The End of the American Century?
©2008 by LeeZard In 1776, just as the nascent United States of America was declaring its independence, Edward Gibbon published his classic (to this day) "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire." Two-hundred-thirty-two years later, it strikes me that one could pen a similar tract entitled "The Rise & Fall of the American Century" and not stray too far from many of Gibbon's analyses. The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest. - Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West.” (Edward Gibbon, oil painting by Henry Walton, 1774; in the National Portrait Gallery, London) I'm certainly not the first to mentally compare the current state of America t ao the fall of the Roman Empire but, I think it is wise to reexamine the simil...