READ: “This country isn’t the same,” say foreign visitors.

Friends and allies see America’s rapid decline. Will we?

America has a very long tradition of inspiring the outsiders who reach its shores. Perhaps most famously, in the 1830s, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville toured the United States and published his now-classic reflections in Democracy in America, marveling at the nation’s democratic spirit, civil society, and culture of participation. Even then, he saw a c…