A snapshot from the past depicting the present reality of the United States

The following is about the fall of Rome but it could from the editorial page of today's newspaper.

"There are no doubt lessons here for the contemporary reader. 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 offices present unprecedented opportunity for marginal men to whom its ranks had once been closed; the lip service paid to values ling dead; the pretense that we are still 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."

From "How The Irish Saved Civilization" by Thomas Cahill, pg. 29-30