Sooner or later, all nations die. Rise and Decline: Where We Are and What We Can Do About It studies six of history’s great democracies and republics – Ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, The French Third Republic, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Rise and Decline shows that the United States has passed its peak in world prominence and is on the decline. It identifies the core values that drove its ascendance. And it shows that the reasons we’re now in decline are not those so often offered up – corruption, national debt, weakening military, racial divide, poverty, etc., etc. These are merely symptoms of the root problems – growing indifference and disdain for America’s founding values. America’s raison d’être is liberty, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. These values are being usurped by our government and eschewed or disdained by citizens. Unless this erosion is halted or reversed, the end of the United States will arrive sooner, rather than later.