During my sophomore year at Bishop Watterson High School in Columbus, Ohio, I took a world history class.

It was taught by this nun who was really old, or at least I thought she was. I was in High School, and back then, I thought 40 was really old. But if she wasn’t 80, she sure as hell acted like it. I remember joking that she taught that class when it was called “current events.”

We were studying the fall of the Roman Empire, and she asked the class if America could ever collapse the way Rome did. I was the only student to raise my hand and, in a very confident voice, stated that, of course, America could fall just as Rome, Greece, and other empires had fallen before us.

I thought the answer was obvious.

Well, this ancient nun didn’t see it that way. She got in my face and said that God would never let that happen to us. She said America was special and would never meet the same fate as those other empires. She was very adamant about it and tried to humiliate me in front of the rest of the class.

But I stood my ground, and now, a little more than fifty years later, I’m sad to say that I fear I might have been right and the old nun who was so sure of herself was wrong.

So many of the factors that led to the demise of the Roman Empire are showing their ugly head here.

The government in Rome was corrupt. Political leaders were more concerned with their own financial wealth than with effectively running the country. The people saw this corruption and lost faith in their government. Infighting among political factions contributed to the instability of the government.

This corruption led to poor leadership in the military, and as such, its impact on the world weakened. Other nations saw this weakness and capitalized on it.

The Roman government overspent, causing economic woes that contributed to social problems from within.

The legacy of Roman Emperor Nero is too complex to go into great detail here, but suffice it to say that legend has it he fiddled while Rome burned. Maybe that’s because he didn’t play golf.

Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.

If you’d like a brief history of the fall of the Roman Empire, visit this website: https://www.history.com/articles/8-reasons-why-rome-fell.

But if you’re not into history, maybe you’re into the fine arts. Study Shakespearean plays and they will teach you that what is happening in America today is nothing new. John Adams and some other founding fathers studied Shakespeare and saw the pitfalls of absolute power.

We are currently living under an administration that is successfully working towards having absolute power, putting us on the same downward path as many great civilizations that came before us.

After the Constitutional Convention completed its meeting in 1787, someone asked Ben Franklin what type of government they had created. He knew his history and answered, “A Republic if you can keep it.”

When I see what has already happened and what is being threatened to happen in the near future, I believe we are losing our Republic.

Recently, members of President Trump’s administration met with some Nebraska lawmakers to discuss taking us down the same path as Texas and Missouri and gerrymander the second congressional district. That would give the Republicans a better chance at keeping control of the House and getting rid of the so-called blue dot. In effect, silencing the voice of thousands of Nebraska voters.

They say that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. They also say history repeats itself. It’s time we start listening to the people who say those things.

I take no joy in being right and that old nun being wrong. I understand why she felt that way. She had been alive during World War II and still had that feeling of invincibility and belief in the American dream.

I, on the other hand, was a young man who saw what was happening in Vietnam. The Watergate scandal was starting to make the news. We were in the middle of a cold war with Russia. I wasn’t as optimistic as her.

While I still believe that what happened in Rome could happen here, I am not going to give up. I’m going to speak out and do what I can to fight for the Republic that Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the others gave us.

Join me in trying to prove that the old nun was right!

Tom Becka is a long time Nebraska broadcaster who for over 30 years has been covering Omaha and Midwest issues on both radio and TV. He has been a guest on numerous national cable and news shows, filled in for nationally syndicated talk radio programs and Talkers Magazine has recognized him as one of the Top 100 talk show hosts in the country 10 times. Never afraid to ruffle some feathers, his ‘Becka’s Beat’ commentaries can be found online on Youtube and other digital platforms.

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