One chief causal factor for the decline of these former great nations is what has been described as "bread and circuses," where government spends money for the shallow and immediate wants of the population, and civic virtue all but disappears. For the past half-century, our nation has been doing precisely what brought down other great nations.
We might have now reached the point of no return. If so, do we deserve it?
-Dr. Walter E. Williams
http://www.lewrockwell.com/williams-w/w-williams84.1.html
Quote from: redcliffsw on June 02, 2011, 08:09:47 AM
One chief causal factor for the decline of these former great nations is what has been described as "bread and circuses," where government spends money for the shallow and immediate wants of the population, and civic virtue all but disappears.
-Dr. Walter E. Williams
How true. Though such rot usually begins at much lower levels than the federal. Waste begins & virtue surely disappears first at the local level. The corruption, given local feed then grows like a cancer, eventually engulfing states then on to the nation as a whole.