...a state is not the same thing as a society, although the Greeks and Romans thought it was. A state is an organization of power on a territorial ba… - Carroll Quigley

The final result will be that the American people will ultimately prefer communities. They will cop out or opt out of the system. Today everything is a bureaucratic structure, and brainwashed people who are not personalities are trained to fit into this bureaucratic structure and say it is a great life--although I would assume that many on their death beds must feel otherwise. The process of copping out will take a long time, but notice: we are already copping out of military service on a wholesale basis; we are already copping out of voting on a large scale basis. ...People are also copping out by refusing to pay any attention to newspapers or to what’s going on in the world, and by increasing emphasis on the growth of localism, what is happening in their own neighborhoods.

The basis of social relationships is reciprocity: if you cooperate with others, others will cooperate with you.

...empires and civilizations do not collapse because of deficiencies on the military or the political levels.