Welcome to FP Free Week. To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, our entire site is completely unlocked this week only. Enjoy the article.

“Shine, Perishing Republic,” wrote the poet Robinson Jeffers in 1925 about a corrupt Roaring Twenties America that he feared was “heavily thickening to empire.” We survived that degradation, just as we will the present. But Jeffers’s twin sentiments should guide us as we celebrate our 250th birthday: We glow as a nation. But we decay.

If we’re honest on this July Fourth, we must admit that the sturdy American men and women who made the revolution are a distant historical memory. Today, we resemble the imperial Britain of 1776 more than the scruffy patriots who rebelled against it. We’re a nation with an appalling gap between rich and poor, rather than the republic of farmers and merchants that our Founders envisioned.

“Shine, Perishing Republic,” wrote the poet Robinson Jeffers in 1925 about a corrupt Roaring Twenties America that he feared was “heavily thickening to empire.” We survived that degradation, just as we will the present. But Jeffers’s twin sentiments should guide us as we celebrate our 250th birthday: We glow as a nation. But we decay.

If we’re honest on this July Fourth, we must admit that the sturdy American men and women who made the revolution are a distant historical memory. Today, we resemble the imperial Britain of 1776 more than the scruffy patriots who rebelled against it. We’re a nation with an appalling gap between rich and poor, rather than the republic of farmers and merchants that our Founders envisioned.

At 250, America is a nation in late middle age showing unmistakable signs of decline. Our political system is broken, and our politicians seem unable to solve big social or economic problems. Our education system is broken, and our children’s test scores are in continuing decline. Our social cohesion has unraveled so much we often feel like two nations rather than one.

“Corruption never has been compulsory,” Jeffers implored. Yet somehow, we’ve twice elected a president who exuberantly uses power for his own political and financial gain. His republic shines, to be sure, but with gold ornaments strewn across the mantel. His heroes........

© Foreign Policy