Posted on 06/25/2009 11:16:21 PM PDT by Osnome
Six Most Important Factors that destroyed Roman Civilization:
1)Overtaxation
2)Opression of the Provences by the Central Government
3)Government topheavy with bureaucracy
4)Military power overextended across the world(their world at the time)
5)The Populace diverted by degenerate mass entertainment
6) The Borders poorly defended against increasing foreign migration(in their case, Barbarians)
People don’t even know the meaning of liberty anymore it is so confused with entertainment and debauchery. We watch the thieves in proud plain sight and we do nothing to stop them as they rape and beat lady liberty into submission we do nothing when we should have their heads.
That’s a great statement, worthy of engraving somewhere.
You are absolutely right on all those factors leading to the collapse of the Roman Empire. I read once that the taxes were so high, that many of the Roman citizens welcomed the barbarian invaders as a relief from high taxation.
It seems that we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of history.
A problem is that we who are not debauched have often voted for those politicians who have fraternized or would like to do so with the Hollywood Crowd.
We should not seek to be with them(or co-opt them), we should eradicate them!
There are no Conservatives worthy of the name in Hollywood(or the rest of the Popular Media).
None of them can be trusted.
The Barbarians are already in the White House.
They are not Americans, they were not raised in America, they owe no allegiance to America. We could only be destroyed from within, and that is what is happening.
Unilateral disarmament, runaway spending leading to hyperinflation... what more could a Jihadist against America wish for?
The cancer in D.C. must be excised.
>>You are absolutely right on all those factors leading to the collapse of the Roman Empire. I read once that the taxes were so high, that many of the Roman citizens welcomed the barbarian invaders as a relief from high taxation.<<
Yeah, I think I saw that too, on some show on The History Channel.
There are other factors, I leave it to posters to add their own considerations.
P.S. I sometimes consider the Canadians to be a reincarnation of the Parthians.
I do not trust any of them. When they are with us it is fine. We see how well supporting Arnold benefited us in CA?
A self-ping for a morning comment. I think your list is a good one. I’d add a couple - first, the shift in political emphasis, military resources, and especially revenues toward Constantinople after the split of the Empire, and second, as Gibbon proposed, the dramatic shift in talent from the secular government to the building of the Church. It’s a little difficult to understand just how radical a shift it was until you consider that Christianity had, in the same period, run like wildfire through the Goths, and that the very men taking over the Western Empire in 476 AD were Arian Christians. The notion of a barbarian taking over the monarchy was tempered by the realization that the barbarian was a Christian, not to mention the leader of an army that was as close to Roman as anything in the field at the time. The Emperor was, by then, in Ravenna anyway, not Rome. It may not have been as jarring a change as it might appear to us at this historical distance. IMHO, of course.
Of course, there have been some historiographical developments since Gibbon’s day. One thing he failed to consider was the agriculutural revolution that happened in the East, which lead to an explosion in wealth and population in the barbarian East, which could perhaps be likened to the economic rise of China....
Also, most of what you have just mentioned is more indicative of the collapse of the Republic, following which there was another 500 years of Empire, much of which was even more successful than the the Republican period.
America has yet to reach it’s ‘Principate’ phase if we’re making the analogy with Rome here. So is Obama a Marius, brothers Gracchi or a Julius Caesar, or maybe a combination?
Oh, and I almost forgot - I’m going to bed, really, and won’t comment until the morning - yeah, right - the fact that the Vandals had swept through Spain and captured North Africa, which was the principal granary of Rome, really put an end to the whole thing. Until Belisarius came back through (from Constantinople) half a century later Rome only ate by permission of the barbarians. The Ostrogoths from the north and the Vandals in the south - that was pretty much all she wrote.
The truth is, the Roman Empire did not fall in a day in 476 A.D., it withered away until nothing was left but a shriveled denuded trunk of its’ former self.
Then the Goths took over, then the Byzantines sought to recapture the Italian peninsula in the 6th century.
The Goth & Byzantine wars devastated Italy.
That was the onset of the Dark Ages.
The truth is, the Roman Empire did not fall in a day in 476 A.D., it withered away until nothing was left but a shriveled denuded trunk of its’ former self.
Then the Goths took over, then the Byzantines sought to recapture the Italian peninsula in the 6th century.
The Goth & Byzantine wars devastated Italy.
That was the onset of the Dark Ages.
Good night!
Bookmark for later
>>Also, most of what you have just mentioned is more indicative of the collapse of the Republic, following which there was another 500 years of Empire, much of which was even more successful than the the Republican period.
America has yet to reach it’s ‘Principate’ phase if we’re making the analogy with Rome here. So is Obama a Marius, brothers Gracchi or a Julius Caesar, or maybe a combination?<<
Well ofcourse the U.S.A. is not a verbatim remake of the Roman Empire.(antiAmerican Cynics from Europe to Canada will call us that)
We are a democracy of which Rome never truly was.
We don’t rely on slaves for cheap labour(once again Libs and Lefties will compare that to immigrant labour).
I think Obama is our Septimus Serverus, an interloper~
He maybe our Septimus Serverus, an interloper from Africa
We are not an empire ruled by an emperor. Such a comparison was more apt for the British. We are a republic. As such, comparisons to the Roman Republic are more apt. Why did the Roman Republic fall?
Good night all :-)
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