Decline and Fall

img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-100984" title="Mark Steyn" src="/files/wxrimport/2011-08/mark-steyn-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="459" height="306" /><

Conor Friedersdorf laments in The Atlantic about the tendency of some conservatives to fixate on the supposed decline & fall of the Western world.

Why single out conservatives? Much of modern environmentalism is a literature of doom. Nobody would call writers such as Gore Vidal, Edmund Wilson, or George Kennan "conservative," yet they devoted half their careers to prophesying the end of everything.

The theme of decline is powerfully persuasive to the human mind. As individuals, each and every one of us faces a future of decline - slow at first, then fast - culminating at last in extinction. It's natural to imagine that what is true for us as individuals must be true for society as a whole. For people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s - the Limbaugh audience - decline and extinction loom with special immediacy. Who wants to hear: "Yeah, things are tough now. But they are scheduled to improve dramatically at about the time you shuffle off the scene."