Like ancient Athens, US is arrogant, powerful, declining and in denial

The Statue of Liberty looks out on the lower Manhattan skyline, January 2014. [AP photo

The United States behaves as if it is a 21st Century ancient Athens and Rome rolled into one.

It is arrogant, discriminatory, powerful, declining and in denial. Athens collapsed because, despite having brilliant philosophers like Thales, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, it also had tyrannically disdainful imperialists like Solon, Cleisthenes, and Pericles who believed that forcing others to be like Athens, or discriminating against them, was divine.