While Democrats and Republicans wrangle endlessly over how to fix a broken economy, other signs of impending social collapse are going unheeded. The twelve warning signs listed below are compiled from ancient historians who recorded how nations gradually descend into hopeless corruption, revolution, and civil war. 

These twelve warning signs reveal those areas of society which require the immediate attention of government. Endless palavers about the economy are at best a misdirected effort, and at worst, a deliberate attempt to distract the American people with a pointless charade.

1. Manners are corrupted; vice triumphs with impunity, and useless laws are multiplied. (T)

2. Words change their ordinary meaning, and take on the new meaning which is given them. (Th)

3. Those in government have the ability to see all sides of a question, and the ability to act on none. (Th)

4. Leaders seek prizes for themselves while claiming it is in the public interest. They stop at nothing in their struggle for power, allowing every excess. (Th)

5.  Religion is in honor with neither party, the party of the people, or the party of the wealthy, aristocratic rulers. (Th)

6. Banners and slogans increase. (S)

7. The decay of patriotism leads to the use of other nationalities in the armed services. (AMH)

8. The government resorts to heavy taxation, which discourages business enterprise. (AMH)

9. A free middle class disappears. (AMH)

10. As an empire grows, its own history and traditions are forgotten. (BE)

11. Wealth and power lead to the expansion of an overseas empire, which is too costly to maintain, and the nation is undermined from within.  (BE)

12.  The institution of marriage declines, then disappears. (AMH)

AMH   Ancient and Medieval History, a textbook used at Cony High School in Augusta during the 1920s. The historian Edward Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, wrote that the Roman Empire collapsed approximately forty years after the demise of the institution of the Roman family.

BE      Biblical Encyclopedia, Commentary on the Book of Nahum.

S         Sun Tze, The Art of War (The full quotation is "Where disorder is   present in the enemy camp, banners and slogans increase.")    

 T       Annals of Tacitus, describing the period shortly before the reign of the Emperor Nero.

Th      Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, describing the conditions preceding a revolution which swept through the Greek city states.