While Americans in the past may have earned a reputation for being perennial optimists, lately it seems we have been suckers for declension narratives — perpetually convinced the golden age is over and our best days are behind us. On the podcast "The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie," Scott Winship breaks down what's wrong with this outlook. Whether the horror stories involve economic mobility, fertility rates, or income inequality, Winship explains, rumors of our decline have been greatly exaggerated.

We still have room to improve, of course. Drawing on his own experience in the George W. Bush administration, Yuval Levin counsels how Congress can ensure the final version of the Endless Frontier Act doesn't undermine the very research efforts the bipartisan bill intends to help. Additional funding should grow slowly but over a longer period of time, Levin writes, which would help sustain new research projects and avoid the mistakes of the early 2000s.

Abroad, Hal Brands describes the new face of war, exemplified by China's recent actions in Bhutan. In quietly seizing a chunk of land from its small Himalayan neighbor, Brands writes, Beijing is displaying the favored tactic of countries that want to alter the international order but aren't ready to confront it head-on.

Finally, this week saw the launch of the Edward and Helen Hintz Book Forums, a new series of interviews with prominent authors inside and outside AEI. In the inaugural event, Robert Doar and Robert Tombs discussed Tombs' new book, "This Sovereign Isle: Britain in and out of Europe" (Penguin, 2021), considering the causes underlying Brexit and its implications for the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union.