Because people grow emotionally attached to the music they love, they have a high regard for its singers and want to emulate them. Inevitably, popular music's often spiritually rotten lyrical content—such as foul language, blunt sexual references, glorifying immorality, and even Satanic allusions at times—influences fans. Furthermore, the immoral lifestyles of many musicians, often including drug abuse and promiscuous sex, also have an impact on society. Glubb Pasha learned that different empires had similar cultural changes while experiencing a life cycle in a series of stages that could overlap. He generalized about empires having seven stages of development, identifying these successive ages as follows: BH Liddell Hart STRATEGY should also be read especially his Indirect approach. The direct approach is impossible now.

As numerous points of interest have arisen in the course of this essay, I close with a brief summary, to refresh the reader’s mind. Has the United States entered the latter phases of the empire life cycle? True, it's only been independent from Britain for somewhat over two centuries. It's a young country compared to those of Europe or Asia. But does America today have the same values or cultural developments that past empires such as Rome had before they fell?But let’s see what Glubb has to say. His first, and arguably most important, conclusion is that all empires, with the exception of a few whose life span was cut short, last for approximately the same time period—250 years, or ten generations, more or less. This is true regardless of their form of governance, location, or the technologies of the time, transport, war, or other. Glubb’s is a pessimistic vision. The usual human response to the inevitable failure of empire is to analyze one’s own declining polity and offer revisions to the structures in an attempt to prolong the empire, but Glubb is very clear that what does not matter at all is the nature of the political institutions or the ideology of the state. Huge variations have existed in history—the Romans had almost nothing politically in common with the Mamluks, for example—yet regardless, every empire follows the same path. The precise nature of the ultimate fall varies, however, because it depends largely on external circumstances.

In spite of the accidents of fortune, and the apparent circumstances of the human race at different epochs, the periods of duration of different empires at varied epochs show a remarkable similarity. Ancient Greece is a peculiar example given their high development of reason, the shortness of its duration, and the suddenness of its vanishment. The Greeks achieved one of the most influential but short-lived civilizations by focusing exclusively on reason and population control (birth control, eugenics). Eventually, this “great breed” died out.

Rapid expansion—the rise of Alexander the Great

Furthermore, some indicators of decline have good, not just bad, results. For instance, some immigration is helpful. As skilled, educated immigrants arrive, they normally benefit America economically while being a "brain drain" from Third World countries. And, indeed, the United States has historically embraced vast numbers of immigrants. Again and again in history we find a small nation, treated as insignificant by its contemporaries, suddenly emerging from its homeland and overrunning large areas of the world. Nevertheless, the present flood of immigrants, legal or illegal, equals in impact the wave that arrived at America's shores around 1900. Today, they are far more apt to be a divisive force. Why? Unlike a hundred years ago, America's intellectual elite overall has adopted multiculturalism (the promotion of immigrants maintaining their prior distinct cultures) and has rejected assimilation (adopting the existing national culture) as its ideal. He spent the remainder of his life writing books and articles, mostly on the Middle East and on his experiences with the Arabs. Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov (transliterated as Aleksandr, Aleksander and Suvarov), Count Suvorov of Rymnik, Prince of Italy (граф Рымникский, князь Италийский) ( November 24 1729 – May 18 1800) was a Russian Generalissimo.