As a counterpoint to this entire line of thought, I'd recommend reading "The Fremen Mirage", a series of blog posts linked to below. It does a fantastic job of going through the history of the idea of "decadence" as what destroys society, and of the idea of "hard times" as the crucible to form strong fighters. The long and the short of it is that there is no historical evidence for this idea, that the "decadent" groups had massive advantages over everyone else, and that the original idea of "decadence" tended to be created for internal political reasons, rather than any true comparison with outside groups.

https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

(My description is summarizing to the point of uselessness, and I highly, highly recommend reading the series.)

I thought decadence equated to a corrupt and inefficient ruling class, where decline is inevitable if power is handed over to whoever has the biggest bag of coin to offer or highest number of spears.

A propos, there was a review on slatestarcodex for "Secular Cycles" effectively tracking the rise and fall of civilizations if I remember correctly. The argument is societies start to destabilize and stagnate once wealth concentrates to a certain point, after which war and strife levels the playing field once more. Except, we don't much expect that same sort of upheaval to happen today in Western society.

All of which to say, you could liken periods of high wealth concentration as lending to decadence, though I'm not sure how useful that would be as the same argument could be made of golden ages. Decadence itself doesn't seem suspect but I would expect it to be around before things go awry.

edit: here - https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/08/12/book-review-secular-cy...

That correlation might be reversed, though. The author of The Great Leveler makes the argument that in peaceful times, inequality almost always rises to the maximum level that society can bear. It remains that way until a destabilizing event occurs (plagues, state collapse, destructive revolution, mass-mobilization warfare) which decreases inequality (mostly through wealth destruction - the wealthy have the most to lose).

So it's possible that rather than high inequality leading to destabilization, it's the opposite: destabilization leads to decreased inequality.

Why "rather"? They don't contradict each other. The aforementioned argument I linked to suggests it's both.

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times.”

A succinct and pithy saying, but generally incorrect. Historically, good times create a food surplus. A food surplus creates well-nourished armies. Well-nourished armies, for better or for worse, create hard times for everybody else.

As I've posted elsewhere in this thread, I would recommend reading the following series of blog posts.

https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

You’re taking it too literally. It’s not about physical strength, it’s about cultural and societal strength and fortitude.

Ah, so it’s a vague unsupported aphorism that purports to explain something unmeasurable?

Just because something is pithy, doesn’t mean it’s true.

Exactly. It was in response to the “America is too comfortable” part of the comment.

Great quote, firm believer in it.

The generation that grew during WWI and post it, gifted us with WWII.

Hard times can create hard ressentful men who value low empathy and are eager to unleash hard times on others.

I agree with OP in some general sense in a closed political ecosystem because WWI/II didn't happen in a closed ecosystem. The extremes were just enough that it couldn't be easily contained within their perspective domains or countries. I wasn't aware of apt analogies before reading this thread but I just called it the Champion's Paradox, that with enough wins a fighter generally becomes less vigilant, "decadent" if you will, and I'd wager that the same holds true for larger domains as well given that all other things being equal.

> must be destroyed

I think that the article is not saying anything about ought-to-be matters. Just what-is observational statement.

It's not that it 'must' be, by some moral standard, be destroyed. It's that it would be destroyed by inevitable laws of objective reality, which, like gravity, do not take any moral stance.

> arguing, effectively, that America is too comfortable and therefore must be destroyed?

I wouldn't describe the author's definition of decadence as synonymous with "comfortable": Sterility, poor response to covid, a lack of economic and technological progress, repetitive "arts" with nothing worth remembering by history.

Amid all this discussion of Rome, perhaps worth noting that the largest Empire in history was busy dissolving itself exactly at the same time it was taking huge measures to improve the quality of life of its own home citizens.

This comment would make sense on Reddit or twitter “maybe” due to how easy it is to fall into a bubble but on HN? This website regularly features content from conservative intellectuals.

I'm pretty far to the left, but I will say that one thing that's good about HN is that you can discuss an idea here without it getting down voted into the abyss, sometimes. Sometimes people even argue on good faith. Try finding that on Twitter.

Not really, or to anything like the extent that conservative intellectualism circulated on (and argued on) the blogosphere prior to 2016. It's just not published so much any more. See https://crookedtimber.org/2018/04/05/who-has-any-use-for-con... and previously https://crookedtimber.org/2009/05/12/richard-posner-on-the-c...

Trump has destroyed conservative intellectualism because he has no use for nor respect for them.

Lincoln believed that the civil war was God’s punishment fwiw.

You say quaint. To me it seems remarkably out of touch with the real problems Americans face.

A government in the geopolitical landscape is much like an organism in the environment. Evolution is spurred on not by chance, but by selective pressure that prunes out the weak and unstable.

We've entered an era where Mutually Assured Destruction has reduced that selective pressure of superpowers down to nothing. In this environment, power can easily be pulled from citizens and placed into the hands of the autocrats who trust that the chances of being usurped is extremely low. And they're right.

There are social justice issues in the world, sure. But I think this issue of power redistribution is a big issue too.

See "You and the Atomic Bomb" (1945): http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part33

for the lines of thought which I believe inspired 1984's Eastasia, Eurasia, and Oceania.

(the latter of which Airstrip One will have joined by the end of this year)

Edit: for GP, I believe BR 'quaint' == US 'out of touch', much like BR 'brave' == US 'will lose you the next election'.