The Decline and fall of the American Empire

By Dr. Henry Flores, NewesTaco

One of my favorite all-time historiographic books is the classic Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  The book qualifies as a tome being more than a thousand pages long.  I first read this fascinating volume, actually three volumes, while serving in Vietnam and have browsed it several times since.  Recent events in the United States, however, have led me to open the book once again to try and place certain cultural phenomena in perspective.  I actually still have the three volumes I carried during my time in Vietnam so I turned the pages very carefully lest they crumble as I turned them.

The Phenomena 

The recent revelation that the Koch Brothers were leading a group of extremely wealthy libertarians to take over the government by controlling the forthcoming presidential elections was the scariest of these occurrences.  Then, you had “gun toten” crazies in Texas invading the state capital threatening legislators over the passage of a law that will allow Texans to openly carry hand guns.  Then, the week’s sports pages and cable programs were dominated by “super-hyped” coverage of the “best” high school football players signing with Division I and II schools.  Finally, we had the desmadre of various Republican presidential hopefuls (hopefully they won’t run) stumbling all over themselves over whether the government or parents should have the responsibility for vaccinating children against measles.  I mean, what have we come to?  I mean really, really!

The Decline and fall of Rome 

Gibbon concluded after an extensive review of Roman history that this empire fell for four principle reasons including massive environmental degradation, both natural and artificial, the over dominance of religious institutions, the failing struggle against the incorporation of barbarians into Roman culture, and what he called seditious political machinations.  Sound familiar?

Rome’s infrastructure, particularly the urban waterworks and their highway systems had been under stress for years due to overuse and natural disasters.  The Catholic Church had become so dominating they were dictating to the emperor in areas far outside their traditional spiritual jurisdiction.  German and other northern tribes wanted to be part of the empire but the Roman’s did not think these barbarians capable of incorporation.  And, court and bureaucratic politics had become dominated by personality cults, intrigue, subterfuge, and the voice of the people had become muted.

The Decline and fall of the American Empire 

I have concluded that the conditions that Gibbon identified leading to the downfall of Rome exist today in the United States.  For instance, the environmental degradation of our country is already well on its way what with fracking, cementing over and developing every open space, poisoning our food chain and more.  The most interesting phenomenon is that of how our country deals with “barbarians.”  There is a contradiction here because of the way the United States excludes productive immigrants, people who want to work and contribute to this country’s greatness and promotes and lionizes violent perpetrators by focusing so much attention, particularly media attention, on athletics from the professional to “mini-tyke” levels.  The recent rash of publicity given to the “signing” of high school football players by big schools is a shining example of this.  Why don’t we turn heroes into the academic superstars that will become the inventors, scientists and leaders of our society instead of a group of young men who will do nothing but entertain us in contemporary examples of gladiatorial contests every weekend in the fall of each year?  The influence of religion today can be seen in the absurd pseudo-moral arguments set forth in all areas of social legislation from vaccinations for measles to public housing to public education to the health of women.  Finally, we have seditious political machinations that range from Supreme Court decisions that hinder voting, allowing the unlimited monetary contributions of the wealthy attempting to buy influence at all governmental levels, to the “low-handed” political maneuvers that dominate election processes.

I plan to write, more detailed columns of each of the above phenomena plaguing our beloved country and society, however, at this point there appears only one thing to say.  We need to take notice of these phenomena and start doing something to fix them or, I predict, our country will end up on the trash heap of history just like Rome did.

Henry Flores, PhD, is a Vietnam veteran. He’s the Distinguished University Research Professor, Institute of Public Administration and Public Service; Director, Masters in Public Administration (MPA); Professor of International Relations and Political Science at St. Mary’s University.

[Photo by Eli Christman/Flickr]

Subscribe today!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Must Read