Well first off, Aussie Aussie. Oi Oi Oi!!! Australia lucked out because they only got the Irish Catholic criminals (and face it, being Irish was pretty much a crime in England at that time) while we got the religious nut-cases - The Puritans, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, Jonathan Edwards, and Cotton Mather (mmmm, spectral evidence). It's made a hell of a difference in the social histories of the two nations.
It's deminse was, in no small part, due to its refusal to let go of outdated notions it believed were related to its own superiority.
Nah, empires always fall for the same reason, and that they over-reach and extend their power out further than they can pay for it. They either go broke trying to defend the empire, or else give up and then you get barbarians at the gate.
he couldn't see any patterns in history. Inspite of his status and my respect for him I found this very strange. I see patterns everywhere in history.
I'm down with him. I don't see any patterns in any long range analysis of historical events. Which is why history is utterly unable to predict the future. That you, or I, see patterns, well that's just how our brain is hardwired - humans love to see patterns, and will see them even when they are not there. But history is just one damn thing after the other, there is no rhyme or reason to it.
if I could live for another 100 years, I would lay money that the US will be where the UK is right now.
Actually we seem to be mirroring the USSR far more than the UK when it comes to decline, collapse, and disintegration. And in 100 years we are going to be way, way past the end of oil, and the end of cheap energy and that is going to have (is having) a cataclysmic impact that has no historical antecedents or precedents.
