freedom.
The Constitution secures our liberty, and the government defends it. Political leaders are not our rulers, but our servants. These principles explain why America is the only nation whose revolution left citizens freer than they were under the government they rebelled against. In most cases throughout history, revolutions leave the people worse off than they were before. America is indeed the exceptional nation.
Our founding principles also explain why America, although established when the world was ordered by conquest and enslavement, ultimately became the nation that affirmed human dignity more than any other. We created a culture in which human beings can flourish in pursuit of their God-given gifts and abilities. It is a long journey to the full realization of the American dream, and we have not fully arrived. Yet we have traveled farther in that quest than any nation ever has. We have produced a higher standard of living for more of our citizens than any other country has. We have created, invented, and innovated to improve life for our people and the entire world. We have unleashed the productive and creative capacities of human beings with unprecedented success.
Our unique recipe of individual liberty tempered by Christian virtue has fed millions and brought them prosperity. We continue to tweak and improve the recipe. At times, terrible ingredients are thrown into the mix, and we must take corrective action. At the moment, socialism is one of those unpalatable ingredients being served up and spat out by most Americans.
The key to our unprecedented national success is our Judeo-Christian foundations. Psalm 33:12 says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.” If this remains true, we will overcome the symptoms of our decline, shatter Glubb’s 250-year theory, and continue to prosper as the greatest nation on earth.