In Russia, a professor named Igor Panarin has been getting lots of publicity for his prediction that the United States will disintegrate in 2010. He’s most likely wrong, especially about the timing, but it’s still something to think about.

Panarin thinks, or claims to believe, that the U.S. will suffer an economic and moral collapse that may end in something like a civil war, followed by the country then being split in several parts.

In his view, as recounted in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, the new “Californian Republic” would become part of China or under Chinese influence. The “republic” would include Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

The Northern Plains and the Midwest would somehow adhere to Canada. Texas and most of the South would become part of Mexico. And the Eastern Seaboard would affiliate with the European Union.

Russia would get Alaska back, and China or Japan would take Hawaii.

The scenario is simple-minded, based strictly on relative proximity, but at the start of 2009 the story reminds us that history always moves on and nothing is forever. Countries can change over time even if they don’t fall apart.

There are smart and hard-working people in every part of the world, and always have been, but it was America that became the preeminent country in the world over the past century and a half, so we ought to inquire into the reasons.

The reasons do not include living large, showing off, throwing our weight around, borrowing like there is no tomorrow, and buying everything we need from the rest of the world.

The reasons are political and economic freedom, based on equality and individual rights as well as responsibility, along with a huge amount of space and natural resources, coupled with English as a common language and a culture grounded in the values of the Anglo-Protestant settlers of America two and three hundred years ago. To the extent we abandon those concepts or ignore them, we lose the things that hold America together and make it work.

So anything that restricts liberty, takes away from individual rights and responsibility, or puts the country further in debt — any of that places the long-term survival of the United States in at least some doubt.

If we don’t make use of the wealth of our natural resources, if we laugh at concepts such as right and wrong, if we restrict liberty every chance we get in the interest of security, if we think of English as just another language no better or more useful than any other, if we make fun of the American culture in general and instead hop eagerly on every foreign trend, then ol’ Igor in Moscow might not be that far off. (hh)