LETTER: Columnist was right: Modern day America like ancient Byzantine

Thank you to Victor Davis Hanson for his brilliant essay in the March 19 Review-Journal comparing the ancient Byzantine Empire and today’s America. He contrasted the erosion of an empire that lasted almost 1,000 years beyond the fall of the Roman Empire to modern day America and presented the underlying roots of failure in both societies.

Byzantines practiced realist diplomacy, avoided military entanglements, developed aqueducts, cisterns and sewer systems, guarded its walls from intruders and built on scientific progress. Each generation built on the progress of previous generations. Children advanced society through constant education.

Contrast that to modern day America. Today, America has turned its major cities into sewers that fester with drugs and homelessness. We tolerate a invasion of illegal border intruders, we sacrifice critical thinking by our children to the self-hatred of critical race theory. We use wokeism to undermine society’s mores, erode our military and poison our corporations. We are a society in decline led by a leftist imbecile and a self-serving, self-preserving and do-nothing Congress.

The Ottomans who eventually conquered and overthrew Byzantium are now replaced with communist China. We foolishly squander our wealth and young on wars that have no goals or chances of victory. We run our selves to bankruptcy by printing w0rthless money. The progress of Byzantium society is now replaced by an infestation of self-hatred toward a country that built itself out of a wilderness. When it finally fell it was too late. The enemy had breached the walls.

Wake up, America. The bell is tolling.