America's eerie parallels to downfall of Rome

[mmckee1952]

Bill Federer recounts factors contributing to massive empire's demise

The fall of Rome was a culmination of several external and internal factors.

Great Wall of China
By 220 A.D., the Later Eastern Han Dynasty had extended sections of the Great Wall of China along its Mongolian border. This resulted in the Northern Huns attacking west instead of east. This caused a domino effect of tribes migrating west across Central Asia, and overrunning the Western Roman Empire.

Open borders
Illegal immigrants poured across the Roman borders: Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Anglos, Saxons, Alemanni, Thuringians, Rugians, Jutes, Picts, Burgundians, Lombards, Alans, Vandals as well as African Berbers and Arab raiders.

Will and Ariel Durant wrote in “The Story of Civilization” (Vol. 3 – Caesar and Christ, Simon & Schuster, 1944, p. 366): “If Rome had not engulfed so many men of alien blood in so brief a time, if she had passed all these newcomers through her schools instead of her slums, if she had treated them as men with a hundred potential excellences, if she had occasionally closed her gates to let assimilation catch up with infiltration, she might have gained new racial and literary vitality from the infusion, and might have remained a Roman Rome, the voice and citadel of the West.”

Loss of common language
At first immigrants assimilated and learned the Latin language. They worked as servants, with many rising to leadership. But then they came so fast they did not learn Latin, but instead created a mix of Latin with their own Germanic, Frankish and Anglo tribal tongues. The unity of the Roman Empire began to dissolve.

The welfare state
“Bread and the Circus!” Starting in 123 B.C., the immensely powerful Roman politician Gaius Gracchus began appeasing citizens with welfare, a monthly handout of a free dole (handout) of grain.

Roman poet Juvenal (circa 100 A.D.) described how Roman emperors controlled the masses by keeping them ignorant and obsessed with self-indulgence, so that they would be distracted and not throw them out of office, which they might do if they realized the true condition of the Empire: “Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions – everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”

The Durants wrote in “The Lessons of History” (p. 92): “The concentration of population and poverty in great cities may compel a government to choose between enfeebling the economy with a dole or running the risk of riot and revolution.”

Welfare and government jobs exploded, as recorded in “Great Ages of Man – Barbarian Europe” (NY: Time-Life Books, 1968, p. 39), one Roman commented: “Those who live at the expense of the public funds are more numerous than those who provide them.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/americas-eer ... PxCtkMQ.99

My Thoughts:
I’ve been saying this for years.

[dorminWS]

I'll give you an amen from the choir.

[Marshall357Dillon]

When several historians and thinkers comment on the similarities of the USA to nations that have fallen from internal causes, it begins to make me think that all is not right with America. Not conspiracy thinking, just an objective comparison. At least four books on the subject come to mind which I would recommend to those who care about what is happening to our country.

The End of America by Naomi Wolf

Suicide of a Superpower by Patrick Buchanan

A Government of Wolves by John Whitehead

The Tyranny of Good Intentions by Paul Craig Roberts

[Jollyrogers66]

I too have been saying this for years.


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[MarcSpaz]

Arrogance of leaders believing, "not us, that could never happen in the US", is exactly why it will happen. Its just a question of when.

Rome still stands today; not as a nation, but as a ghost town of memories and a city of forgotten men. So, one day, will Washington DC.

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