“Slip sliding away, slip sliding away. You know the nearer your destination, the more you're slip sliding away.” -- Simon and Garfunkel
The song keeps running through my mind as I watch America lose its former influence in world affairs as well as its economic power. Both are slip sliding away. In the wonderful world of punditry, a lot of us are trying to figure out where the nation is going and for now how events in the Middle East will play out.
As always, history provides a template by which to judge present times. A similar period occurred when the British Empire began its decline. At its peak it was so vast it was said “the sun never set” on it. By the 1920s, a quarter of the Earth’s land mass and its population composed the empire.