A lesson for America in Ancient Athens?

in their worse years

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it....

that those who learn their history are doomed to watching repeats.

Eadem, sed aliter. Schopenhauer explains:
The same things differently. History’s motto.

eventually broke them and turned the rest of the Greeks against them.

the moment they tried to be an empire at the same time.

They want to give all the responsibility to the government. Their version of their savior.

should read and take to heart . . . a concise summary of where we're heading as a nation . . .

And don't forget the 1940's Germany. That's even scarier. If you want to be shitted by the book "Night" by Elie Wiesel.

They will leave it to a volunteer military. Most of whom hopes to pimp themselves to the military at a shot at educational help.

We’re not like Athens. Gibbon, in the quote cited here, isn’t referring to all Athenians, but only those who mattered in Athens, i.e. the male elite. Though usually thought of as a democracy, Athens was really a sort of oligarchy or aristocracy, depending upon how you look at things. The vices Gibbon refers to are the vices of an aristocracy. What they would call a comfortable life would have been something like what we find in Epicurean philosophy, whereas our notions of comfort are more hedonistic.

Like the US, Rome was a mass society, driven by its belly and the desire to be entertained (i.e., to avoid boredom). Bread and circuses. We are much more like Rome than Athens.

they studied the Classics, we no longer do... history is boring...