Posted on 11/17/2015 8:34:22 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Edward Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" is one of the great works of written history. It comes in six volumes and was published over 12 years starting in 1776. It covers how the Roman Empire fell from its glory over centuries, eventually crumbling to nothing.
Over the weekend prominent historian Niall Ferguson, the presenter of the TV series "Civilization," has drawn an analogy between the bloodshed in Paris last Friday and what was the beginning of the end for the Roman Empire.
Ferguson declares he is here "to tell you that this is exactly how civilizations fall."
He continues:
Here is how Edward Gibbon described the Goths' sack of Rome in August 410 AD: " ... In the hour of savage licence, when every Âpassion was inflamed, and every restraint was removed … a cruel slaughter was made of the ÂRomans; and ... the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies ... Whenever the Barbarians were provoked by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the helpless ... ".
Now, does that not describe the scenes we witnessed in Paris on Friday night? True, Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, represented Rome's demise as a slow burn. Gibbon covered more than 1400 years of history. The causes he identified ranged from the personality disorders of individual emperors to the power of the Praetorian Guard and the rise of Sassanid Persia. Decline shaded into fall, with monotheism acting as a kind of imperial dry rot.
He later says that modern Europe is starting to display some of the characteristics of Rome at its apogee. He says:
... Europe has allowed its defences to crumble.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Immigration and invasion are how civilizations fall.
But it’s “racist” to say it.
Rome was, after all, Rome! It had survived, and even flourished, after Hannibal's invasions, numerous internal revolts, etc. So there was no need to take any real precautions. Rome could never fall. Until it did.
I see a lot of that thinking in the West today, America included.
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Excellent history post whose valuable lessons few in power will likely heed.
Those who ignore lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
Why is it so few can see the existential threat that Islam presents to non-Muslim’s freedom, way of life, and survival?
I have a simpler view:
Civilizations fall when they are incapable or refuse to defend themselves.
Incapable because they have destroyed their own economic function.
Refusal when they feel their own civilization is unworthy of defense.
Who does that describe?
Part of it is because their capabilities are so meager.
They are a very large street gang, in essence.
That's not to say they will not develop real military capability. But today, any modern army could easily defeat them.
The cause of America’s decline is the internal degeneration of traditional morals, purely economic thinking to the exclusion of political thought; selection of outsiders as “leaders” i.e. a negro community organizer from Chicago; adoption of cosmopolitanism to replace patriotism. In short internal rot.
Rome didn’t really fall. It was “fundamentally transformed “.
Among other reasons, Rome was destroyed by admitting so many people who had no loyalty to Rome.
One of the Other reasons is "Democracy", whereby the power blocs in Rome granted the vote to all these unloyal "citizens" and then bribed them with bread and circuses to support the existing power blocs, very much in the manner that Democrats bribe poor people with welfare to keep voting Democrat.
The Democrat policies of unlimited "immigration" and Welfare vote bribing are exactly what destroyed Rome.
Hear! Hear!
That is EXACTLY correct!
Yup. That pretty much nails the phenomena. So now I know the sociological-political term for it. Thanks for that.
Yep. And it's a shame that they didn't declare everything south of Po River a "safe place", where invader "microaggression" would not be welcome. All that barbarian looting, pillaging, etc. would have been avoided.
At the rate it is going Europe will soon become our number one islamic enemy.
One of the best responses in the Republican debate was when Huckabee said, “Immigration without assimilation is invasion.”
Mmmmm, not really. Rome primarily collapsed from being too big for the technology of the time and basically losing control of itself, eventually the outposts were so independent they just stopped being part of Rome. By the time the Goths sacked Rome (bearing, again, no real resemblance to what happened in Paris) Rome was already pretty collapsed, heck Rome wasn’t even the capital of Rome anymore. Paris is how wars start, not how civilizations end.
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