America on the decline?

My friend Josh, a graduate of St. John's College and a guy who knows a thing or two about a classical liberal arts education, submits the following. Thoughts?

I would submit that the American experiment is in the “complacency to dependency” stage as is evidenced by the over-reliance on government bailouts and total lack of consequences and free markets in today’s environment.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. Those nations always progress through the following sequence:

• From bondage to spiritual faith,
• from spiritual faith to great courage,
• from great courage to liberty,
• from liberty to abundance,
• from abundance to selfishness,
• from selfishness to complacency,
• from complacency to dependency,
• from dependency back into bondage."

–Alexander Fraser Tytler Lord Woodhouselee (1748-1813), "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic", Scottish historian at Edinburgh University