[Cboldt]

I can pen any animal on the face of the earth if I can first get him to depend on me for a free handout! ...

Humans are especially easy to pen that way. Humans succumb to a siren's song.

[TheSpottedOwl]

Good post. Excuse me while I pull my hair out :-(

[happydogdesign]

Rome's decline has far more to do with disease than moral turpitude. Malaria was endemic, small pox was making its presence known, and the first major wave of bubonic plague during the reign of Justinian cut through most of civilization like a scythe at a point when an understanding of disease pathology was just beginning.

It is always popular to blame the woes of past cultures on moral weakness, but the facts are most of our ancestors had to be pretty tough, lucky, and smart to live long enough to reproduce at all.

[Cacophonous]

Another parallel to consider. Rome defeated Carthage, the other "superpower" of the day while maintaining her superiority, but was brought down by the less-civilized rabble - not nations, per se - in the north and west, essentially through guerilla warfare. In much the same manner, the US has defeated her major enemies and now remains the world's only superpower. And we are now engaged in a war with less-civilized groups - not nations - practicing a form of guerilla warfare (terrorism).

I hope the US profits from Rome's example. It's not the wars against clearly defined opponents, with clearly defined goals that establish clear victory, but the murky, guerilla-style where noone knows when victory is achieved, where warfare is a perpetual, draining thing, that will defeat us.

[A. Pole]

All this disappeared, however, by the fifth century ad, and when it was gone, Europe was plunged into darkness and despair, slavery and poverty.

It is more complicated than that. Arian Germanic tribes (followers of the heresy of Arius) conquered the Western part of Rome. Eastern part was destroyed by Muslims many centuries later.

[SmallGuerillaReactionaryArmy]

good article

welfare simply doesnt work when you expand it to every bum who is too lazy to get a job...

[Number_Cruncher]

Many of the so-called barbarians were actually Roman citizens who had fled the empire to escape its high tax burdens. I recommend the book For Good and Evil by Adams on how taxes destroy civilizations.

[Viking2002]

Excellent artice, and backing up my longtime belief that we ARE going the way of Rome, with no means of salvation in sight. Politicans are too blind and/or greedy and/or unintelligent and/or self-absorbed to learn from history. The price they will pay at the hands of the masses will be to little, too late as the cities burn.

[Eternal_Bear]

The Roman empire fell but Roman culture lives on. It passed on Christianity, law, literature, centralized government, high taxation, imperial wars, public games staged in coloseums, welfare state and much more. Hey isn't that a Roman Goddess on top of the Capital dome? We celebrate our independence day in the month named in honor of the Roman god Julius Caesar. Governments come and go; culture lives on forever.

[DeathAngel]

About the best post in a year on this site. A true historical past that is our near future. We plunder each other, corrupt our morals and ethics, and demand everything for ourselves while providing little to the nation.

At some point, someone may enter our world, and we won't care that they have come.

America: RIP.

[Semper]

there are very promising indications that the intellectual battles these days are being won-often decisively won-by the friends of freedom and limited government, not by those who foolishly seek to put government in the driver's seat.

Right. I will be optimistic as soon as the national debt starts to decline.

[neverdem]

Interesting read. I'll recommend it.

[.cnI redruM]

Not bad. It reminds me of the Walter Williams analogy on how you cook a frog.

[Zipporah]

No we're not going the way of Rome (other than the decadence)we're going down a trail that IMO is without precedence, remember Kruschev when he said we would be destroyed. Not by the means most think.. it's a battle of propoganda. The truth cannot be spoken without fear of being muzzled.. branded. So we 'suffer' in silence out of fear. We are IMO in the midst of a slow and ever more hasty destruction of the US as we have known it. It is many fold and if we don't open our eyes and become brave and ignore those who try to muzzle the truth, then we will deserve what we get.

[linton59]

I watched "I, Claudius" three different times on PBS at 8 year intervals. The first time I saw only the personal villanry, (poisonings, etc.) The second time, saw the political chicanery..that was during the Clinton Administration. The third time, I saw the obsession with pornography. :(

[packrat35]

I have been saying this for 10 years at least. I am amazed at how fast it has accelerated since then.

[Lady Eileen]

Bump and thanks for the post.

[RLK]

The reason Rome fell is the same reason the United States is falling to pieces.

No great nation or empire has survived the softness and excesses made possible by its sucesses.

America has seen its day and is on the decline, although we pride ourselves on still having a few bombs left to drop on undeveloped nations such as Iraq. Military victories, especially in a technological age against nontechnologized opponents, can occur while a nation is decaying internally.

[Mel Gibson]

The growing intrusiveness of government in America is not inevitable; it is not something beyond the control of the American people. It is, rather, the consequence of faulty ideas, which can change if only this message is carried forth by those who cherish liberty. Indeed, there are very promising indications that the intellectual battles these days are being won-often decisively won-by the friends of freedom and limited government, not by those who foolishly seek to put government in the driver's seat.

Wrong

Once excessive taxation is granted in a liberty-oriented society, the tax man must be "invested with extraordinary means of oppression, and then the country is ruined." To recapitulate, people in a state of liberty foolishly grant their government the right to levy heavy taxes, this in turn fosters evasion, and this in turn requires great punitive measures.

Direct taxes are the badge of slavery, and indirect taxes the badge of liberty. "Capitation [direct taxes on the individual] is more natural to slavery; a duty on merchandise is more natural to liberty, because it has not direct a relation to the person" (Emphasis added)

Baron de Montesquieu in his The Spirit of Laws (1751) contained in the book For Good and Evil, The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization by Charles Adams (1993)

[Porterville]

Um, Rome was an Empire that wanted everything... the USA is a country that everybody wants to be.... see the difference???