The Germs That Destroyed An Empire [Roman Empire]

American Spectator ^ | April 24, 2020 | Rod Dreher

[C19fan]

he COVID-19 pandemic has brought the global economy to a halt. The geopolitical upheavals yet to come will dramatically change world history, in unpredictable ways. The United States is only three months into its struggle with coronavirus, and is experiencing an Icarus-like plummet from the economic heights. The tiny coronavirus will ravage the nations, and may even cause empires to fall. We have been here before. In his 2017 book The Fate Of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, Oklahoma University historian Kyle Harper examined the roles that climate instability and plague played in weakening the Roman Empire. The fate of Rome reveals an eternal truth: that not even the greatest concentration of wealth and power in the world can infallibly protect a nation from Nature. I spoke to Prof. Harper by phone yesterday from his home in Oklahoma:

[Pelham]

Rod Dreher was a Jonah Goldberg National Review writer. Likely why he was easy to miss.

He invented the term “crunchy con” for his own particular persuasion and wrote a book with that title.

Here’s an NR piece describing what he imagines himself to be; like the ever annoying Ben Shapiro I think he forgets to include ‘insufferable moralizer’ among his attributes:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2005/05/crunchy-cons-rod-dreher/

[reasonisfaith]

If there is no God, then God wasn’t involved in the fall of Rome.

If God is real, then he controlled the whole thing.

[reasonisfaith]

Shall we compare the faith of 4th century Roman leaders to that of the first American colonists?

I think you understand where I’m going with this.

[Buttons12]

If He wanted to control everything, we would not have free will.

[reasonisfaith]

To grant us free will is a greater control than it would be to exert his will in place of ours.