The fall of America

The invasion of the Romans by the barbarians was just the beginning of the end of their empire. "There are, no doubt, lessons here for the contemporary reader, " writes Thomas Cahill. "The changing character of the native population, brought about through unremarked pressures on porous borders; the creation of an increasingly unwieldy and rigid bureaucracy, whose own survival becomes its overriding goal; the despising of the military and the avoidance of its service by established families, while its offices present unprecedented opportunity for marginal men to whom its ranks had once been closed; the lip service paid to values long dead; the pretense that we still are what we once were; the increasing concentrations of the populace into richer and poorer by way of a corrupt tax system, and the desperation that inevitably follows; the aggrandizement of executive power at the expense of the legislature; ineffectual legislation promulgated with great show; the moral vocation of the man at the top to maintain order at all costs, while growing bind to the cruel dilemmas of ordinary life- these are all the themes with which our world is familiar, nor are they the God-given property of any party or political point of view, even though we often act as if they were." Cahill continues that "At least, the emperor could not heap his economic burden on posterity by creating long-term debt, for floating capital had not yet been conceptualized." Too scarey the fact that this historian and author about the end of Roman civilization presents prescient analysis from history. He performs a service to the concept of the God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by pointing out what we could lose. A win for Hellary Clinton or Barak Obama in 2008 would usher in the very realities that he describes as preludes to our downfall.