Are we Rome? Are we doomed?

I find that when traveling to Europe, and even Asia at times, a frequent topic of conversation tends to revolve around the infrastructural progress the rest of the world seems to be making that we are not. Our roadways are illogical and often ill-conceived, our cell phone infrastructure is a bear to deal with and the newer technologies take us longer to decide upon and adopt. I ran across this article in FT where the US comptroller warns about going the way of Rome. While I'm generally allergic to such broad generalizations it's an interesting new trend of thought and I can see some parallels in the decline of Rome and America such as the over-bearing stresses of maintaining a vast infrastructure and control center. Our military forces are taxed and we are increasingly becoming non-homogenized in our culture.

After reading more about the idea of the origins of Holy War over the past few weeks in the context of 12th century Europe, I ended up in a mind-tangent that society is only cohesive if there is a commonality behind which it can rally. For medieval Europe it was being Christian and this formed the "dominant culture". Any challenge to it was seen as a tug at its cohesiveness. For America it's the complex tradition of freedom and the culture that sprung up to support the cohesive nature of it (e.g., learning english, joining the military, becoming "American"). Let's call this Americanism. America has always had to be somewhat heterogeneous as a culture with influences coming in from all parts of the world (although I would argue against the notion we were ever a melting pot), but in a way the incoming cultures intended and had to mix and alter to support the ideal of Americanism. I think there is now a trend coming with immigration where we're seeing immigrants bringing the dominant culture (as opposed to morphing themselves into it) and people are afraid it's tugging at our sense of cohesiveness. It's a lot like the "barbarian invasions" in the late days of the Roman Empire. Are we "losing" Americanism the way the Romans lost Romanism? If society requires a commonality and our only commonality is Americanism, what impact would the loss of Americanism have on us as a unified nation?

Cullen Murphy has written a book on the subject titled Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America. I haven't read Mr Murphy's work so I'm unaware how it relates to the opinions of the US comptroller or a sense of losing Americanism. It is now on my todo list.