Remember Rome, but do not forget Greece...
“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.” –Edward Gibbon
‘Ask not’ speech of JFK, too.
Precisely. In both cases, everything collapsed because, ultimately, their gods were too small. How could they not be? After all they were created in the image of man, not the other way around.
What we see playing out now in America is much the same, as we have abandoned the real Creator of the universe for one that is made in our image. It is the almost inevitable result of late southern Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophy, where "man is the measure of all things."
We never learn. We think we have become the smartest generation to grace the earth with our presence and soon all problems will be resolved, yet we fail to understand the most basic principles. As it says in Ecclesiastes, "There is nothing new under the sun."