The Committee of Public Safety

George Washington's Chair

At the Constitutional Convention, the chair that George Washington sat in as he presided had an engraved sun on its back. James Madison’s notes record:

Doctor Franklin, looking toward the President’s chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising sun from a setting sun.  I have, said he, often in the course of this session, and the vissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.

How many, when looking at the chair now, would see a rising sun? America has been manic-depressive during my lifetime. Some see every passing cloud and proclaim The End of America As We Know It. Some see every ray of light that shines through the gloom and declare that The Sun Always Shines on America. Some hold their opinion due to congenital optimism or pessimism. Some hold it out of professional interest. Most Americans think that America is generally rising but the overall size of the group ebbs and flows with the country’s fortunes.

Right now America is in an America in Decline cycle. I’ve seen several of these cycles:

• America in malaise
• Morning in America
• Germany and Japan are the future
• America is the world’s sole and indispensable super power
• America is the hyperpower
• China is the future

Whether or not America is in decline is an open question. If it’s in decline, what kind of decline is it in? Is it a dip on an upwards rise or a terminal decline? If it’s a dip, is there any way to pull out of the rut? If it’s terminal, is there any way to reverse the inevitable? Or is national morphine the only option?

There’s a few signs to look for in diagnosing system decline:

• Decline of the elites vs. decline of the general population
• Decline of the nation vs. decline of the state
• Decline in hard power vs. soft power

There is a distinct possibility that what some observe as overall decline is decline in the elites rather than decline in the general population. A nation can seem to be in irreversible decline, suddenly shed its elites, and bounce back with new vigor. Mancur Olson contended that nations gradually accumulate free riders who consume national power without contributing back to the communal pool. People turn to accumulating power through extraction rather than improvement. Eventually the number of free riders grows so large that national vigor suffers death by a million free rider cuts, much sharper and harder to see than a thousand paper cuts.

A closely allied phenomenon is that of the institutional imperative. This is the tendency of human organizations to drift from their original instrumental role to a later institutional role. Organizations are usually started with a purpose; the organization is an instrument for realizing that purpose. Over time, the members of the organization drift more and more towards perpetuating the organization and, by extension, their own living. Eventually preserving their own share of power overcomes the original instrumental purpose as the guiding light of the organization. Another organization may then be created to fulfill the purpose the original organization is increasingly incapable of. It then gradually drifts towards institutionalization and the process starts all over again. Deadwood builds up and society goes slower.

These two, allied phenomena both hamper society by making it hard to see new threats and making it hard to react to new threats. Since a large part of society is devoted to getting and maintaining their hold on the public teat, they put their own particular interest over the general interest which has no particular constituency. This leaves them blind to outside threats and serves to break up their OODA loop. Often, even if the threat is perceived, nothing can be done because society can’t be moved. The build up of special interests seeking rent see any attempt at adaptation as a threat to their interests, which are deeply invested in the status quo. Since the primary purpose of an elite is to maintain their own power and prestige and since they are the one’s leading society, this leaves society vulnerable to secular and cyclical threats.

Often times the vigor of the general population remains unchanged. All they need is new leadership. Poland went through an extended period of decline from 1683 to 1791 but was unable to move its sclerotic aristocracy fast enough to hold off partition. Yet the repeated uprisings against Russia, Austria, and Prussia showed that the Polish people had plenty of vigor. France in 1789 was the Great Power That Couldn’t, bankrupt, divided, and frail. Yet the revolution came along, destroyed the power of the old aristocracy, and made France the dominant power on the Continent, subjected to repeated checks, until 1871 and briefly from 1918-1940. Pareto called this the circulation of the elites.

It may be that republics, with their emphasis on restricting violence to legally sanctioned expressions, reducing conflict to rhetorical bombast, and due process of law, are prone to react slower than other systems. Machiavelli makes this argument in his Discourses:

And certainly, of all Rome’s institutions, the Dictatorship is one that deserves to be considered and counted among the ones that led to the greatness of its power, for without such an institution cities will have difficulty getting out of extraordinary events. Because a republic’s customary institutions function slowly: no council or public official can run everything by itself; in many matters one needs the other. It takes time to reconcile their wills, so their remedies are very dangerous when they have to deal with something that cannot wait. And that is why republics must have some such means among their institutions. The Venetian republic, which excels among modern republics, has set aside powers for a few citizens who, in times of urgent need and without broader consultation, can make decisions unanimously. When a republic lacks such means, it is necessary for it either to collapse in observing the constitution or to break with it in order not to collapse. And in a republic nothing should ever occur that has to be dealt with by extraordinary means. Because, although the extraordinary means may work well then, the example does harm nevertheless: people become accustomed to breaking laws for a good purpose and then under that pretext they are broken for ill. So a republic will never be perfect unless its laws have provided for everything and supplied a remedy for any event and prescribed means for applying it. And therefore I say in conclusion: those republics that in cases of urgent danger  do not have recourse either to a Dictator or to some such power will always collapse under serious events.

America has turned to the Dictatorship solution during at least three crises: Lincoln during the Civil War, Wilson during World War I, and FDR during the Depression and World War II. There was some legislative and judicial brakes but, compared to peacetime, the powers of the presidency were enormous. Whether this is an effective release valve for accumulating rent seeking is an open question but it may be better than the outright revolution required in some other nations.

If America’s elites are out of touch with external reality and can’t adapt the increasingly sclerotic American system to a changing world, decline may not necessarily be the fault of the American people. It may be that a rotation of elites would be enough to offset any decline.

There is also the decline of the state compared to the decline of the nation. The Polish state has come and gone over the last millennium but the Polish nation has endured. It may be that America the nation is so bound up in its political expression, the United States of America, that the two cannot be disentangled. However, if there is an American nation under the institutional framework of the United States, than it may be possible for the United States to decline but America to rise. If the current state of affairs is leading to decline, it may become time to create a new state. The state is only the instrument of the nation. If it becomes an end unto itself, its instrumental role is broken.

Of course it may also be that America is not a nation but a league of nations. In the long run Kansas may not go the way of Massachusetts. The two may be governed by broadly different imperatives. America has distinctive regional cultural clusters and it may fragment along those lines under a elite circulation caliber event. However, never underestimate the inertial momentum of 200 years of political union.

Another symptom of decline may be the decline of hard power vs. a decline in soft power. Hard power is a nation’s easily quantifiable resources. Natural resources, geography, wealth, accumulated productive infrastructure, and weaponry are examples of hard power. Cultural strengths, social cohesion, fighting qualities, adaptability, and innovativeness are examples of soft power. Declines in hard power are easy to measure. Declines in soft power are ambiguous. Similarly, preservation of physical ecology is easy to measure and easy to campaign for compared to soft power. Preservation of social ecology is far harder to do successfully and far harder to justify. Yet both are necessary. Losses to soft power, however, may be more costly because of their relative invisibility. The extraction and refinement of hard power is a knowable process. The extraction and refinement of soft power is hit and miss. The tragedy is that a nation that is strong in soft power will often defeat a nation that is strong in soft power and the reasons why will remain elusive.

Decline is a hard call. And the experience of whether America is rising or falling is also going to be a hard call despite what the professional pollyannas or naysayers say.

Buckle up.