Will America self-destruct?

Babylon the Great has fallen; her Hanging Gardens but a shadowy memory. The British Empire, once spanning the globe, is now reduced to an island nation. The grandiose statue of Nike of Samothrace, now in the Louvre, bears mute witness to the former greatness of the Hellenic world. The World Empire of Alexander the Great is but a chapter in history books. The unfathomable greatness of mighty empires of the past has been reduced to a remembrance of almost forgotten ages.

Is America now standing at the door leading to ruin and decay? The brilliant experiment bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers was built upon a system of checks and balances. Our worthy forebears knew that humans could not be trusted with power. They asked themselves what political governance could be designed to keep raptors from destroying the dream that "all men are endowed . . . to have certain unalienable rights . . . Life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness?"

The brilliance of the system of checks and balances was the keynote theme of my previous article, Ariadne. This one discusses -- rather sketchily -- some of the possible reasons why greatness decays, why might declines, and why power crumbles.

The ultimate self-destruction of nations, eternal warfare, economic injustice, and social degradation, find their genesis in the three pounds of gray matter inside our skulls. Devils and demons, Satan and his satraps are not responsible for the pages of history dripping with human blood and echoing the cries of the innocents. Not only is Lucifer not responsible for the misdeeds of humankind but there is also no messiah waiting in the wings to liberate us from our human bondage. The answer to our war-mongering and saber-rattling, our mendacity and exploitation is found in the stuff inside the human skull.