Posted on 07/16/2007 5:34:07 PM PDT by blam
The Romans were fat, dumb, and happy as long as their leaders kept them fed (welfare) and entertained. This produced a mind numbing affect that rendered them wussies and unable/unwilling to defend against their enemies. An uncanny resemblance to 21st Century America
sorry about the double post
Most unfortunately, lead in ones water makes one behave like the “Mad Hatter”. Lead poisoning does cause a specific dementia.
Hmmmn - I wonder, sometimes, what is in the Washington, DC water supply? Something is causing otherwise reasoned and prudent people to become supportive of collectivist schemes of a wildly metastizing “Nanny State”.
An Oldsmobile previously owned by a certain Taxachussetts senator?
Very interesting ....but what’s the bottom line? IOW...Why did they fall? er ..devolve?... in ten words or less.
I think about this sometimes in the context of our current geopolitical situation. Is it not the wisest policy for a United States in what historically must be a temporary ascendancy to provide for a world wherein it will be safe not to dominate? That would be something altogether new in history.
Some see that as an argument for globalism. Some others - myself, for one - see it as an argument against. Food for thought, I guess.
lol
The denial is there, subtle and effective: the Roman Empire gets renamed with a name its inhabitants in 500 or 800 or 1453 would not have recognized. “Byzantine” was a little used adjective meaning someone from Constantinople proper.
Eleni is right. Mount Athos, for instance, is governed by the same constitution established in the days of the Empire, and (quite remarkably) still flies the old Imperial flag—black double-headed eagle on gold. The sackos of an Orthodox bishop was originally an Imperial vestment—the distinctive vestment of a bishop in ancient times being the polystavron, a long stole embroidered entirely in crosses.
But the water ran constantly in Roman systems, so the possibility of a significant accumulation of lead was practicaly nil.
Rome didn’t fall - HBO just cancelled it.
I've always found Gibbons to be a disorganized mess. Yeah there's a lot of information in there but it's not organized and its thick language and prose makes it a dreadful chore to slog through. I'll take the classic Roman historians - Tacitus, Seutonius, Polybius, Livy, etc. (if I accidently slipped a Greek historian in there sorry I'm working from memory and the point still holds.) The classical historians are easy to read, simple direct language and they don't waste time on academic speculation. They stick with interesting stuff like wars, geography, great kings and leaders, palace intrigue, assainations, broken treaties, etc. Manly stuff. I'll take that over Gibbons and his ilk any day.
That's one of the most perceptive statments I've read in a while.
LOL
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If Rome had sank instead of fallen, you would have been the first to know.
Good point.
“You don’t need to to “legitimize” the selection process. What you need are brave and honorable rulers...period.
The best goverment is a “Good Caesar”. The worst government is a “Bad Caesar”.
“
You’ve got to be kidding. Without effective mechanisms to sort out the ‘honorable rulers’ from the rest, you are stuck with what was reality for a good part of the western empire’s history, where control was as much as anything predicated on how many troops you had at your disposal, where you were located, and what other problems the empire had on its plate at the moment.
Everyone needs brave and honorable rulers, this is like saying everyone needs good nutrition. Without mechanisms to sort pretenders to the throne out effectively, you aren’t going to get them most of the time....civil war every time a legion declared its general as emperor is one of the sorts of problems ‘legitimizing’ the selection process would hope to avoid.
Or it could have been Bush's fault.
It’s not about how many agree. It’s about getting at the truth. Sometimes that comes hard for people. I have faith in Freepers in their ability to discern fact from fiction.
As for where Putin is taking his nation...it’s certainly not down the secularist unChristian Muslim apologist path that many are following in the west.
We could learn a lot from him and from Russian history. So could you.
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