Barbarians at the Gates!A Parable for Our TimesCivilizations rise, and civilizations fall.They rise when all of the varied forces, actions, and influences which move a culture toward a more civilized state are more powerful than those forces, actions, and influences move a culture away from that more civilized state. When that balance changes to favor the “anti-civilization†forces, that civilization will begin to fall.When a civilization falls, (from all of the various factors which damaged and weakened it) the end of that civilization is typically characterized by an invasion by a nearby non-civilized, but more robust culture. Over the...