The fall of American society

To the editor:
This nation is mired in political deadlock where confidence has given way to contentious discourse.
Views emerge as to where fault lies. Some feel we are victim to a demographic transformation with so many views that do not allow a consensus. Others feel the problem is differences between youngsters and elders.
The issue relating to gun control is so divisive that seemingly no consensus can emerge.
As a mid-term octogenarian, I harbor the notion that a significant portion of the problem is analogous to that which occurred during the fall of the Roman Empire.
Historian Edward Gibbon in his thesis exploring the “fall” opined it was in large part due the gradual loss of virtue among citizens and also the undermining of dignity of the home, which is the basis for human society.
He lay blame on increasingly higher taxes and public money for free bread and circuses; a mad craze for pleasure with sports and plays becoming more exciting, more brutal and more immoral; and building of great armaments when the real enemy was within (i.e. the decay of individual responsibility).
I believe many of these same conditions exist in America today, which caused that great Roman civilization to wither and die.
As a related but tangential issue, I believe when government programs assume the basic functions of family, it embraces a socialistic concept that will fail just as communism did in the Soviet Union.
Sadly, our nation is engaged in a polemical “Civil War” that could eventually result in anarchy with ensuing disastrous consequences.
Francis W. Niland
Shallotte