The parallels between the Roman Empire and America are striking and scary.
Gibbon....what did he ever write other than that boring Rome stuff? //sarc.
I doubt if the Roman legislature ever enacted
laws without knowing what was in them. We’ve
passed them in decadence
Just about every one of these points existed at the very beginning of the Roman empire. Tiberius (emperor #2), Caligula (#3) and Nero (#5) were all pervs of the highest order. Roman art was a rip-off of Greek art. There was always a vast gulf between the rich and poor in Rome. Finally, didn’t Gibbon also blame the rise of Christianity as one of the reasons the Roman empire collapsed?
Some of the parallels are quite shocking. Obama,of course, is perfectly cast...
“The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the appearance, and produce the effects, of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy.”
“The Italians, who had long since renounced the exercise of arms, were surprised, after forty years’ peace, by the approach of a formidable Barbarian, whom they abhorred, as the enemy of their religion, as well as of their republic.”
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gibbon/03/daf03033.htm
I always like to point out that according to Gibbon, when Rome finally fell to the barbarians, the gates were opened from within:
“While the emperor and his court enjoyed, with sullen pride, the security of the marches and fortifications of Ravenna, they abandoned Rome, almost without defence...
“The king of the Goths, who no longer dissembled his appetite for plunder and revenge, appeared in arms under the walls of the capital; and the trembling senate, without any hopes of relief, prepared, by a desperate resistance, to defray the ruin of their country. But they were unable to guard against the secret conspiracy of their slaves and domestics; who, either from birth or interest, were attached to the cause of the enemy. At the hour of midnight, the Salarian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city, which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia.”
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gibbon/03/daf03019.htm
Good post, but obsolete. The Roman Empire was like decades ago, or whatever. They’re just a bunch of dead white men.
Those ideas will work differently this time. Today we can have amoral leftists with their conspicuous displays of affluence, their obsession with sex and perversions of sex, their tax-supported freakish art, their policies that widen the disparity between very rich and very poor, and their push to have ever growing numbers live off the state. Nothing will go wrong.
Human nature has changed, so this time it won’t lead to collapse, universal misery, and a thousand years of darkness. Trust your neighborhood liberal. Would Obama lie to you? If you like your civilization, you can keep your civilization. Period.
“Where error is irreparable, repentance is useless.â€
Another Gibbon quote
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Who knew?
A bloody hard book. And thick. HARD.