My old Hammond atlas used to include a map of the Roman empire at its geographic peak, 117AD as I recall. Then the empire went into a rather slow decline. Rome itself wasn't sacked until 410AD. Events move much faster nowadays. We(the USA) are certainly now suffering from the effects of imperial overreach. When will our political leaders finally realize that we can't afford to be the policemen of the world, with military bases in hundreds of locations throughout the world? I am better prepared than most Americans to deal with the effects of rising energy prices, since I use public transit (not a car), live in a part of the country that does not have high heating bills in the winter or high air conditioning costs in the summer and currently collect enough each year in dividends from oil company stocks to cover my property taxes, utilities and other expenses related to "home ownership". But if oil goes to $200 a barrel, as investment guru Stephen Leeb has forecast, who knows what the US economy will look like? Are we destined to follow in the footsteps of Weimar Germany? If the US survives in its current form, perhaps historians will look back years from now and give part of the credit to former President Nixon and Milton Friedman, who were the two people most responsible for the switch from a draft to a volunteer army. Thank goodness, President Bush cannot call up 500,000 young draftees and send them over to the Middle East.

timbuktom, that was great.

Classical Rome always was brutal, bloody, powerful, and cruel. THAT is the topic here. The question is whether the USA is brutal, bloody, powerful, cruel Rome.

In the USA, we are at an an historical stage that is somewhat analogous to the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire in the first century BCE (time of Julius and Augustus and Cleopatra, with Jesus right around the corner).

Please bear in mind, though,that the Roman Republic already had an empire, and it was a multi-century bloodbath, even though it was not called "Roman Empire" yet.

Since 2000 CE, the USA has taken a brutal, bloody, arrogant Roman attitude, and has conducted Roman-style conquest. Our leaders have discarded American ideals and aspirations (our saving graces in the past), and have taken on Roman-style bloodthirst.

The question is NOT whether we will fall, NOT how we will fall, NOT whether the USA might endure...

The question is whether we still are American, whether we have become global killers instead (Romans), with no more aspirations toward justice and progress.

And that's what I gather you folks mean, because the eastern Empire lasted until 1204 and Constantinople the city survived another 250 years. But if you mean the Western Roman Empire, factors such as plague and famines played a huge roll. Italy is a sub tropical place and malaria, smallpox and yellow fever were big and long term problems. The fact that Rome was one of the largest urban concentrations in the world at that time only accelerated that long slide. In fact one of the reasons that the Emperor moved the administrative capital from Rome to Milan in 293 and then to Ravenna in 402 was for public health reasons to escape the fetid disease that plagued metropolitan Rome.

America dollars were pegged to gold untill the reign of Richard Nixon, once he disconnected the gold standard, the public debt went thru the roof. Rome also did the same thing by increasing the alloy content of it coins to the point that the percentages of gold and silver were miniscule and nobody wanted them.

Historically, empires have been governed by monarchs or despots. Not much print is devoted to this fundament in "Are We Rome?" In "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Edward Gibbon writes that Augustus solidified Caesarean despotism by destroying "the independence of the senate. The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive." Did this change in government eventually contribute to Rome's fall? Is this happening to the American Empire?

"A wheel barrel was needed in past times, and the wood-wheel-barrel was loaded with gold, and hauled to a Market Place to purchase a gold loaf of crusty brown bread..." etc etc

Point-of-Information: It's called a wheel-BARROW!

Also: what's all that about "saddle bags … overflowing with pure and delicious food... (paraphrased inspiration from YKW and Persian poet Rumi)."

Roman SADDLEBAGS?

What ARE you talking about?

We Americans have the tools to correct our decline - we can punish the perpetrators and would-be emperors (Cheney, Rummy, Bush) for going too far beyond our laws at home (domestic warrantless wiretapping, political hires for non-political positions, obstruction of justice at Justice and countless US Attorney investigations) and for going too far beyond our comfort zone abroad (how many Americans can stomach secret CIA torture chambers, reckless trashing of nuclear proliferation treaties, or a permanent military base in the Middle East, with the elevated troop levels and daily rocket bombardment that it would entail? Hell, Reagan pulled us out of Beirut after a single attack killed less than 300 Marines, and the dreadful toll from Iraq exceeds 10 times that much in final deaths alone, not counting the slow deaths from blown-off arms and legs, blind eyes and damaged brains). So if we can outsmart Rovian brown-shirt political tactics and reclaim the White House, we should be able to bring the most egregious crimes to light, if not to justice, which should delay their return among the electeds for at least a couple of years.

But we should concentrate on fixing our own home before we go searching for others to meddle in. We Americans are simply not cut out for empire - if the British couldn't sustain one despite rock-solid discipline, systematic education, and wanderlust for more exciting climates, we sure as hell can't in their absence. Anyway, Americans would much rather forgo empire-building and concentrate on amassing enough to retire in our gated communities, replete with golf courses, swimming pools and cable TV. Who's going to fight to retain our empire? The rich won't, the middle class is nearly gone, and the working class has begun to realize that they've been played for dupes.