Decline is a choice. President Trump could not have said it better.

Two years ago, everyone was talking about the Roman Empire, musing over its tragic decline. Would the United States fade the same way, with relentless clashes among different demographics fighting for a diminishing share of the government pie?

Was Pat Buchanan right? The Republic is over, and the days of Empire have hastened the end of this once glorious experiment, he claimed.

Historians note that democratic systems don’t last longer than 250 years. Yet the United States will celebrate its semiquincentennial. President Trump will be in office until 2029. Even if a Democrat follows him, the United States will have endured past the expected expiration date.

The United States has lasted. We don’t have an empire. We have a culture, a legacy worth defending.

I once embraced the notion that countries rise and fall in the grand scheme of things. That’s a new concept for me: that the country can still survive and thrive after 250 years.

Decline is a belief, a mindset more than anything else.

The notion of rise and fall has changed over the last thirty years, too. The Soviet Union collapsed. New nations emerged. Russia is still Russia, but it’s never been a democracy. HA!

Countries with large empires saw their colonial holdings released into independence, or they fought for it just as the United States had done in 1776. The United Kingdom has been overrun with migrants, legal and illegal. The citizens of that country, with heritage and heart, have raised their voices demanding change. Political parties are reshaping themselves drastically. Populist right political parties are pushing out the globalist left- and right-uniparty phalanxes across the continent.

Will Europe survive, though? Will these countries enjoy a legacy after having adopted democratic systems long after the United States was........

© Townhall