This article is bad. Instead of focusing on the actual topic of the book, it immediately jumps into an absurd comparison between the fall of the Roman Empire and today's America.
The two situations have NOTHING in common. None of the factors that led to the Western Roman Empire's fall plays any role in the US.
Also, the argument that the Roman Empire allowed things like individual human rights is absurd. Modern notions of individual and individual rights appeared in the 16th century. How is it possible to link the downfall of the empire with something that happened more than 1000 years later? How could we know the same development wouldn't have happened inside the empire?
>This article is bad. Instead of focusing on the actual topic of the book, it immediately jumps into an absurd comparison between the fall of the Roman Empire and today's America.
It's a coatrack to justify a claim that "Trump is destroying America, and maybe that won't be as bad as that sounds". Which, in turn, leads to Fallows's related article (linked at the bottom), "Trump is so bad that he is destroying America, which is justification to actually destroy America (in terms of dissolving the Union)".
The two situations have NOTHING in common. None of the factors that led to the Western Roman Empire's fall plays any role in the US.
Also, the argument that the Roman Empire allowed things like individual human rights is absurd. Modern notions of individual and individual rights appeared in the 16th century. How is it possible to link the downfall of the empire with something that happened more than 1000 years later? How could we know the same development wouldn't have happened inside the empire?