pcr presents this essay about how the empire is failing and its got some real events that certainly match his premise;

The 15 Years That Destroyed America

Paul Craig Roberts

The United States Government today bears little resemblance to the government created by the Founding Fathers.  Many “reforms” contributed to the transformation of an accountable government to an unaccountable one.  For example, the direct election of US senators and the expansion of the franchise from male property owners adversely affected the security of private property. Others point to the effects of wars. All of these played a role in America’s destruction.  However, in my opinion the transformation of American government can be explained by events in three short periods of our history.

The founders saw the US as an association of states in which central power was limited and weak.  The 10th Amendment gave governing to the states.  President Lincoln’s war for the tariff destroyed states’ rights and led to the supremacy of centralized federal power over the states.  Today what happens in specific states can be determined by votes in other states.  Lincoln’s war lasted four years, and that was time enough for Lincoln to destroy the framework devised by the Founders.

The second devastating period was 1913.  That year the United States took two hard blows.  One from the creation of the Federal Reserve, and one from the establishment of an income tax. The creation of the Federal Reserve took control over money from the government and gave it to the big bankers.  The income tax resurrected slavery.  Historians have ignored that historically the definition of a free person is a person who owns his own labor.  A slave or a serf is a person whose labor is owned in whole or part by an outside party.  No person subject to an income tax owns his own labor. Once a person is violated in this way, all his other protections fall away–his privacy, his security in his home and documents, his protection against arbitrary arrest, self-incrimination, indefinite detention without conviction.  No American alive today has experienced the freedom known to the Founders........more.....