In the year 410, Alaric and his Goths sacked Rome.  For 800 years, Rome had not suffered siege and sack.  Within 30 years, the Western Roman Empire effectively vanished, becoming a bundle of new Germanic kingdoms.  The change plunged the West into a darkened age.  But it also reinvigorated Europe to have a brilliant future. What is happening in our world echoes those distant events.  Historian Michael Kulikowski offers a new take on the Western Empire's fall.  He proposes that the Western Roman Empire accidently committed suicide. Like the Eastern Roman Empire, the Western Empire was basically stable and should have lasted.  But it didn't.  The pettiness and vitriol of powerful fools destroyed a great empire from the inside.  We face that same risk.  The Roman Empire always had a fundamental problem: succession.  How does the empire peacefully...(Read Full Article)