Debunking the US-in-permanent-decline Conventional Wisdom

"We are witnessing a seismic shift in global affairs," writes Victor Davis Hanson, and none of the conventional US-is-in-permanent-decline wisdom "now seems very wise." Consider the "political, demographic and technological change that will soon make the world as we have known it for the last 30 years almost unrecognizable:"

• The European Union, until recently thought to be an emerging powerhouse, is unraveling.
• The Arab Middle East for the last 40 years seemed to be the world's cockpit, as its huge petroleum reserves brought in trillions of dollars from an oil-depleted West. Now the Arab Middle East is in free fall.
• Tiny oil-poor Israel, thanks to vast new offshore finds, has been reinvented as a potential energy giant in the Middle East. Such petrodollars will change Israel as they did the Persian Gulf countries, but with one major difference. Unlike Dubai or Kuwait, Israel is democratic, economically diverse, socially stable, and technologically sophisticated, suggesting the sudden windfall will not warp Israel in the manner it has traditional Arab autocracies, but will instead become a force multiplier of an already dynamic society.
• China is not only resource-poor but politically impoverished. For decades we were told that Chinese totalitarianism, mixed with laissez-faire capitalism, led to sparkling airports and bullet trains, while a litigious and indulgent America settled for a run-down LAX and creaking Amtrak relics. But the truth is that the Los Angeles airport will probably look modern sooner than the Chinese will hold open elections amid a transparent society -- given that free markets did not make China democratic.
• Horizontal drilling and fracking have made oil shale and tar sands rich sources of oil and natural gas, so much so that the United States may prove to possess the largest store of fossil-fuel reserves in the world — in theory, with enough gas, oil, and coal, we will soon never need any imported Middle Eastern energy again. “Peak oil” is suddenly an anachronism. Widespread American use of cheap natural gas will do more to clean the planet than thousands of Solyndras. 

If the United States utilizes its resources, then its present pathologies — massive budget and trade deficits, mounting debt, strategic vulnerability — will start to subside. 
These new breakthroughs in petroleum engineering are largely American phenomena, reminding us that there is still something exceptional in the American experience that periodically offers the world cutting-edge technologies and protocols — such as those pioneered by Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Walmart.