Britain’s decline did not begin with Suez; Suez merely exposed a deeper erosion already under way. This article examines the weakening of Britain’s imperial, financial and governing foundations, then asks whether the United States may be approaching its own equivalent moment of revealed limitation.
A good life may be measured by the old rule of the picnic spot: leave the place better than you found it. If the individual mind ends with the living organism, then dignity lies not in survival after death, but in the care, truth, restraint, and generosity we leave behind.