Great article.
bookmark bump
Sobering reading. Thanks for the post.
BTTT
Thanks tolik - great read.
The strange thing is that these wild swings in civilization are at their bases psychological: decline is one of choice rather than necessity.
Yes it is...try telling the welfare piker with an SUV, 3 squares a day, nice clothes, free rent, and a flat screen TV that they need to provide for themselves. Their answer is they deserve or are entitled to such luxury - that working will not pay as well as welfare. We are too stupid to discriminate between those that can’t work and those that can but don’t. We are a stupid venal people and will soon be a second rate country - just as bammy has foretold.
How ‘bout this? Within a generation of the Marian reforms, the Roman Army invaded Rome at least twice [I think three times]. The Roman Army, even with good emperors had to be bought. It both held the state together, and, increasingly, tore it apart, with various armies and legions proclaiming [for a good payday] their general as ‘Caesar’.
And by the late Empire, Romans were not stepping up to serve in the Roman Army. Increasingly, barbarians were, sometimes in whole tribal units [ Alaric was a Roman general, and Chief of the Visigoths]. This had three serious effects for the Western Roman Empire. First, the barbarians learned the Roman military system. Second, the same group that defended the Empire was best positioned to bring it down. Third, they had learned the Roman Army’s tradition of interfering in the government of Rome for personal benefit, and of being separate, both in allegiance and outlook, to the society they were to defend. And when the politicians didn’t pony up the lands and other ‘gifts’ on their lists, the tribes took matters into their own hands.
Mixed up in all of this, especially in Europe, has to be the decline in birth rate (to native stock) (which at least in part stems from a loss of serious, demanding religion). As has been observed (Mark Steyn among others), how do you convince a retired childless couple that their government benefits should be cut for the future benefit of unrelated future generations of countrymen? The US birthrate is higher than Europe’s but the concept is the same. Along the same lines is the decline of the family, by which perceived obligations to future generations are also strained.
Terrific article. Worth reading and re-reading. Perhaps VDH should be the one running for Senate from CA. He’d be sending everyone to their dictionareis, for sure.
After decades of civil war, they let in the Goths, abused them, and then used them as mercenaries.
Unions are POWERFUL BEYOND ACCEPTING and spreading tentacle's into every employer or single persons having their own employment, IE day care, coming under the umbrella of unions without our voting on it.
We are watching the demise of our life styles on fast forward escalation.
I would love to be wrong. How deep and how bad is yet to be seen. Look at Zimbabwe ... the farmers there (largely Dutch, German, etc. that had been there successfully for 40 -50 years having successful farms ... lost them all. Not willingly. some were shot. All were seized.
Did they believe it would happen? NO way.
Reminds me of the world-view of Thomas Jefferson who fought tooth and nail against Alex Hamilton's different vision of an increasingly capitalistic society. Hamilton won out and the result was the metropolis of NYC.
It was and remains empty moralizing by crabbed would be Catos.
The western empire fell because the forthieth man to conquer it as spoils in a civil war decided he'd rather be called a king than an emperor.
Generals had been conquering the empire for centuries. For centuries, their armies had been German, and for the last few, the generals were, too.
Civil war is what destroyed the western empire, in other words. Not one civil war, but endless civil war after civil war. So many that the empire as a joke if not a disgrace, rather than a prize.
Nobody is interested in dying for a political football used exclusively for the benefit of the cynical murdering dictators who seized it by force.
The only thing remotely of the same tendency in the modern west is the hyperpolitical, hyperpartisan attitudes of modern ideological parties. That all is politics, that the party comes before the country, that the purpose of the party is the material benefit of its adherents - those are in common with Rome in its decline. But we aren't murdering each other over such things, so we don't (yet) have their disease.
In addition, the Anglo American has embraced the idea that the barbarian is his equal. In short, the Anglo American has abdicated his right to govern. He is being eagerly replaced as governor by blacks, hispanics, homosexuals, actors and actresses.
VDH didn't mention a few things. First of all, by the end those who were ethnically Romans no longer really cared. The ones who were holding the Western empire together were former barbarians. The native Romans had all dropped out of the equation by that time.
The other issue (mentioned in part) was that the military became very involved in the politics. And that military was no longer native, and made up of mercenary troops. Increasingly they had no real feel for the culture of Rome, and didn't really view it as something worth saving.
When the last Emperor was pensioned off, most people seemed to like it. The violence and oppression of the later Western empire was very hard on the people, and the germanic kings were less oppressive.
View it as a warning for our times.
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btp
But I think, initially at least, Rome transformed itself rather than fell. Initially, the “barbarian” successor states, particularly the Ostrogothic, Visigothic and Frankish kingdoms, tried to continue with Roman tradition, titles, architecture, etc. Many of these people had a long history of trade and connection with the Empire and no real desire to destroy it. They wanted to share in its affluence.
What prevented an orderly transformation of the west and instead created a true collapse and resultant “Dark Age” was the spread of the Mohammedans out of Arabia, across North Africa and into the Mediterranean, cutting off trade and communications by sea of the states bordering the northern part of the Mediterranean with Byzantium and with each other.
The Mohammedans were and always will be a source of political and social degeneration wherever they spread.