[txzman]

This answer is easy. Rome fell because the society got rich, liberal and complacent and no longer felt a strong military or decisive action was worth the effort.

Reliance on mercenaries to do their fighting, evasion of taxes needed to keep up the Republic and a general malaise that they were invincible led to their destruction.

In other words they became fat, dumb and lazy. Just like America today.

[small voice in the wilderness]

Tolerance. The final nail in any country's coffin. When leaders and citizens become so lazy and complacent to fight for what they believe in and KNOW to be right, then tolerance is introduced as a way to avoid getting off their lazy a**es and doing something about it. It's a way to relieve themselves of the guilt. And it always leads to the fall of a nation. Always.

[G Larry]

“Rome fell because the society got rich, liberal and complacent and no longer felt a strong military or decisive action was worth the effort.”

You left out ‘gay’.

[nicollo]

In other words they became fat, dumb and lazy. Just like America today.

Yours is just fear cloaked in self-loathing. I know it's all the rage to hate ourselves these days, but I refuse to join.

[Bender2]

Re: Rome fell because the society got rich, liberal and complacent and no longer felt a strong military or decisive action was worth the effort.

Robert Heinlein's Lazarus Long summed it up nicely... “Roman matrons used to say to their sons: 'Come back with your shield, or on it.' Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome.”