"Three hundred pairs of gladiators would fight to the death and twelve hundred condemned criminals would be eaten by lions. Fights between elephants and rhinos, buffalo and tigers, and leopards and wild boars would be staged.
As a special feature, twenty beautiful young girls would be raped by jackasses."
While not the Roman Empire of old, my Country, The United States of America is an Empire that bears some striking similarities.
Originally founded by God-Fearing men on the principles of <a href="http://www.salars.net/2006/06/10/the-declaration-of-independence/">life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it has fallen from grace and Government has passed multitudes of <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,113861,00.html">unconstitutional laws, edicts and regulations which seriously hamper its Citizens efforts to achieve these noble aims.
While the Romans had their Games to entertain and blind them, the USA has its mass media to hypnotize them, the <a href="http://www.salars.net/2006/05/28/wake-up-america-are-our-schools-concentration-campuses-for-mind-destruction/">public school system to brainwash them, the pharmaceutical industry to soothe them and the force of government to control them.
Its borders are unprotected and like the Roman Empire, the wild hordes are sweeping in. It is being attacked from both <a href="http://www.salars.net/2006/06/15/high-court-backs-police-no-knock-searches/">within and from without. Its leadership has <a href="http://www.salars.net/2006/06/14/fema-funds-spent-on-divorce-sex-change/">lost control over the mass bureaucracy it has created, all in the name of protecting its citizens from themselves.
The productivity of its hard-working people has been <a href="http://www.salars.net/the-economic-rape-of-america/">stolen and we receive little value in return. We have become dependent, obedience-trained, powerless weaklings who submit to authority.
Can 'We The People' reclaim the ideals of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness that this Great Country was originally founded on???
Possibly.
If each of us learns how to think for themselves and becomes a <a href="http://www.salars.net/2006/05/28/tl05-how-to-discover-your-freedom/">free and sovereign individual.
If we then take this power and <a href="http://www.salars.net/2006/05/28/wake-up-america-the-power-of-jury-nullification/">spread these ideas to others.
If we learn how to <a href="http://www.salars.net/2006/06/15/on-the-duty-of-civil-disobedience-thoreau/">'Just Say No.'
But it still would be a good idea if we also learn how to <a href="http://www.salars.net/prepare-yourself/">protect ourselves and our loved ones (just in case :)