What does the fall of Rome have to do with modern America?
For decades, I taught a course in European economic history that stressed the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath and spent a couple of lectures talking about the Roman Empire and other ancient civilizations. The Roman Empire lasted over 500 years (by some accounts, even longer) but ultimately declined and fell. Is America and its world leadership (rather than “empire”) undergoing a remarkably similar decline? Is history eerily repeating itself well over a millennium later?
Through the 1960s and early 1970s, black discontent grew. Although progress was made, the level of discontent was increasing. Black Americans put up with a lot when they thought there was no alternative to segregation and embedded discrimination. When they knew they could be jailed — or killed — for speaking out, there was an understandable reluctance to try to 
