"I would invite the reader's attention to the kind of lives our ancestors lived and the means by which [America's] power was first acquired and expanded; I would then have him trace the process of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them."

This quote is exactly true of our day.

It was written by the great historian Livy at the very end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire. I only changed the word "Rome" to "America." Otherwise, his words are right on for our nation today.

Livy lived during the great shift from a free Rome to one that became a great evil. In his day it was unclear what direction Rome would take -- back to freedom, or toward authoritarian rule by a dominant elite class.

Livy was a patriot who loved his country and wanted it to choose the path of freedom. He considered the Roman Republic the "mightiest empire the world has known -- next to God's."

He knew Rome had lost its founding morals, that it was losing its freedoms, that things were getting worse, and that his nation's leaders were consistently unable to fix the nation's problems.

Ditto to modern America.