The Fall of a Once Great Empire

Every great empire has its beginning. Every great empire also must fall, at one point or another. For my critical book review for our history course, I read How Rome Fell: The Death of a Superpower, by Adrian Goldsworthy. In our current economic recession, I found this particular book to be quite fascinating and would highly recommend it to anyone. Rome is considered to be the greatest empire of all time as it certainly lasted the longest out of all the "modern" empires in ancient history. In our world today, America currently holds that record, but how long will we stand?

As Goldsworthy writes Roman history, he describes the events leading up to the initial fall of the Roman capital. He talks about the great leaders that Rome once had, including Marcus Aerulius and Caesar. There were many main reasons that he lists as to why Rome actually fell. Economic reasons, as we discussed in class, were some of the main reasons. The other was unstable rulers towards the end of the once great Roman empire. This website is a pretty good outline of the Roman emperors and when they ruled. In the beginning, there was some time between changes of emperors. But as the years continued and approached 476, the length between shifts in rulership condensed. Suddenly there are multiple emperors in a single year taking charge of the slowly dividing kingdom. It is no wonder that the Roman empire eventually fell.

So I pose this question to anyone who enjoys discussing politics. With the changing society that America is facing today, are we on our way downward, or is this just a moment of stagnation after half a century of fighting a world war? Is this our way of trying to bounce back to normalcy, or is America truly declining as a world superpower, as Rome had in 476?