America's Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers . . . and the Future of the United States

By Cal Thomas

A warning and a wake-up call to learn history so we are not doomed to repeat it. A must-read for anyone who longs for a promising future for our great nation.

What is wrong with America today? Is it possible that America could crumble and our democracy fail?

Questions like these plague Americans and cause us to be anxious about the future of the "land that we love." Individuals may come to different conclusions, but there seems to be a common thread - the deep-seated feeling that we need to improve our country. Our culture is increasingly immoral, the family structure is threatened from all sides, and government programs consistently overreach, creating massive debt.

In this powerful and prophetic book, nationally syndicated columnist and trusted political commentator Cal Thomas offers a diagnosis of what exactly is wrong with the United States by drawing parallels to once-great empires and nations that declined into oblivion. Citing the historically proven 250-year pattern of how superpowers rise and fall, he predicts that America's expiration date is just around the corner and shows us how to escape their fate.

Through biblical insights and hard-hitting truth, he reminds us that real change comes when America looks to God instead of Washington. Scripture, rather than politics, is the GPS he uses to point readers to the right road - a road of hope, life, and change. Because, he says, if we're willing to seek God first, learn from history, and make changes at the individual and community level, we can not only survive, but thrive, again.

This powerful, timely, and much-needed perspective is a must-read for anyone who longs for a promising future for our great nation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9780310357544

Cal Thomas

Cal Thomas is one of the most widely syndicated columnists in America. His fifty-year journalism career includes anchoring and reporting for KPRC-TV in Houston, NBC News in Washington, Fox News Channel and other outlets. For ten years he co-wrote the Common Ground column for USA Today with his colleague, Bob Beckel. A native of Washington, D.C. and graduate of American University, Thomas is married to Christie Jean ("CJ"). The couple live in Key Largo, Florida. Visit calthomas.com.

Book preview

Stunning. . . . A sobering look at the likelihood the USA survives the various attacks and assaults that are being made against her from within our borders. . . . Go get it!

—Rush Limbaugh

In America’s Expiration Date, Cal Thomas offers a sobering message: that the United States is on the downward slope to self-destruction. You may agree with his analysis or not (I do not), but in view of the fall of other great empires throughout history, Thomas’s injunction is well worth pondering.

—Jay Winik, author, New York Times bestselling April 1865 and 1944

Cal Thomas brings a lifetime of working to save America and thinking deeply about what threatens us and what the lessons of history are. If we follow Cal’s advice, America’s expiration date will be put off for decades and decades.

—Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, US House of Representatives

I read Cal Thomas, always have, and have the utmost respect for the sincerity, depth, and insight of his work.

—Peggy Noonan, columnist, Wall Street Journal

In his timely new book, America’s Expiration Date, my friend Cal Thomas shows clearly that unless we in America take seriously the grim lessons of previous empires, we are very soon doomed to follow in their footsteps. But by showing us just how those empires rose and fell, he makes our vital history lesson far easier and more fun that it might otherwise be. Bravo!

—Eric Metaxas, author, New York Times bestselling Bonhoeffer; Martin Luther; and If You Can Keep It; nationally syndicated host, The Eric Metaxas Radio Show

ZONDERVAN

America’s Expiration Date

Copyright © 2020 by Cal Thomas

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For Christie Jean (CJ),

who has put a new song in my heart

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: If the End Were Near, What Would You Do?

1. The Persian Empire: Today a Shell of Its Great Past

2. The Roman Empires: Yes, It Really Burned

3. The Byzantine Empire: Officially Christian

4. The Arab Empire: Muhammad’s Followers

5. The Spanish Empire: How the Mighty Doth Fall

6. The Ottoman Empire: Winners and Losers

7. The British Empire: Where the Sun Never Sets

8. The Russian Empire: From Orthodoxy to Communism

9. The United States: 1776–?

Appendix 1: Bonus Cameos

Appendix 2: A Prophet Ignored

Appendix 3: The Prophet’s Second Warning

Notes

PREFACE

In the next several pages, I hope to offer a convincing argument that the nation that I love is in danger of losing its greatness. But first, an explanation. The late philosopher-theologian Dr. Francis Schaeffer taught me to always begin a discussion, debate, or argument by defining words I intend to use. Otherwise, he said, you might see people nodding as you talk, or in this case as they read, while some or all of them might have defined the words I am using in ways that give them a different meaning than what I intend.

Societies change. Technology changes. Modes of travel change. Hairstyles, clothing styles, and musical tastes change. Medicine changes. Only one thing has remained constant since the first humans walked the earth, and that is human nature.

One definition describes the inherent nature embedded in all of us: the general psychological characteristics, feelings, and behavioral traits of humankind, regarded as shared by all humans.¹

We’re all pretty much alike, especially when it comes to character. You can dress a human in animal skins or a toga or robes, suits, and dresses from various eras. You can put hats and boots on a person. The one thing you cannot change is what is inside any and every person: their human nature. My convictions, which have been shaped by the Bible, tell me this means all humans, while possessing tremendous potential for good, are predisposed to lust, greed, envy, gluttony, and the rest of what are called the seven deadly sins. Given the proliferation of modern sins—Paul said we invent ways of doing evil (Rom. 1:30)—we may want to add more to the list.

We want to do what is right, but on our own we seem largely incapable of it, even if we can define right in an age of moral relativity.

Attempts over the centuries to change human nature have mostly addressed external expressions of our inner sins. Futile attempts to bring peace on earth and goodwill to men have long been a cause of man’s frustrations, because of his inability to change himself. It is why every effort at ending war has failed. Recall that World War I was called the war to end all wars. The peace lasted only until World War II. Many wars and conflicts followed. Some wars have ended, but war itself seems never to end, and we are currently engaged in the longest-running war in our history: the War in Afghanistan.

On Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC, there is a large building that serves as the headquarters for the United States Institute of Peace. The world is no closer to peace now than before the building was erected. There are scores of wars, conflicts, armed resistances, and battles for independence occurring throughout the world.² Some of these wars have been going on for decades, and no one seems to have the power or wisdom to end them.

These wars and conflicts are mostly over land or ideology or religion, or in some cases all three. The one thing they all have in common is that each side wants its own way and is willing to fight and even die to get it, though doing so brings misery to hundreds of millions of civilians, including children.

Human nature causes these wars, as do elements of that nature that can be found in America’s political conflicts. While not armed conflicts (yet), they consist of envy of what others have, greed for wanting what they have, and a sense of entitlement indicating we should be given what they have.

If you understand this pattern—and you have to look no farther than yourself to understand it, because we all possess the potential to behave like those we condemn, given the right circumstances—you will have the key to understanding why empires rise and why some of the same qualities in human beings that cause them to rise have led to their demise.

In this book, I will explore the causes of the decline and fall of great empires and nation-states of the past and examine what we can learn that might ward off a similar fate for the United States. There is no guarantee that the US is any different from any other empire or great nation of the past, but one thing is certain. If we do not cease behaving as citizens in those other empires behaved, our country will suffer the same fate they suffered. We can blame all sorts of causes and forces that are diminishing the greatness of America, but until we look inside our own hearts, the decline will continue, until we finally reach our expiration date.

I am a journalist, not a historian or a preacher-theologian. In the past—and even more recently—many have warned of decline when certain moral and economic laws are violated. Many learned men and women have written scholarly and popular works about some of the subjects mentioned in these pages. I do not pretend to be their equal. As a journalist, I observe what I see happening, try to make sense of it by arriving at conclusions based on what I see, and in this case offer some practical suggestions for how each of us can do our part in halting the decline I will describe.

I believe we can bequeath to our descendants a nation resembling the one that was handed to us by our forebears, but for that to happen, we must humbly and honestly address the moral decay that plagues us. And we must begin today if we want to celebrate a birthday rather than grieve a funeral on July 4, 2026.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Jeremy Williams, my researcher, without whom I would not have the time to explore such history in depth. Thanks also to Lyn Cryderman, my editor, who helped me navigate all of the pitfalls that go with repeating myself and concentrating on the goal while writing my column, doing radio, and working on other things. Thanks also to the team at HarperCollins/Zondervan for seeing the potential for this book to warn of coming disaster (as Old Testament prophets did). One hopes we won’t ignore these warning signs as the ancient Israelites did, suffering for their denial.

INTRODUCTION

IF THE END WERE NEAR,

What Would You Do?

How would your life change if you knew the exact date of the end of the world, and that date was only a few years away? Just for fun, let’s say you have received advance knowledge from a reliable source that on July 4, 2026, the world will end. Jesus will return on that date, the dead will be raised, and he will take those who have believed he is the Son of God into their eternal reward.

Stay with me. I’m not an end-times alarmist; I’m not peddling a particular millennialist view found through careful study of the book of Revelation. I’m a journalist, not a theologian. So please humor me and use your imagination. Pretend you’re a character in a science fiction novel. That giant asteroid we’ve all seen in the movies is on its way. Efforts to nuke it off course have failed, and it’s too late to try to ship us all off to colonies built on far-flung planets. The only help we’ve gotten from technology is the exact moment the world will go up in flames, vaporizing everything and everyone.

You may or may not have grown up in church, but you’ve heard the phrase end of the world through either sermons, sitcoms, or science fiction. The War of the Worlds was a famous radio drama in 1938. Some people listening to the broadcast narrated by Orson Welles on CBS believed it was fact. Many rushed out of their homes and into the streets, fearing Armageddon had arrived.

There was a time when church folk took seriously warnings about the end times. In the 1980s, a former NASA engineer, Edgar Whisenant, published 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988, mailing three hundred thousand copies free of charge to pastors all over America. An additional 4.5 million copies were sold in bookstores. When 1988 came and went without the archangel’s trumpet blast, Whisenant published a new book, setting the date in 1989. Followed by another, setting the date in 1993. Then another, warning of a nuclear firebomb that would destroy the earth in 1994. By then, no one paid any attention to his warnings, which is why you may need to employ some creative suspension of disbelief to answer my questions.

How would you spend those next—and last—few years? What would you do? Who would you want to know better, love better? What would your bucket list look like? What offenses against others would you attempt to redress? Would you quit your job? And do what? Would you give in to greed, lust, envy, wrath, gluttony, and pride? One hopes not. Then again, what would be the point of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, and the like?

If you knew life would end for you on July 4, 2026, what would you do?

Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—we don’t get to know our expiration date, at least until it’s almost too late to do much about it. You and I both know of friends or family members who have been given weeks, months, or possibly a year or two to live, but the rest of us not only don’t know but also don’t spend much time thinking about it. With little sense of urgency to motivate us, we live day to day, week to week. We get up, go to work, come home, enjoy our families, go to the movies, go to church, take vacations, and try to be decent and kind. Which is why plunging ourselves into my little scenario might be helpful, might shift our attention to what matters most in life.

This isn’t a book about the end of the world. On that topic, I can’t help you. But let’s rephrase the question.

What if I told you I have a pretty good idea when our nation will breathe its last breath, or at least cease to be the bright and shining city on a hill that President John F. Kennedy mentioned in an address at the Massachusetts State House, borrowing from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount? How would you