"The Decline of Nations," Joseph F. Johnston, Jr. - A Review

 I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Johnston at a Liberty Fund/Hayek Institute-sponsored colloquium in Vienna a few years ago. We have remained in touch since.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

“The Decline of Nations,” Joseph F. Johnston, Jr.

March 5, 2021

 

“Politics today has become further embittered by the loud and immoderate voices

of social media, which are not subject to the ordinary restraints of polite discourse.

In this cultural climate, governing becomes a zero-sum game of irreconcilable hostility

in which compromise, the mother’s milk of politics, becomes increasingly difficult.”

Joseph F. Johnston, Jr.

Decline of Nations, 2020

 

Joseph Johnston received both a master’s degree in history and a law degree from Harvard. He practiced law in New York and Washington. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law and the author of The Limits of Government, published in 1984. He believes a knowledge of history is critical to sustaining the nation in which we live.

 

The author believes in individual liberty, constrained by rule of law and tradition, and in the understanding that with liberty comes responsibilities and obligations. He believes markets should be free, with minimum but necessary regulations. He believes in freedom of thought, expressions and movements. He believes in a culture based on Judeo-Christian principles and that, to preserve our system of government, the citizenry should be educated in the history of western civilizations. He believes that consensus can only be achieved through free and rigorous debate. The book is subtitled, “Lessons for Strengthening America at Home and in the World.” The first quarter is an abbreviated history of Rome, from its pre-Christian republican origins to its fourth century empirical endings, and an examination of Britain, from the creation of its Empire to its final collapse in the wake of two world wars.

 

Regarding the Roman republic, he writes of Polybius (c. 200 BC – c. 118 BC), the Greek historian who wrote of the need for checks and balances: [equilibrium] “is maintained by the impulsiveness of one part being checked by its fear of the other.” However, as Johnston writes, the temptation of central governments is to expand their power: “…and Rome provides a clear instance of the threat to liberty poised by excessive centralization, burdensome taxation, and oppressive government.” Quoting the German classical scholar, Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), Johnston writes “…the republic was ‘brought to ruin in politics and morals, religion and literature, not through outward violence but through inner decay…thereby making room for the new monarchy of Caesar.’” A tyrannical empire followed the collapse of Rome’s republic. 

 

Britain is the world’s 80^th largest country when measured by land mass, yet when Queen Victoria died its empire embraced one quarter of the earth’s inhabited surface. Its population of 30.5 million in 1900 governed 400 million people, one quarter of the world’s population. “As in the case of all powerful states, national greatness and military strength were inseparably linked.” Loss of the American colonies were offset by victory in the Napoleonic wars, with naval victories at the Nile and Trafalgar, which “made England essentially invulnerable to attack from the continent and led to Britain’s worldwide naval supremacy.” But as the 19^th Century came to a close, fractures in Britain’s empire were revealed. While England’s success could be attributed to the discipline imposed by a successful aristocracy, an omission to respect a rising merchant classes abetted their downfall: “…a failure to recognize that commercial activity was not the enemy of culture, but rather a necessary condition of it.” Britain declined, Johnston writes, because “it was over extended and could not afford to defend its empire…it chose to emphasize the redistribution of wealth rather than its creation…it fell behind its competitors in industrial technology…and it called into question the very foundations of Western culture.” Britain’s spirit remained strong, but Crimea, the Boer War, two world wars and the rise of the United States ended what once had been an impregnable empire. There are lessons for the U.S. in both histories.

 

The last three quarters of the book concern the United States, its strengths and weaknesses and what might be done to avoid the fate of Rome and Britain. Economics are covered, as are foreign policy, national defense, education, culture, American society, federalism, law and liberty. In terms of foreign policy, Mr. Johnston writes, “Power matters more than ideology…that we must deal with the world as it is…and not the world as optimists would like it to be.” He adds, “It is a basic theme of this book that military power is predicated on economic strength.” He writes in favor of capitalism, but adds: “Our adherence to capitalism, while justified by its success in creating prosperity, must be tempered by a recognition that the pursuit of wealth alone is insufficient to achieve the good society.” 

 

Education and culture are trends that determine a nation’s success or decline: “An ignorant population will inevitably be susceptible to demagoguery and deceit.” It is troubling, he notes, that a March 2018 Pew Research Center study found that “one in four American adults read no books at all in the past year.” Free speech is critical, especially in universities. He quotes John Stuart Mill, “…it is only through the free expression of adverse opinions that we can arrive at the truth.” He notes recent attacks on Western culture in our colleges, and then points out: “It was Western civilization that abolished serfdom and slavery, substituted astronomy for astrology, replaced magic with technology, created modern medicine, fostered Christian charity, emancipated women, invented civil liberties, asserted the rights of the individual against the state and developed permanent institutions for the protection of private property.” And the West did this while producing some of the world’s greatest art, music and literature. He does not dismiss the values of learning other cultures but feels one must first know one’s own. He writes of five major institutions important to the survivability of a nation’s society: “Family, school, religion, marketplace and government.” They are the links in the chain that bind a nation. A weakening in any one link can lead to centralization of power, individual dependency and moral relativism, which, in turn, can lead to the nihilism heralded by Friedrich Nietzsche.

 

He concludes by telling us that while the patient is sick, the condition need not be fatal: “The price of liberty, as always, is eternal vigilance. Americans should, from their earliest years, be taught civic virtue and the principles of the American founding. This should not be difficult…All that is needed is self-discipline and persistence. Our founders had these principles, and we can recover them.”

 

This is not a long book. Joseph Johnston packs a lot of information into 361 pages. To some, his views may seem too adamant, but to all they should be provocative, as they are well-reasoned and clearly expressed.