Yesterday we covered an abbreviated history of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Grant it, two and half pages can hardly cover nearly 100 years of history but I was really only using small portions of their history to illustrate a point about our own society and situation. As stated yesterday, the main causes of the collapse of the Roman Empire was:
Antagonism between the Senate and the Emperor
Decline in Morals
Political Corruption and the Praetorian Guard
Fast expansion of the Empire
Constant Wars and Heavy Military Spending
Barbarian Knowledge of Roman Military Tactics
Failing Economy
Unemployment of the Working Classes (The Plebs)
The 'Mob' and the cost of the 'Games'
Decline in Ethics and Values
Slave Labor
Natural Disasters
Christianity
Barbarian Invasion
So let’s examine the parallels between ancient Rome and the United States on a point by point basis.
Antagonism between the Senate and the Emperor: Because of the absolute power given to the Emperor with the role of the Senate degraded to that of an advisory capacity, the Senate was constantly at odds with the Emperor and that seriously impacted the ability of government to act in the interests of the Empire as a whole.
In the United States, our government has also has descended to a base argument over power. American Presidents since the time of Theodore Roosevelt have had agendas that required the creation of enormous new Federal agencies. These agencies began stealing the State rights supposedly guaranteed under the 10th Amendment through the stated goal of enacting minimum standards for the benefit of all States. This was first seen with food and drug safety under the FDA created by Teddy Roosevelt. Federal regulatory power brought about through new agencies continued ever since and has expanded incrementally; controlling nearly every activity of life in America. Over time, the agencies themselves became enormous and bloated bureaucracies that have diluted the power of Congressional oversight and have assumed unconstitutional control over the electorate by the use of regulations issued by the agencies themselves.
Because of the subversive activities of the Progressive movement, the Congress itself has become ideologically polarized. The very function and Constitutional authority of Congress has been re-written through a serious of small moves only possible by mutating the intent of the enumerated powers. Our government has become as much of an ideological battle ground as the Roman government was at the highpoint of their decline.
Decline in Morals: Because the economy of Rome was based on conquest and the taxation of occupied peoples, there was no real sense of creating sustainable wealth through Rome’s economic activity. With a steady flow of captured wealth, leisure time exploded and leisure activities quickly became boring. Bored people constantly move beyond the norm to find excitement and a Rome plagued with excesses, would eventually descend into a moral abyss. Nothing was off the table. Prostitution, slavery, sloth, gluttony, orgies, incest, sex with children and homosexuality had exploded as the elite chased new forms of entertainment and the elite after all, ruled the land.
Is there any doubt that America has rejected its societal morality? I say societal morality because on average, Americans are still a moral people. There has been a corruption of our courts that have allowed a minority of iconoclasts to justify things that would have tested public sensibilities as little as fifty years ago and would have caused massive civic outrage less than a hundred years ago. The Federal government has not only legislated protections for these questionable activities, circumventing the Constitutional right of the States to determine their own direction, but has even funded some of these moral assaults through agencies like the FCC and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Political Corruption and the Praetorian Guard: The Praetorian Guard was the Emperor’s personal army and would shield the Emperor from any attempt of the Senate to reign in Imperial excesses or to reinstitute Constitutional government. While our President does not have a personal army, he does have a closed circle of advisors and Czars that have not only diluted the Constitutional authority of the Congress but have obviously corrupted the governmental process through their secretive strategies to use agency fiat to affect the President’s agenda.
Fast expansion of the Empire: In order to fund the Empire, Rome launched a military campaign that would eventually stretch the limits of the Empire to over two and half million square miles in area and brought them right to the borders of the Barbarian territories; a mistake that would plague them later as the economic strain of supporting their massive occupation became unsustainable. While we don’t engage in wars of conquest, nor do we have vast areas of militarily occupied territories, we have seen a rapid and massive increase in the size and scope of the Federal government. The spending required to support this monstrosity is equally as devastating and has quickly brought the most vibrant and prosperous economy in the history of the world to the brink of ruin.
Constant Wars and Heavy Military Spending: The Roman Empire existed through war and expansion of the Empire was central to feeding the greed of their Imperial economic machine. It was when the wealth of the occupied territories fell flat that the Roman legions became a strain on the Empire. In America, it was just before the turn of the Twentieth Century that the focus of the American Military began to change because of a shift in the ideology of industrial era Presidents. Beginning with the Spanish-American War, America began to flex its newly acquired military muscle under the banner of expanding democracy and fighting foreign, imperial expansion. The role of the military until that point was the protection of the American States. By embarking on a path of global protection we have assumed the burden of funding a military that far exceeds our own need for protection and well beyond our current financial abilities.
Barbarian Knowledge of Roman Military Tactics: Roman military tactics were rigidly trained and vigorously adhered to. As Barbarian tribes gained more experience in fighting the Roman Legions, they used that mindset of rigid strategy against the Romans. While our modern military has a technological advantage that has yet to be defeated and the initiative based strategy used by our command structure is not nearly as rigid as the Roman style of leadership was, we still have an exploitable weakness.
Since we have civilian control over our military, our enemies have mastered the tactic of using public opinion against us. Just the unsubstantiated accusation of abuses has often been enough to threaten the support of the American people for military action in a foreign land. Civilian control of the military is critical to a democratic Republic and works very well with a defensive force. Once we use the military to enforce an ideological view of what is right and wrong beyond our own borders, civilian control becomes divided because there is no plurality of opinion in the use of military force for that purpose. That division creates civil conflict within our nation and leads directly to revisions of military policy that endangers the mission and the lives of the soldiers charged with carrying out that mission.
I try to keep my ramblings to roughly two and half pages so that my blog articles don’t become oppressively long. We are about halfway through the list of causes for the fall of the Roman Empire and we can already see direct and frightening parallels to each and every one of them. Tomorrow we will continue with some of the more frightening and unfortunately, even more relative items on that list. Please join me tomorrow as we complete this examination.
Paul
Antagonism between the Senate and the Emperor
Decline in Morals
Political Corruption and the Praetorian Guard
Fast expansion of the Empire
Constant Wars and Heavy Military Spending
Barbarian Knowledge of Roman Military Tactics
Failing Economy
Unemployment of the Working Classes (The Plebs)
The 'Mob' and the cost of the 'Games'
Decline in Ethics and Values
Slave Labor
Natural Disasters
Christianity
Barbarian Invasion
So let’s examine the parallels between ancient Rome and the United States on a point by point basis.
Antagonism between the Senate and the Emperor: Because of the absolute power given to the Emperor with the role of the Senate degraded to that of an advisory capacity, the Senate was constantly at odds with the Emperor and that seriously impacted the ability of government to act in the interests of the Empire as a whole.
In the United States, our government has also has descended to a base argument over power. American Presidents since the time of Theodore Roosevelt have had agendas that required the creation of enormous new Federal agencies. These agencies began stealing the State rights supposedly guaranteed under the 10th Amendment through the stated goal of enacting minimum standards for the benefit of all States. This was first seen with food and drug safety under the FDA created by Teddy Roosevelt. Federal regulatory power brought about through new agencies continued ever since and has expanded incrementally; controlling nearly every activity of life in America. Over time, the agencies themselves became enormous and bloated bureaucracies that have diluted the power of Congressional oversight and have assumed unconstitutional control over the electorate by the use of regulations issued by the agencies themselves.
Because of the subversive activities of the Progressive movement, the Congress itself has become ideologically polarized. The very function and Constitutional authority of Congress has been re-written through a serious of small moves only possible by mutating the intent of the enumerated powers. Our government has become as much of an ideological battle ground as the Roman government was at the highpoint of their decline.
Decline in Morals: Because the economy of Rome was based on conquest and the taxation of occupied peoples, there was no real sense of creating sustainable wealth through Rome’s economic activity. With a steady flow of captured wealth, leisure time exploded and leisure activities quickly became boring. Bored people constantly move beyond the norm to find excitement and a Rome plagued with excesses, would eventually descend into a moral abyss. Nothing was off the table. Prostitution, slavery, sloth, gluttony, orgies, incest, sex with children and homosexuality had exploded as the elite chased new forms of entertainment and the elite after all, ruled the land.
Is there any doubt that America has rejected its societal morality? I say societal morality because on average, Americans are still a moral people. There has been a corruption of our courts that have allowed a minority of iconoclasts to justify things that would have tested public sensibilities as little as fifty years ago and would have caused massive civic outrage less than a hundred years ago. The Federal government has not only legislated protections for these questionable activities, circumventing the Constitutional right of the States to determine their own direction, but has even funded some of these moral assaults through agencies like the FCC and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Political Corruption and the Praetorian Guard: The Praetorian Guard was the Emperor’s personal army and would shield the Emperor from any attempt of the Senate to reign in Imperial excesses or to reinstitute Constitutional government. While our President does not have a personal army, he does have a closed circle of advisors and Czars that have not only diluted the Constitutional authority of the Congress but have obviously corrupted the governmental process through their secretive strategies to use agency fiat to affect the President’s agenda.
Fast expansion of the Empire: In order to fund the Empire, Rome launched a military campaign that would eventually stretch the limits of the Empire to over two and half million square miles in area and brought them right to the borders of the Barbarian territories; a mistake that would plague them later as the economic strain of supporting their massive occupation became unsustainable. While we don’t engage in wars of conquest, nor do we have vast areas of militarily occupied territories, we have seen a rapid and massive increase in the size and scope of the Federal government. The spending required to support this monstrosity is equally as devastating and has quickly brought the most vibrant and prosperous economy in the history of the world to the brink of ruin.
Constant Wars and Heavy Military Spending: The Roman Empire existed through war and expansion of the Empire was central to feeding the greed of their Imperial economic machine. It was when the wealth of the occupied territories fell flat that the Roman legions became a strain on the Empire. In America, it was just before the turn of the Twentieth Century that the focus of the American Military began to change because of a shift in the ideology of industrial era Presidents. Beginning with the Spanish-American War, America began to flex its newly acquired military muscle under the banner of expanding democracy and fighting foreign, imperial expansion. The role of the military until that point was the protection of the American States. By embarking on a path of global protection we have assumed the burden of funding a military that far exceeds our own need for protection and well beyond our current financial abilities.
Barbarian Knowledge of Roman Military Tactics: Roman military tactics were rigidly trained and vigorously adhered to. As Barbarian tribes gained more experience in fighting the Roman Legions, they used that mindset of rigid strategy against the Romans. While our modern military has a technological advantage that has yet to be defeated and the initiative based strategy used by our command structure is not nearly as rigid as the Roman style of leadership was, we still have an exploitable weakness.
Since we have civilian control over our military, our enemies have mastered the tactic of using public opinion against us. Just the unsubstantiated accusation of abuses has often been enough to threaten the support of the American people for military action in a foreign land. Civilian control of the military is critical to a democratic Republic and works very well with a defensive force. Once we use the military to enforce an ideological view of what is right and wrong beyond our own borders, civilian control becomes divided because there is no plurality of opinion in the use of military force for that purpose. That division creates civil conflict within our nation and leads directly to revisions of military policy that endangers the mission and the lives of the soldiers charged with carrying out that mission.
I try to keep my ramblings to roughly two and half pages so that my blog articles don’t become oppressively long. We are about halfway through the list of causes for the fall of the Roman Empire and we can already see direct and frightening parallels to each and every one of them. Tomorrow we will continue with some of the more frightening and unfortunately, even more relative items on that list. Please join me tomorrow as we complete this examination.
Paul
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