I read something both interesting and unsettling today:

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 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 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.

You might wonder which recent news analysis or editorial opinion I pulled this from. In fact, it was written in 1995 by Thomas Cahill, describing the fall of the Roman Empire in How the Irish Saved Civilization. He goes on to observe:

“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.”

For some crazy reason, the phrase “doomed to repeat…” keeps running through my head.