Non solus ruinam rei publicae praedico.

I am not the only one predicting the destruction of the republic.

Apparently, the crazy doom-sayers here at PopulistAmerica.com have been citing Roman parallels to prophesy the end of American democracy.

Meanwhile, at Language Log, Mark Lieberman attends to predictions of destruction from another source, proposed here at Epea Pteroenta (in an aptly titled post, "pont max tr pot lol"). He wisely does not subscribe to the school of texting=death of civilization. He writes:

You might have thought that the Roman empire was doomed by barbarian invasions, lead poisoning, the loss of masculine values, or climate change. But Jim Bisso at Epea Pteroenta has pointed out that at the very height of the empire’s power, in the reign of Trajan, Roman culture had already been compromised by an insidious agent that you probably have never considered, though it’s obvious in retrospect.

The villain was none other than txting, that widely-feared destroyer of civilizations. While IM and SMS had not yet been invented, the Romans used a medium that motivates textual concision even more strongly: marble...

Go read both!