National Review Online invited Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg to contribute to a roundup of opinion on the inauguration of a second term in office for President Barack Obama. Gregg, the author of the just-published ing Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future, was also featured yesterday on Ed Driscoll’s blog on Pajamas Media. Driscoll linked his New York Post column on “eurosclerois.

Here’s Gregg’s contribution to NRO’s “Inauguration Day Survival Guide”:

Time is a precious thing, and I, for one, don’t intend to waste it watching the hubris-filled extravaganza and tedious acclamation of identity politics that’s likely to occupy much of the media’s attention over the next few days.

A far better investment of time for those worried that the republic is slowly entering the twilight world of failed states such as California and Illinois would be to forget about the ins and outs of policy debate for a few days, dust off some of the classics of the American Founding, sit down, and, yes, actually read them.

Plenty of people — and not just conservatives and free-marketers — know there’s a more-than-serious risk that the next four years will take the United States even closer to the nadirs of political Detroitification and economic Europeanization. But for all the endless introspection that apparently grips the Right these days, we don’t need to reinvent the philosophical and political principles for the way forward. For although they didn’t agree about everything, the basic agenda for a resurgence of conservative America was penned by those present at the creation in places like Mount Vernon and Philadelphia over 230 years ago. Remembering that is worth more than all the polling and focus groups in the world.

Be sure to pick up a copy of ing Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future (Encounter Books, January 2013).