Posted on 09/05/2015 5:11:03 AM PDT by NYer
The fall of Rome was a culmination of several external and internal factors.
Great Wall of China
By 220 A.D., the Later Eastern Han Dynasty had extended sections of the Great Wall of China along its Mongolian border. This resulted in the Northern Huns attacking west instead of east. This caused a domino effect of tribes migrating west across Central Asia, and overrunning the Western Roman Empire.
Open borders
Illegal immigrants poured across the Roman borders: Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Anglos, Saxons, Alemanni, Thuringians, Rugians, Jutes, Picts, Burgundians, Lombards, Alans, Vandals as well as African Berbers and Arab raiders.
Will and Ariel Durant wrote in “The Story of Civilization” (Vol. 3 – Caesar and Christ, Simon & Schuster, 1944, p. 366): “If Rome had not engulfed so many men of alien blood in so brief a time, if she had passed all these newcomers through her schools instead of her slums, if she had treated them as men with a hundred potential excellences, if she had occasionally closed her gates to let assimilation catch up with infiltration, she might have gained new racial and literary vitality from the infusion, and might have remained a Roman Rome, the voice and citadel of the West.”
Loss of common language
At first immigrants assimilated and learned the Latin language. They worked as servants, with many rising to leadership. But then they came so fast they did not learn Latin, but instead created a mix of Latin with their own Germanic, Frankish and Anglo tribal tongues. The unity of the Roman Empire began to dissolve.
The welfare state
“Bread and the Circus!” Starting in 123 B.C., the immensely powerful Roman politician Gaius Gracchus began appeasing citizens with welfare, a monthly handout of a free dole (handout) of grain.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Ping!
Our current leaders (in both parties) are selling out what was the world’s premier nation just one generation ago.
Both parties.
Bring back American jobs, bring back American strength, and stop illegal immigration.
Why is Trump the only person saying these things?
Pedophilia, bestiality, queer marriage. All fits the fall of Rome paradigm
Bkmk
Might add one thing.
The senate became so corrupt that men proclaimed themselves Caesars virtually ending the republic.
From the Sibylline Books:
“Italy, to thee no foreign war shall come, but a people of thy blood shall destroy thee, shameless one, with many woes, stalwart as thou art and much renowned.
And thou, stretched by thine own warm offerings, careless of thy children’s future, shalt slay thyself, and thou shalt not be the mother of heroes but the nurse of beasts.”
Because he knows that's what you're dying to hear.
and
America is also following the pattern of a cursed nation, which leads to destruction. This nation has advanced to the end of the list...
DEUTERONOMY 28:16-66
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deuteronomy+28%3A15-66&version=NIV
Fundamental transformation.
This article is right on the money. Rome destroyed itself...and we, here in the USA are doing exactly the same thing!!! I have repeated this in postings a zillion times. Americans will come to rue the day they ever elected Barack Hussein Obama, POTUS!!! He and the Democrat party are the working destruction of the USA!!! I will not be here, thank God...but, unless America changes quickly...parents, children and all American citizens will suffer that same ugly fate as the entire Middle East is suffering now!!! Obama’s Muslim buddies are headed this way, just as the “Germanic Tribes” destroyed Rome!!! Yes, history repeats itself when fools cause their own self-inflicted wounds!!!
Trying to "bring back American jobs," by adding tariffs and new trade restrictions, which is what many or most people think when they use or hear that phrase would be counterproductive, self defeating. The exodus of American industry to other parts of the world would only accelerate.
Some of the others say those things, too, but they mumble.
Forget about the homofication of the masses and paying extortion money to enemies to keep them from attacking you. Yeah that worked out well didn’t it?
Oh you mean Rome’s own lesser evils that people couldn’t be bothered to keep tabs on?
Combine becoming fat and lazy and moral decline along with paying others to fight their wars for them led to the fall of the Roman Empire.
Sound familiar?
“Military cuts
Though militarily superior and marching on advanced road systems, the highly-trained Roman legions were strained fighting conflicts from the Rhine River to the Sassanid Persian Empire. Roman borders were over-extended and the military defending them was cut back to dangerously low ranks.”
Maybe, to reduce the effect of other factors like debt and high taxes, Rome should have focused more on itself, instead of policing and Romanizing the world with its decadent culture. Maybe its “exceptionalism” was the virtuous part of its culture (its art and law and engineering). But it was overcome by hubris of empire and war, the distraction of it all, and the sheer impossibility of its scale.
However, from the ruins, Christianity could fully emerge in its wake. That even kept Islam out of Europe. Until today...
Many here use "bring back American jobs" as shorthand for "punish China", when the people who need punishing are really in Washington, DC.
Machiavelli thought there might be lessons to learn from the Roman republican experience.
He spent two years studying the Roman historian Livy.
There is much for 21st century America to learn from Machiavelli's 16th century work, Discourses on Livy.
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