[2nd_Amendment_Defender]

Any comments on the above information?

[maestro]

Living in denial of the "limiting' Constitution

via the ACLU, ABA, Supreme Courts,.....the UN and World Couet,..etc.,...."While the USA Slept!!"

:-(

[Cold Heat]

A more solid comparison would be the EU and not the US.

We are getting there, but a bit more slowly.

Europe is there now.

[Jhoffa_]

Any comments on the above information?

I think "decay" & "decadence" played a pivotal role.

Remember Sodom?

[blam]

"Any comments on the above information?"

Yup. You left out asteroid/comet impacts, worldwide affecting volcanoes, tidal waves and weather/climate changes. (Just to name a few)

[Main Street]

"A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last only until its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority (who vote) will vote for the candidates promising the greatest benefits from the public purse, with the result that a democracy will always collapse from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest democratic nations has been 200 years. Each has been through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith.
2. From faith to great courage.
3. From courage to liberty.
4. From liberty to abundance.
5. From abundance to complacency.
6. From complacency to selfishness.
7. From selfishness to apathy.
8. From apathy to dependency.
9. And from dependency back again into bondage."

- Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, author and politician, in a letter to a friend in 1857

[hedgetrimmer]

"Then began the patricians to oppress the people as slaves, ..., as the kings had done, to drive them from their holdings, and to tyrannize over those who had no property to lose."

St. Augustine--The City of God

Replace politicians with patricians and you can see the same thing that happened to the Romans is now happening to the American people. We are driven from our property by the ESA and environmental laws and high taxes. We are not allowed to profit from our property by restrictive logging, mining, grazing and farming laws. We are enslaved to the rest of the world by trade laws that transfer our wealth and prosperity out of the country to support communist governments such as China's.

[Nateman]

 I claim Rome started its fall on the day Ceasar crossed the Rubicon. Rome fell because it had too many people in the cart and not enough to pull it! In short it taxed itself to death, a fate which happens to most civilizations.It might have spared itself this fate if power had stayed spread out in the Senate rather than completely in the hands of an emperor.If power had stayed in the Senate, you'd get enough senators now and then to cut taxes, but no such inhabition naturally occurs when you have one man rule.

[MosesKnows]

it seems to me there are some similarities

I have omitted the author of the following observation so that one need only ponder the merit of the message.

"The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at all.

When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the Republic was at hand, and nothing could save it.

The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing."

Do you see any similarities?

[evilC]

>>>
The Dole and Barbarians
<<<

Is the analogy here, Bob Dole losing to Bill Clinton?

:)

[DeuceTraveler]

"I see currently in the United States: Trade Deficit, the Invasion of Barbarians (illegal immigrants), Division of the Nation (Republicans and Democrats), and Financial Problems as very similar to the Decline of the Roman Empire."

I would agree with the expanding national debt (vs trade deficit), invasion of barbarians (large segments of people coming in and not assimiliating into the culture, but instead forming cultures inside or culture), and our socialist bread and circuses. The last being the most dangerous.

[bert]

The Roman Empire declined longer than the USA has existed.

[kidd]

Hogwash.

Liberal America-hating hogwash.

The United States is no where nears a decline and fall like Rome.

We have small blips in the economy. A blip is not a fall. A blip is not a decline. The only thing in our history that came close to an economic collapse was the Great Depression and the decision to use socialism to fix it. Yet we endured. The Great Depression was nothing even close to a Somalian-type disaster. And we have learned a lesson from the Great Depression have many safeguards in place.

We have the greatest military in world history. Nothing on this planet comes even close. There are concerns that enemies may have WMD, but this fear is also overblown. If an enemy uses some on a population center, then what can they do next. We are virtually un-invadable, at least by conventional means. We can be hurt, but we cannot be occupied.

Complacency? Decadence? Of course it exists. And its getting worse. But captitalism and conservatism will always keep these in check. Despite rampant liberalism, we are the most conservative country in the world. And the popularity of the Free Republic is evidence that liberalism doesn't have the stranglehold that some think that it might.

We are a wealthy nation. And as a wealthy nation, we can afford to pay for certain safeguards such as consumer protection and certain environmental safeguards. Yes, I know that these have become excessive lately, but certain basic safeguards are necessary to maintain our longterm health.

We have the most diverse population possible, yet we have relatively minor conflicts between races/religions. We had a war between Northern and Southern attitudes. We survived that. Our pride is nation-wide. Europe (including Rome), on the other hand, is not so well behaved. Countries that are the size of small States have been at each others throats countless times. Their pride (or whats left of it) is concentrated in relatively small groups, thus they clash frequently. We have the geographical benefit of being phyically separated from the misbehaving children of Europe (and every 30 years or so, we go over there and hand out some spankings and make them sit in the corner).

We are vigilant. We do not appease. And we have the greatest Constitution ever written. We are not in decline.