In response to:

Why Do Societies Give Up?

C.H. Wrote: Feb 14, 2013 2:40 PM
Obama: We are all created in the image of God, in that sense we are equal. Equality is not something to be pursued in the micro sense, ie: we should all have an iphone. Equality should be pursued as it pertains to justice, because God is a just God and doesn't want those created in his image to not be treated fairly, ie:can't vote. The parable Jesus tells about the talents is illuminating, because the master gives each worker a different amount of talents. The master expects each of them to invest the talents and make more. The worker who was given the least buried his talent. When the master returned, he was pleased with the two who made a profit and he punished the worker who buried his talent. The master took the talent away...

Why do once-successful societies ossify and decline?

Hundreds of reasons have been adduced for the fall of Rome and the end of the Old Regime in 18th-century France. Reasons run from inflation and excessive spending to resource depletion and enemy invasion, as historians attempt to understand the sudden collapse of the Mycenaeans, the Aztecs and, apparently, the modern Greeks. In literature from Catullus to Edward Gibbon, wealth and leisure -- and who gets the most of both -- more often than poverty and exhaustion implode civilization.

One recurring theme seems consistent in Athenian literature on the eve of the city's takeover...

Tuesday, June 18 | 08:42 PM ET
Tuesday, June 18 | 08:42 PM ET
Tuesday, June 18 | 08:42 PM ET
Tuesday, June 18 | 08:42 PM ET