In a chapter entitled “Why Rome Fell,” Durant writes that a great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. I am no historian but I am fascinated by the similarities between our own times and those described by Will Durant. Excessive regulation, excessive government size and intrusion, and excessive and abusive taxation policies were only the tip of the iceberg. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, and fall in population. Sexual excesses may have reduced human fertility. Contraception, abortion and infanticide had a dysgenic as well as numerical effect. The dole weakened the poor and luxury weakened the rich. Immigration brought together a hundred cultures whose differences rubbed themselves out into indifference. Moral and aesthetic standards were lowered by the magnetism of the mass and sexual “freedom” ran riot while political liberty decayed. Government no longer attracted first-rate me.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.210
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