Has Washington Gone Bonkers?

Last month I had written a couple of articles outlining the political similarities between the fall of the Roman Empire and the current course of politics in America. Needless to say, the major causes for the fall of Rome are frighteningly close to the discussions we see all over America today. One of the more recent theories being bandied about claim that lead poisoning had seriously affected the mental competence of the Roman elite which contributed to the fall. Lead was used in great quantities all over the Roman Empire, particularly for the comfort of the elite ruling class.

Lead pipes brought drinking water to the homes of the wealthy, the Senate and to the Imperial palaces. Lead was used to seal anything used in conjunction with water including baths; it was even used to sweeten wine for the most privileged members of the society. Lead was in such broad use that it could have posed a significant threat to the health and sanity of those upper classes and scientists say they have found tell-tale signs of lead poisoning in human bones recovered from Roman necropolises. The lead was concentrated in amounts well above the levels needed to impede rational thought and may be the smoking gun that explains the wild stories of eccentricity prevalent in the Roman elite during the final years of the Empire.

Watching the antics going on in Washington these days, one must wonder what has affected their behavior. We know that America has prohibited the use of lead for household plumbing and paint. We are well aware of the dangers associated with lead and have taken the proper precautions to protect ourselves from this insidious killer so it can’t be that.

It’s no mystery that our illustrious Congressmen drink too much because it was disclosed that the liquor bill on Pelosi’s private flights between Washington and San Francisco outspend the food consumed on those flights and probably runs a close second to the cost of the fuel used to power the aircraft. Recently disgraced Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY) apparently drank heavily enough to get into “tickle” fights with other men in their 50’s and with members of his staff. This erratic and childish behavior continued to the point where some staffers had accused him of inappropriate physical contact. His retort to these charges were equally bizarre and consisted of a string of unsubstantiated claims that this was the manifestation of a concerted effort to force him out of Congress because of his opposition to the Senate Healthcare Bill; an opposition shared by dozens of other Democrats that obviously have not been subject to similar attacks.

Ted Kennedy was also famous for his imbibing ever since the days of Chappaquiddick. His bloated figure and large reddened nose had been the subject of many stories of three martini luncheons and hazy vacations in Martha’s Vineyard before his illness had taken their place in the tabloid headlines. Charlie Wilson (D-TX) may have been recorded in history for his involvement in the clandestine military operations against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan but he was equally famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for raucous womanizing fueled by drug and alcohol consumption.

Of course it could just be the stress of the job or some other deeply emotional issues that we are seeing. Even Nancy Pelosi has shown evidence of mild dementia; at least that’s what it looks like to me. How else could you claim that American’s want Congress to pass healthcare reform immediately in the face of overwhelming opposition? She seems to have no concept of how miserably people are rating the approval of Congress and has no concern for the future of her party despite poll after poll that says there will be a heavy price to pay for passing this; especially if there are more back room deals and legislative tricks. Harry Reid has been reduced to a babbling fool incapable of rendering a coherent thought without infuriating massive segments of the population; something politicians never do unless they are at the point of mental collapse. His last statement basically said that Congress must pass a jobs bill because unemployed men beat their wives and the abuse shelters in Nevada are overflowing. Yeah; poor fellow.

Speaking of someone that appears to be on the verge of mental collapse, we have the incredible display put on by Representative Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) yesterday. While debating a bill proposed by Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), that if passed, would have required the immediate withdrawal of U.S. Military forces from Afghanistan, Representative Kennedy threw what can only be described as a kindergarten tantrum about the lack of press coverage. His voice cracked as he screeched at the upper levels of his vocal range, shouting that the reason Americans are so upset with Congress is the lack of coverage the press gives to Congressmen actually doing their jobs. Pointing at the two news agencies that had reporters present, Kennedy called the media’s lack of interest “despicable” noting that this bill speaks of “war and peace” and affects the lives of the military personnel risking their lives in the call of duty and in the defense of their nation.

He continued saying that the press was covering the resignation of Eric Massa “24-7” but failed to show up for this crucial debate. I’m not certain whether it was the media’s lack of attention to that bill that angered Patrick Kennedy or if it was the unnerving reality that for the first time since the Kennedy family entered American politics, the media was not riveted to their seats to hear a Kennedy speak. In fact, Patrick Kennedy’s career has been so unremarkable that even his announcement that he would not seek reelection populated news stories for a mere twenty-four hours. His tantrum only proves that you can kick a Kennedy, you can disgrace a Kennedy you can even despise a Kennedy but if you should dare to ignore one, they become unglued. Hopefully our poor little Patrick won’t suffer the same fate and lifelong feelings of inadequacy that have plagued the children of so many of America’s Hollywood stars. It is a terrible thing to live in the shadows of the public giants that preceded you only to be brushed aside as an inferior copy of the original.

The media did not attend the debate on this bill because the bill was meaningless. The Kucinich resolution was based on the 1973 War Powers Act that requires the President to obtain congressional approval when he sends troops to a conflict for more than 90 days. Since Congress has been regularly authorizing expenditures for the conflict since it’s inception, the requirement for approval has been adequately met to the satisfaction of all but a few of the more extreme Democratic Progressives in the Congress and the resolution failed with predictable margins. The Massa resignation had the potential for far reaching consequences because of the accusations Massa had launched against the White House and the Democratic Leadership. It wasn’t until Massa’s showed no interest in pursuing those charges that the media realized that there was no credible reason to believe they were true.

Since his resignation, the House investigation into the charges has been terminated because the House Ethics Committee has no authority to investigate private citizens. Unless the staffer that levied the charges is willing to pursue the matter with other authorities, we will never know the full extent of Massa’s behavior in connection with this. Well, that’s not entirely true. I fully expect another “tell-all” book will surface either written by the violated staffer or someone else close to the Congressman’s office. That is just the way these matters are handled in Washington these days.

I’m sorry Patrick. The American people are not angry because we have not seen Congress at work. In fact, we are angry precisely because we have seen, felt and fear the work that you have been doing. If Congress were to take a protracted vacation and leave the poor taxpayers alone, the approval rating of Congress would probably climb twenty points every month you folks were off playing golf and sailing schooners. I hate to tell you….we don’t even care if you “tickle” each other until you all need diapers; just stop the taxing and the spending and you’ll be fine in the end.

I guess all we can do now is watch for more of this strange behavior and try to connect the dots in an attempt to find the cause. Lead poisoning was likely responsible for Roman Emperor Nero torching a large part of urban Rome and legend has it that he played his fiddle as he watched the flames consume hundreds of buildings. I know Obama smokes….I just hope he doesn’t play any musical instruments; at least until we find out what is driving our elected officials crazy.

Paul

Rome Falls and America Follows - part two

Yesterday we began drawing parallels between the fall of the Roman Empire and the path that America is now on. Because of the long list of complex issues, we only managed to get about halfway through the main reasons. Today we pick up where we left off and the remaining items on the list seem to have even more relevance to America than what was discussed yesterday. Those items are:

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

Failing economy: As the flow of captured wealth to Rome diminished, it became increasingly difficult to fund the Legions defending the far reaches of the Empire. There had always been a wide disparity between the elite and the poor of Rome which exacerbated Rome’s economic problems as opportunities for employment dwindled among those of the lower classes. Of course the Roman elite still expected luxuries from the Far East and an increasing amount of gold was used to purchase those goods, creating a shortage of gold to coin money in Rome. The resulting unemployment, high taxes and inflation placed the government at constant risk of bankruptcy.

Teddy Roosevelt lauded the idea of a progressive tax system and the redistribution of wealth although he never had the opportunity to put either into practice. Instead, we would have to wait until Woodrow Wilson for a progressive income tax and FDR to figure a way to use that money to advance an agenda that would culminate in today’s entitlement culture. By abandoning capitalist principals and punishing the attainment of wealth through the progressive tax system, we have seriously hampered the ability of our economy to grow in proportion to her population.

The increasing numbers of people that have been raised as second and third generation recipients of government support programs have created an entire class of people that rely solely on government instead of their own abilities, further depleting the treasury. Worst yet is that the number of people that pay the taxes are slowly becoming the minority with those that pay no taxes or collect government benefits now sitting at 47%. Our government has turned to high taxes and credit to continue funding these benefit programs rather than returning to our capitalist roots. The resulting debt has created a shortage of money in the private sector, further damaging our economic stability and creating an unsustainable trend of shifting economic activity from the private to the public sector.

Unemployment of the Working class: Since this title ties directly into the segment above, I will only add that the shortage of capital in the private sector and the threat of increased taxes and government regulation has severely impacted the job market in the United States. As long as business must compete with an out of control government for available credit and as long as business owners operate under the threat of increased government tax and regulatory liabilities, the unemployment trends will not reverse. Our bizarre trade agreements and aggressive taxes have done little to benefit the manufacturing communities within the United States and many of those jobs will never return as long as there is an economic advantage to manufacture overseas. The rest have been regulated out of existence or have been so seriously impacted that they are near collapse.

The 'Mob' and the cost of the 'Games': In order to placate the mobs of unemployed workers, the Roman government found increasing amounts of money going to fund gladiatorial games to occupy the masses. Of course this was only a temporary means to quiet civil unrest and more spectacular events had to be presented to keep the mobs occupied. The games would eventually consume more that a full third of the total income of the Empire.

Of course we don’t have bloody competitions to amuse the poor and unemployed but we do throw an awful lot of money at the problem through government entitlement programs. The problem is as the government spends more, they consume the monies that would ordinarily stay in the economy to create the jobs that would eventually, alleviate unemployment and poverty. There is a minor percentage of the population that would always be unemployed because of disabilities, poor life choices and yes, even because they were raised to be government dependents. Unfortunately, the addition of high unemployment to that base has stressed the entitlement structure to near collapse and it is reaching the point where our public outlay for these programs is nearly on par with the expense of the Roman games.

Decline in ethics and values: Do I really need to expand on this? I think anyone that has read the news lately would agree that the ethics and values of our nation are being seriously challenged. Not because the average American is so depraved, but rather because we are constantly inundated with legal challenges from our friends on the left to accept the unacceptable. There is even an ongoing full court press to introduce many of these radical and morally bankrupt ideas into our schools to infect our children before they have fully developed the moral armor needed to fend off the assault. Parents are being denigrated by these people and they are trying to convince our children that we are old fools that just don’t know any better. Once a society has lost respect for its elders it has lost its past and without its past, it has no future.

Slave Labor: Rome captured many people from occupied lands that would work as slaves for the Empire. Slave labor was essential to Rome because so many Roman men were under arms to defend this expansive Empire. Since slaves were disposable, slave labor added to the decline of morals and ethics as happens when people routinely treated other humans with such miserable disregard. Since slave labor replaced so many Roman men, Rome also suffered from technological stagnation as skilled labor was replaced with unskilled slaves performing a trained task.

Hmm. This is a difficult one. I could comment on our own spotted past but America was courageous enough to abolish slavery and even fought a bloody civil war to bring about abolition. Instead I will say that the oppressive taxation used to fund the distributive policies of Progressive politicians has effectively created slaves of anyone that pays taxes. The taxes are not fair and because they are easily attained, politicians have no compelling interest in reducing them. In fact, Progressives routinely vilify the wealthy to justify their acts of legalized theft just as slave owners dehumanized their human possessions to justify the harsh treatment of other men. Our wealthiest Americans now bear so much of this nation’s financial burden that they are fast approaching the point where not working and living on their savings is becoming increasingly appealing. Tell me that is not an induced loss of ethics and values?

Natural Disasters: Well, Rome faced them and so do we.

Christianity: Christianity not only challenged the established faith structure of the Roman Empire but the excessive and immoral practices of the ruling elite. The adoption of Christianity struck at the heart of the core of Roman culture and fundamentally changed the entire structure of Roman society.

Today we have a growing number of people that show open disdain of America’s Judaeo-Christian roots. This country was founded with deeply religious beliefs and without those beliefs; the tenant that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights suddenly rests on very shaky ground. If God did not grant our rights, who did; Government; The Constitution? If they were granted by an act of law then they can certainly be denied by an act of law. Contrary to popular belief, the largest threat to our religious foundation is not being waged by Atheists or Muslims; it is being waged by the ecological movement. They are actively engaged in a fight to protect “mother” earth to the detriment of her human inhabitants. So misguided are these new fundamentalists, that some have embraced a new age religious belief that earth has a soul and awareness that must be honored. Some have even proposed that mankind should cease breeding and bring about the voluntary self-extinction of man so that the earth can finally heal from our horribly destructive ways.

Finally, Barbarian Invasion: Rome had conquered almost all of Europe but was faced with Barbarian assaults on nearly every one of her new borders. The expanse of the Empire and the decline of their economy left them economically unable to fend off Barbarian attack and as the Roman Empire receded, the Barbarians followed their retreat.

We aren’t facing Mongol hoards or waves of Vandals but we are faced with an equally brutal enemy, partially because of our interference in their home lands but also because their religious beliefs do not tolerate any religious faiths other than their own. Of course I am referring to Muslim radicals. Like the Barbarians that the Roman’s faced, radical Muslims will not stop until we are dead, or they are. Unfortunately, they are in a race to obtain weapons that will make their attacks against us even more devastating.

So there it is. What truly frightens me is that none of my attempts to parallel the fall of Rome with the current actions of America are really a stretch of the imagination. So the question is “What do we do now?” Do we continue down the same path until our society collapses under its own weight and the Barbarians are at the gates or do we take the immediate and drastic steps needed to restore our culture and country to point in time before Progressive ideals began chipping away at our morals, economy and God given rights?

Paul

Rome Falls and America Follows - part one

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