The End of The Empire  

I always find America / Roman Empire comparisons interesting (like I do Bush-Hitler comparisons) - here's one from Roy Smith of Emerald City. Sound familiar ?

(Taken from the comments thread on The Oil Drum's post on Henry Liu's latest depressing epic at Asia Times).

I read this today in Thomas Cahill's book "How the Irish Saved Civilization" regarding the themes dominating the last days of the Roman Empire:

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 blind to the cruel dilemmas of ordinary life -- these are all 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. At least, the emperor could not heap his economic burdens on posterity by creating long-term public debt, for floating capital had not yet been conceptualized. The only kinds of wealth worth speaking of were the fruits of the earth.

Though it is easy for us to perceive the wild instability of the Roman Imperium in its final days, it was not easy for the Romans. [pp. 29-30]

The parallels between this situation and our own struck me. I think the real lesson here is that great civilizations can and do collapse, and we are not exempt from history.