[ April 27, 2024 ]
A dear friend is presently reading a history book The Story of England – Makers of the Realm, by Sir Arthur Bryant published in 1953. He summarizes the reasons for the decline of Roman power in three paragraphs. There is, I believe, an uncanny prescience in his words:
“Rome had grown out of greatness of individual character. It became a community in which individual character counted for nothing compared with an abstraction which proved, in the hour of testing, capable of nothing. By sacrificing the individual to the State the rulers of the Roman world undermined the real virtues which sustained it. They turned active and self-respecting citizens into inert and selfish ones. They discouraged the capitalist from thrift and foresight, the trader from enterprise, the craftsman from hereditary skill, the husbandman from pride in the soil, the mother from maternity, and the soldier from courage and self-sacrifice. They made the moral shell that protected society so soft that it could protect it no longer. A creeping inertia paralysed everyone and everything. Even before the barbarians broke in, the elegant cities had begun to crumble, trade to die for want of purchasers, learning, art and even bureaucratic efficiency to disappear for lack of men of ability. The middle-class was exterminated. Civilisation slowly gave place to barbarism at the Empire’s heart.
There was a further reason for Rome’s decay. At its root lay a lack of faith and hope. The citizens and rulers of the Empire came in the end to see no purpose either in society or their own lives. The religion of their remote predecessors – a little pastoral Italian State – had been a simple nature worship based on love of home and country. But the Mediterranean peasant’s adoration of grove, stream and hill, and of the imaginary gods who personified them, could not satisfy the sophisticated citizens of an international empire. For, though Rome accepted every local god as her own and promoted to her pantheon, under names half-Roman and half-British, the celtic deities of river and spring, earth and sky — Apollo-Maponas, Sol-Minerva, Mars-Nodens, Victoria-Brigantia — no educated person any longer believed in them. The only thing that Rome really worshipped now was herself – the all-embracing State – and, as its power began to disintegrate in a murderous welter of ambitious generals contending for the throne, it became impossible any longer even to believe in that.
Story continues below advertisementWhile the strains and stresses of the Empire grew and disasters multiplied, men and women sought feverishly for some answer to the tragic conundrum of existence. Despite the noble creeds of small philosophical minorities like the Stoics, neither pagan deities nor a meaningless succession of divine Caesars offered an ideal strong enough to inspire the masses to perform duty or sacrifice themselves for the community. The gods in the old Mediterranean myths had behaved without regard to morality or justice. So did the rival emperors who fought each other for the purple. It was natural that their worshippers should come to despise and despair of them. And when men despise and despair of their gods, they presently despise and despair of one another.”
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38 Comments
3 years ago
Our downfall was planned. The plan was carefully and methodically carried out over a century by our enemies in the ruling class families of western civilization. Their primary tool of conquest is currency.
3 years ago
That could not be more accurate. The American republic is no longer a nation of virtuous people. It’s time for an ending and a new beginning, whatever form that takes.
3 years ago
Reply to
ahem
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams
Consider these words written by an English noble in 1857 to an American friend:
Thomas Babbington Macaulay to Henry Randall -1857
I have long been convinced that institutions purely
democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilisation or both.
In Europe, where the population is dense, the effect of such institutions
would be almost instantaneous…Either the poor would plunder the rich, and
civilzation would perish; or order and prosperity would be saved by a strong
military government and liberty would perish.”
Looking to America Macaulay decleared:
“Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reigns of government with a strong
hand; or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians
in the 20th Century as the Roman Empire was in the Fifth – with this difference –
that the Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country
by your institutions.”
James Madison said these things: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
It was Patrick Henry that said ”
Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”
““Being a Christian… is a character which I prize far above all this world has or can boast.”
3 years ago
Reply to
Tesla-rules
Some fascinating and excellent quotes that point to what has gone wrong. “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,” the Bible informs us. From personal observation over many years, it’s evident that largely God-rejecting societies such as Canada, the U.S. and Britain consider themselves enormously clever and enlightened for doing so, but meanwhile the reality is that having chosen this route they get more stupid and dishonest with each passing year. In the process they elect to represent them men and women devoid of wisdom, in some cases utter fools and cowards.
3 years ago
Reply to
ahem
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams He spoke only of Christians and Jews.
3 years ago
Reply to
Tesla-rules
“But the widely held and long-asserted conservative idea that rights come from “God” does not fit the bill. And this is why the left is winning…. ” The left is winning, not because the “idea that rights come from “God” does not fit the bill’, but because too many Americans are now Godless pagans who have no spiritual beliefs and in their appalling ignorance, compounded by low standards of education combined with indoctrination, they gravitate to garbage such as utterly failed socialism and “rights-denying” dictatorship. Such people Josef Stalin described as “useful idiots”. Time and again I’ve read that about 70% of black Americans fall out of school, so how many of these people know a thing about dictatorships and their horrors whether in Africa, Soviet Russia, easter Europe or China? Ignorance and stupidity helps attract these morons to socialism and communism. So, it’s not belief in God that does not”fit the bill”, it’s lack of belief in God combined dumb ignorance that lead to thinking that evil is good.
3 years ago
Reply to
ahem
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams He spoke only of Christians and Jews.
3 years ago
Reply to
ahem
Instead of writing a load of twaddle about ‘virtue’, why not simply investigate its definition? Said you,”Self-preservation is the first moral principle, the primary virtue. Self-sacrifice is the antipode of self-preservation. It’s easy to give up and die for the race, the tribe, or the nation-state, it’s heroic and demanding to live for your SELF, and your SELF is your rational mind, your rational values, your rational morality.”
Evident is that you know nothing about virtue or morality, and an example of the selfishness that is destroying the U.S. and other countries.
3 years ago
Well, Rome was a lot like today. More and more people becoming LGBT, extreme violence was extremely popular, morality and family values were immediately destroyed in favor of male priorities. Everyone including children were sex objects. Sex slavery of male children especially was popular. They couldn’t get pregnant. Far more realistic if you wanted sex without rejection or other consequences. Children can say no but fighting back was unlikely to be a problem if you beat them enough and they would be too afraid to be opposed after that. Females were sex objects but afraid of men so lesbians instead. The identical issues that we face socially today existed in their society with LGBT having power and authority and privileges heterosexuals no longer have. Genocidal wiring gripped everyone including the kind that doesn’t produce offspring. Multiculturalism was their Norm. Everyone walked on eggshells and the dark skinned people were as abusive to Europeans then as they are now. After all, Romans were Europeans and hated for conquering and enslaving them.
Slavery was the norm…just as it is today through taxation instead of owning people, but taxation was equally present regardless.
The Left was in power and thus all their values were recognized and promoted as the only values acceptable.
Arrogance and stupidity from the Left cause the destruction and self destruction of every society.
The Left are wired for genocide and suck the will to live out of everyone by abusing and degrading all of us in the sick name of fake human rights which are actually backward to human normal as they promote promote harm and self-harm as normal and the avoidance of them as abnormal.
They’re paranoid schizophrenic in the extreme. Genocide is all they’re capable of.
3 years ago
3 years ago
3 years ago
Videos: Mum Gets LOCKED UP In HOSPITAL For Refusing COVID TEST – Crowd Comes and Gets Mom Released
A hospital in the Salmon Creek neighborhood of Clark County went into lockdown on Friday night after a group of “exceptionally unreasonable” people demanded the release of a patient, authorities said. From the video below we can see a different reality, a daughter was trying to get her mother out of their care. Police aggressively pushed the daughter back after she tried to enter, and maced a man point-blank in his face. Video: LinkDeputies with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office were called to Legacy Salmon Creek at about 6:30 p.m. after a group of 30 to 40 people gathered outside the hospital. Deputies said the group was there to support a person who had a family member being treated at the hospital and they wanted that person released.
The sheriff’s office said the group consisted of “exceptionally unreasonable” people who were “anti-vaxxer, anti-science types” who live-streamed the incident on social media.
A spokesperson at Legacy Salmon Creek said that around 8:30 p.m. that the hospital was in a so-called “silver lockdown” and no one was being allowed in but people inside were permitted to leave.
….
3 years ago
thx1138: Eddie here ! Where do you hang out ?
I wish to meet you and your group of conversationalists !
My desire has been to sit at a table of people who discuss and
DO NOT ARGUE ! Respectful discussion produces THOUGHT,
which generates wisdom. That is a table of
listening and learning. It’s where i listen and “speak NOT” !
Eddie
3 years ago
Democracy has failed every time including the first and always for the same set of causes. Read The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (Blackwell 1991) by Mogens Herman Hansen, tr. Danish J. A. Cook
3 years ago
Reply to
Doug Huffman
You were doing fine, right up to that fraud Leo Peckoff. Ever notice the absence of discussion of Randianism? Peckoff wants you to pay him royalties.
3 years ago
Reply to
Doug Huffman
Randianism and Objectivism are Ayn Rand’s legacy and not Leo Peckoff’s rice bowl.
3 years ago
Reply to
Doug Huffman
That was deep. I hope you didn’t stay up all night thinking up that rebuttal.
3 years ago
Reply to
Doug Huffman
Um Socrates was given the choice: exile or suicide, furthermore, Socrates AND Plato indirectly or directly supported the Spartan imposition of the thirty tyrants in place of Athenian democracy when the Spartans won the Peloponnesian War. “The democratic government is all-powerful”, but it’s a government of the people by the people, in the truest sense of that word and who could vote was limited to citizens/landowners and the only people who could own land in Athens were people who had served in their citizen army.
“The American system is not a democracy” you should’ve stopped there, because the US is no longer a democracy as proved by the fraudulent election that brought emperor biden to power.
3 years ago
Reply to
Doug Huffman
Athenian democracy was far better than the rule of the Thirty Tyrants who, once they were overthrown, were hunted down and killed for the terror they visited on the people of Athens.
Like the old saying goes, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest.
3 years ago
Reply to
MuhamMUDTheFakeProphet
The point is that you must learn what the Athenian’s did with their ‘democracy’, and they the citizens practiced sortition, the tyrants mob rule of the majoiry. You do not know the history of democracy.
3 years ago
Reply to
Doug Huffman
Huh? R U trying to say the rule of the Thirty Tyrants in Athens was better than the pluralistic democracy they had before? The Thirty Tyrants killed or exiled anyone who dared publicly disagree with their policies because freedom of speech and tyranny go together about as well as cling peaches and canned sardines.
D
1 year ago
Reply to
MuhamMUDTheFakeProphet
MMTFP !! How have you been ?? Good to see you back here !!
3 years ago
Reply to
Doug Huffman
“Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom.” Wow the Athenians certainly preferred it to the rule of the Thirty Tyrants. I’d certainly prefer it to Communism or Nazism or Islamic rule. Why can’t you have a constitutionally protected pluralistic democracy that protects individual rights?
Why should they be mutually exclusive?
3 years ago
without a vision the people perish.
3 years ago
The Roman Empire wasn’t Christian in ANY sense of the word. Byzantium was though and it was a helluva lot better than the islamic scourge that replaced it, after all, it was f’ing muslums that burned the ancient library of Alexandria to the ground along with all the scrolls contained therein. Then there’s the fact it was the Catholic Church that became the repository of the literature of the ancient civilsations of Greece and Rome because it sure as hell wasn’t the f’ing muslums!
3 years ago
Reply to
MuhamMUDTheFakeProphet
The Catholic Church was practically the ONLY place the writings of ancient Greek philosophers and playwrights was translated and kept. The f’ing muslums certainly didn’t preserve them. Furthermore, without Catholic men willing to fight and kill the f’ing muslums, you never would’ve had your Renaissance or Reformation because all of Europe would still be under the muslum sandal heel. In a real sense it’s atheists who are bringing back the Dark Ages back to Eurapia with their imposition of islamic blasphemy and heresy laws across Western Eurapia under the guise of prohibiting hate speech.
3 years ago
Reply to
MuhamMUDTheFakeProphet
Who can disagree with what Leonard Peikoff penned? Ivory tower philosophizing doesn’t lend itself to making policy in the real world. Couldn’t it be said the pursuit of individual rights has led to emasculated men trying to claim that they’re women and trying to impose their delusions on everyone by law?
3 years ago
Forgot that part where the Roman Generals invited the attacking Barbarians (China) into the Capital and tried to bribe them with Gold to leave. The barbarian delegation z(China) laughed and promptly killed all the generals and sacked and burned Rome – then they left.
r
3 years ago
It is a little startling when you begin to realize the difference between conservatives and socialists. Conservatives see inequality in society and do all they can to LIFT the down-trodden, the sick, and weary.
On the other hand, when socialists see social inequality, they do all they can to BRING DOWN the successful and the wealthy, who are the source of all means of help for the down-trodden, whether by personal charity or governmental taxation.
Socialists are just plain stupid because they can not understand this simple dichotomy.
Inequality in a conservative society is far better than equality in a socialist society.
Life is simple if you are not stupid.
3 years ago
Bryant echoes Edward Gibbon. One factor Gibbon noted was the decline of willingness to defend the Empire. In the early days it was an honor to serve in the Roman Legions. Later it became a duty, and still later it became a burden to be avoided at almost any costs. When Romans stopped being willing to defend the Empire they delegated (outsourced the task to others outside of Rome. The rest is history. I doubt the US will even reach the point Gibbon described. We have too many people destroying the country, and all it has stood for, from within.
Liberalism is an auto-immune disease for a society. The infection gives indications of attacking conservatives and patriots. The non-woke, non-Social Justice warriors need to prepare for the new America. America 1.0, which was run according to Enlightenment Values of individualism and based upon US Constitution, is dead. Long live America!. America 2.0 is here and is run according to the as-yet specified Wokestitution and collective rights. Individuals are deprecated. If you value individual rights this is no longer the place to be.
1 year ago
Very good analysis of why the former USA no longer exists. While the plan may have been underway for over a century, until fairly recently you could at least pretend that this was still a Constitutional republic with freedom of speech guaranteed.
This all changed during the “Summer of Love” riots in 2020 which were, of course, “Mostly Peaceful”. It continued with almost all major cities being taken over with homeless encampments, a wide open border, a two-tier justice system, woke politics (including the military) , defunding police departments, throwing political opponents into the slammer, and having Big Tech conduct thought control including silencing anyone who was a “Vaccine Denier”, especially if they were doctors. Enforced by the MSM.
As Lincoln warned us in his Lyceum Address of 1838 “If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.”
We’re almost there.
1 year ago
Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, said Santayana. And we are certainly living through a precarious repetition of the fall of Rome, which in this case was orchestrated and designed by a band of radical, pernicious DemoNazis.
We, however, have not forgotten the fall of Rome. And with our eyes wide open, we quite clearly see what they are doing yet somehow remain impotent to stop the destruction. It is either failure of our own, or our leader ship, but both lead to the same end– the total and complete collapse of the United States of America.
Never forget that no nation can exist on earth without a clearly defined border. Right now, the barbarians are rolling into our country with the help of the seditious Democrat party that is putting them on the tax payer payroll which further adds insult to injury, and it escalates the impending collapse . This is all by design.
Let’s hope our leader ship has the strength, vision, courage, and desire to give their all to save the greatest country ever created in human history.
God bless America and it’s great people.
Last edited 1 year ago by Harry Grimes
1 year ago
What a load of crap.
1 year ago
The truth . . .wrought by history.
1 year ago
Really puts it in perspective, looking back, I can see where a lot of this started over 50 years ago! Buckle up, it’s going to be a ROUGH ride!
1 year ago
Viewing all the excellent comments on this article I do not see my view that today’s problems can be attributed to Obama corrupting our entire society from his first acts of placing moslems in the intelligence agencies and the school system to Bidens first act of destroying America’s energy infrastructure all to the benefit of islam’s focus on bringing Western Civilization under sharia slavery.
We cannot fathom the intensity of islams deceit, treachery and corruption.
