Posted on 06/27/2013 8:21:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Here is the difference between Rome enduring for three more centuries and the United States failing rapidly:
Rome had multiple rules during the three centuries they remained a global power. ONE ruler, Hussein, has destroyed this country in six years and by the time two more years pass, the US won't be a global power of anything and already is not respected in any country, including its own. The majority in our country detest every leader in Washington, except a few. When a country detests its government, other countries feel free to spit on it. We are drowning in spit.
As a result, I am running my own world in my house and garden so I can exist fairly well without any public utility/services or whatever this soon to be fully communist government does. No one knows what Hussein will do next to us, so I have divorced my life from his government.
I can go Galt any time I want and screw Hussein.
“Imperial Rome actually did fairly well despite some atrocious emperors and multiple coup d’états.”
Imperial Rome continued to do fairly well because of its bureacratic apparatus. Emperors came and went, but it was the bureacracy that kept Rome chugging along. The bureacracy didn’t change much; they kept the wheels of gov’t running fairly smoothly. It was one actual example where the bureacracy proved very useful in keeping the ship of State on an even keel despite a continual stream of emperors good and bad, and many of them overthrown.
“Then and now the allure of the low life has destroyed the reasonable social consensus that made Rome and America great.Since the 1960’s a majority of people have embraced the decadence that Justice Scalia and Hanson have noted. Widespread drug use,sexual promiscuity and deviance, abortion, the expectation of entitlements and endless “rights” without personal accountability, loss of work ethic, and a decline in even basic learning ultimately destroyed Rome and has weakened America.”
Exactly right!
George Washington said, “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.” America has been on a rapid path of moral degeneration since the early 1960’s.
Will they praise pedophilia next? Will they applaud bestiality, encouraging those who engage in the practice to stay committed and fight for social equality? Will they affirm necrophilia, sado-masochism, polygamy, and other sexual perversions?
The Bible is still relevant and true today after thousands of years, and homosexuality is still a sin and only leads a nation further into moral degeneration. When a nation has declined enough, it will eventually be destroyed through war, disease, famine, invasion, etc. Looking throughout the pages of world history we see this is true.
RE: Gibbon thought AD 200 to be a Golden Age and the beginning of Rome’s ineluctable decline. What VDH is suggesting if I understand it correctly is that we are enjoying our own Golden Age and that our successors are likely to view it with regret and resentment for those who valued it so little.
_______________________________________
Well, if the parallel holds, that means the USA has ways to go before we see its fall. Hopefully, I won’t be alive to see it....
The Sixties radicals who have taken over our institutions and are guiding public policy have less than a generation left. They produce few children. Even among those, they have even fewer ideological heirs. Their destructive Communist impulses will die out with them, even if their successors retain an excessive fondness for the welfare state.
This situation - right now through 2017, under Obama - is as bad as it is going to get for the US economy. In a decade, the idea of using Federal Departments to destroy large parts of the economy in pursuit of ideological goals will be widely reviled as the madness it is. The need to repair the Little Bosnias which will have sprung up in a dozen major cities by then will take precedent.
The pendulum will swing back. America may have passed its peak, but there are still many pendulum swings left before we end as Rome did.
The accumulated wealth and infrastructure of that period lasted centuries. By the time the wealth and infrastructure needed replenishing, the non-natives who ran things did not have the knowledge or energy for renewal.
Our wealth and infrastructure is dissipating much faster. A few election cycles after this amnesty and we will BE Mexico, which will still look fairly good compared to the rest of the Third World.
Astute observations.
The governor (Lupicinus) and dux (Maximus) that Emperor Valens put in charge of the Goth operation were disastrously incompetent, corrupt and cruel. Which was a significant part of the problem that developed - and led to Adrianople - and the destruction of the Army of the Eastern Empire.
All this improvement in communications will just make the end faster. Watch as China Folds up fast—when the peasants rise up. Watch as cell phones help Revolution—riots and in time a new socialist state where the “Rich” will be killed and the wealth taken—there gated communities will not keep out the masses of rebels. Think Russia not France. Welcome to the workers paradise.
I’d point out that Rome didn’t actually collapse until after the Empire converted to Christianity, and Edward Gibbon actually blames the switch to Christianity for the collapse.
A lot of people have a vague, ill-informed notion of what Rome was like, and the timeline of the collapse and why it occurred, that they roll out to push whatever axes they want to grind about America today.
........
recent scholarship has dated complete collapse of the western roman world to about 640 ad. about the time the moslem armies destroyed the roman world in north Africa and Spain—apparently they did the same by raiding on the north side of the Mediterranean too.
I’d point out that Rome didn’t actually collapse until after the Empire converted to Christianity, and Edward Gibbon actually blames the switch to Christianity for the collapse.
A lot of people have a vague, ill-informed notion of what Rome was like, and the timeline of the collapse and why it occurred, that they roll out to push whatever axes they want to grind about America today.
........
recent scholarship has dated complete collapse of the western roman world to about 640 ad. about the time the moslem armies destroyed the roman world in north Africa and Spain—apparently they did the same by raiding on the north side of the Mediterranean too.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.