I was recently asked by a friend whether I thought America was in decline. I didn’t answer right away. The evidence isn’t always obvious; you can live through an imperial sunset without ever seeing the horizon change. And decline in America is more so a matter of faith than politics.
When I first came here, my middle-school history teacher described America’s civic trinity as Constitutionalism, Proprietarianism, and Exceptionalism. Constitutionalism meant the discipline of self-government, the work of safeguarding rights. Proprietarianism was the belief that property secured independence, anchoring freedom in ownership. Exceptionalism was the conviction that the nation had a duty to outperform the world through excellence.
Under decades of Baby Boomer dominance, each creed drifted into its own parody: Constitutionalism hardened into Entitlement: rights framed as a shield against responsibility. Proprietarianism thinned into Consumerism: ownership reduced to the thrill of acquisition. Exceptionalism swelled into Empire: a global reach that increasingly neglects the home front.
Even those who present themselves as the Boomers’ fiercest challengers rarely attack the foundation. They compete to expand the same privileges to their own constituencies. Zohran Mamdani. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The promise is to deliver to the young everything the old already have, without rethinking whether the arrangement makes sense.
Social Security shows the machinery in motion. Sold as a social contract, it is in reality a massive transfer from the least wealthy years of life to the wealthiest generation in history. Young workers fund older beneficiaries who often have more assets than they ever will. It is the largest intergenerational subsidy ever built, and it locks politics into defending the status quo.
History rarely abolishes old faiths. It changes their content while preserving their forms. Late-era Rome still paraded its gods. The French Bourbons still staged coronations after the age of monarchy had passed. We still chant the slogans of the American creed, but their meaning has inverted. Entitlement breeds grievance, consumerism breeds distraction, empire breeds complacency. The shepherds have died, the wolves kept preaching.
I’m 22. My entire conscious life has unfolded under the Boomer regime. I’ve never seen America without it. When my middle school teacher taught me America’s three great creeds, I believed them. I still want to. But in the years since, I’ve watched them hollow out in real time: Constitutionalism to entitlement, proprietarianism to consumerism, exceptionalism to empire.
Whether America is in decline isn’t really the question. The question is whether we’re willing to inherit this house as-is, or start tearing out the load-bearing myths that keep us from building something better. That’s the decision my generation has to make. And we don’t have forever.