We are following the exact path of the Roman Empire and every empire that has existed in human history. Our decline is well under way. The only question is how long before the final collapse. I can guarantee you it won’t be centuries. History moves more rapidly and the weapons at the disposal of war pigs are much more lethal. First there will be financial collapse, then world war. In the meantime, enjoy the bread and circuses while your dollars are debased by the minute.
Rome Didn’t Fall In A Day
[The Following post is by TDV Correspondent, Chris Sullivan]
Back in the ’70s, I used to expect the government to suffer a financial collapse at which time it would have to quit doing most of the things it’s doing because it would run out of money. That isn’t what has happened. Instead of cutting spending it has printed more money and tried to increase taxes on various things.
Like many things historical, there’s a precedent for this. There’s a proverbial saying that “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” but it didn’t collapse in a day either. Probably most of the Romans who lived as the Empire was collapsing didn’t realize that was what was happening, but plenty of them realized they weren’t living in the good old days.
One such person was a man named Salvian, sometimes called Salvian the Presbyter. He wrote a treatise that is called in English The Governance Of God or De gubernatione Dei in Latin*. Its original title was On The Present Judgement and it is well worth reading to see how things played out then and probably always will. His purpose was to show that the then current problems were caused by moral collapse, excessive taxation and a greedy and conniving landed class, not an abandonment of the old pagan religion. Julian the Apostate who had made the opposite argument 70 or so years before, had tried to re-institute paganism and even tried to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, presumably because it wasn’t Christian and he liked practices such as animal sacrifice, but his efforts ended when he was killed in a war with the Persians after a short reign.
In making his case, Salvian left us a first-hand account of how things went to rot. One of the things he mentions over and over is how the peasant class was obliterated by oppressive taxation and how the small land owners indentured themselves to the large land owners who paid their taxes for them, but in return got their land and their labor, eventually leading to feudalism. Even after the small land owners had lost their land and become coloni – those who worked the land but did not own it – they still were liable for the tax, thus permanently indenturing them to the wealthy land owner who paid it for them.
The Romans had a system of permanent tax collectors called curiales. If you were born a curiale, you could not change jobs and were liable to pay any taxes you could not collect. Needless to say, this assured great diligence on the part of the curiales.
One of the many things Salvian mentions that is starting to be more common in the U.S., but was unheard of just a few years ago is people fleeing the Empire and renouncing their citizenship.
Just as Washington refuses to rein in its excesses, the same was true of Rome around A.D. 450.
It wasn’t just in fiscal matters that modern times resemble the fall of Rome. Salvian laments the obsession people had with attending (American Idol/NFL/NBA) the games. Rome had degenerated so far that there were 175 holidays per year, each with its state-sponsored amusements. The Roman Army had boy camp-followers instead of, or perhaps in addition to female prostitutes. The shouts of people being killed in defense of the city could not be distinguished from those at the games.
Things had declined so far that the public officials whom he classifies as robbers continued to rob the people even after they no longer held office. This has been refined in modern times to the revolving door system of going from elected office to lobbyist or CEO of some big company that conducts business with the government.
Salvian portrays the barbarians as virtuous people – much more so than his fellow countrymen – nothing like the people they are typically represented as being. Even back then, government knew best and imposed price controls which then as always caused black marketeers to provide for people’s wants and needs. One difference between then and now is that the Romans could not print money. They could debase it, but not print it as virtually all modern states do. They also had no efficient way of spying on the populace or freezing assets which is now routine. This enables us to postpone, but not avert the day of collapse. As everybody seems to be fond of saying, it allows us to “kick the can down the road,” but at some point we will find that the road is a dead end.
I’ll say it again: HIstory is Prophecy.
We are absolutely following the path of Rome, just faster and with the added “bonus” of technology at once opiating the masses as it enslaves them.
“De gubernatione Dei ” – is that where the phrase “de gubbermint” came from? Hahaha, if so RE gets credit for that one.
Salvian and Gibbons chronicled the demise of Rome: Jim and the TBP are doing the same for America.
Will there be anybody left to read us in 1500 years?
While i agree with the article,ive traveled a bit and havent found anouther place i would want to move to.Europe has problems and between a language barrier and i found europe expensive.
Asia was poor and where i went humid.I dont like being an outsider.
I still Love the usa,just not our corrupt government.
I have often thought the apex of American society will be marked as the day we shut down the Apollo Project. The US was expanding into space, much like Rome expanded its territories. Then expenses (entitlements, corruption, subsidies, perversions…) at home started to starve the cost expansion to the point it stalled and started to contract. Rome went downhill from that point. The US is repeating the same mistakes.
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In all of history, no government became more honest, less corrupt, or granted its citizens more rights as it grew in size. E.L. 2011
We are far along the path of Rome. I think the wholesale looting of America by the government/bankster cabal in 2008-9 was the equivalent of Alaric’s sacking of Rome in 410 AD. The final collapse and breakup process started then, and was well along the way when the Vandals did a much more destructive sacking of Rome in 455.
The coming financial crash – especially in the bond market, could be the equivalent of the Vandals, and it will happen soon. I think there is a good chance the US will not survive this decade intact.
As things stand now, the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear enrichment will fail. The reason they will fail is not because the Iranians won’t compromise but because they are a sham. Israel wants war and we are Israel’s bitch. The purpose of the talks is to provide the excuse. What will come from this war I have no idea, but it will be nothing good.
The notion that Rome fell in 476AD has only around since the 20th century. In the 4th century Constantine moved the eastern empire to the new capitol Constantinople. The empire was split in two with the east called the Byzantine empire. The Byzantines considered themselves Roman and referred to their empire as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks after 1100 years. Edward Gibbons and other historians concidered the Byzantine the Roman Empire.
An empire that spanned 1600 years. Really amazing. We have only been a nation for 237. Wonder if we will last another 1300.
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.
We are going to be taxed to death before long, just like Romans. There are a lot of bread and circuses (and entitlements) to pay for. The Romans didn’t have 76 million obese baby boomers to pay for.
We hould have hit Iran on the 1st of April, like I predicted, when all three carrier battle groups were in position to support Israel’s effort.
The Iranians lie, cheat and in general, are a bunch of fucking religious nuts. They will lie, lie, lie, to try and buy time and then go ahead and do what they intended to in the first place.
When those battle groups were positioned on april 1st, Iran caved in on something. don’t know what, but they agreed to something re: uranium purification. Now that we have reversed the carrier battle groups direction, they are fucking around with us again.
Remember Neville Chamberlain and his “agreement” with Nazi Germany? Promptly followed by the invasion of Poland?
You can’t trust lying son of bitches like the Iranian Ayatollahs and their puppet politicians.. They have one purpose. Get an atomic weapon and drop it on Israel. The fact that they will promptly vanish in a puff of atomic smoke doesn’t bother them at all. They want Israel GONE. They will lie, cheat, bull shit, prevaricate, lie some more, promise anything and not carry though to gain that endgame.
They are just like any of the other radical Islamic shitheads. The only understand one thing. Force. They need to be bombed into dust; a memorial said for all the innocent civilians they take along with them to Allah and forgotten.
The same thing goes for the rulers of Saudi Arabia who love their booze and whores in private but would prefer us to be all dead. Too bad they need a market for their oil.. They are all a bunch of piss-ants that would cut their mother’s throats to accomplish their goals. Just because all but one of the 9/11/2001 highjackers were of Saudi Arabian origin certainly wasn’t a clue, was it? Why didn’t we go after Saudi instead of Iraq who only lusted after Kuwait’s oil? We couldn’t because Europe needed the oil.. So we sacrifice 3000 lives and no retaliation to insure Europe can keep the home fires burning and the cars a rolling.
I call Horseshit on all of it. The human being, in general, is a sorry example of a low life form on a dying planet and the sooner we’re all gone and Mother Nature erases all signs of our stay on this lonesome planet, the better off the Universe will be.
MA
Sounds like Muck missed the early bird special tonight.
Nothing like a good Muck rant. Get rid of all the useless eaters eh?
The last anti-christ killed off more than 20 million. I’m bettin Obama can make it more than a billion this time.
Muck – now you’ve done it. Admin says Iran is populated by sane, act- in- their- own- self- interest type politicians. I think that they are crazy as bedbugs and will destroy Israel if they ever get a chance, no matter the consequence. I also say let Israel sort them out.
Muck in disguise
Muck, did you steal that rant from Chuckie Krauthammer?
Destroy Israel? What a wonderful idea!
Muck didn’t miss shit. I do not advocate the erasure of Israel. Some of the Israeli (the radical right) needs to have their pants pulled down and paddled severely, but as a country, considering what the world did in standing by and allowing 6 million jews to be murdered over 5 years, dammit, they deserve a country of their own and they deserve to be left alone.
Whether they can keep the country it is another question. Me, if I were Bibi’s right hand man, I would have bombed Iran’s nuclear capability out of existence years ago (about the same time I dropped a dime on Syria’s nuke plans. You know, the ones the Syrians never admitted happened!).
I would have also told the Arab/Muslim world that they can shove their ambitions for the West Bank and the Golan Heights up their collective asses and would have cleared Gaza of Hezbollah year ago. Go along and get along would be my motto. You get along with me, we’ll trade with you, employ you, improve your standard of living and generally be a sugar daddy to you.
Screw with us, however, and you’re a dead bunch of Islamic idiots and for every Israeli you kill, we’ll take out 30 or more of you stupid Muslims in return and screw the “world opinion”. After all, the “world” has done squat to protect us or help us and we’ve fought war after war (only one of which we started) to insure our survival and one or two more won’t hurt much more because Arabs have the ability to fight like my 92 year old Aunt Millie fucks. Which isn’t very much.
I’m not a jew. I’m an atheist so I do not take religion into account. I’m a tit-for-tat kind of guy (heavy on the tit) who believes that if you treat me fairly and friendly, I’ll bust my ass to be a god buddy with you. Screw with me and I’ll slip a sharp one between your 3rd and 4th ribs before you can sneeze. You also get one chance. Israel has given these assholes a half dozen chances and have received nothing but mortar rounds in return. Enough already.
MA
Hmmm.. That’s “good buddy”…
MA
My solution to Israel…recall our ambassador and expel theirs. Cancel the “special relationship” and terminate all aid of any kind. Remove sanctions from Iran and apologize to the Persian people for damaging their economy. Then demand that Israel open up it’s nuclear facilities and wmd to international inspection and that they come to an agreement with the Palestinians based on 1967 borders as a precondition to the resumption of normal relations.
Until we tame that foreign menace, our international reputation will continue to suffer and americans will continue to die in its wars.
PS, I just learned from LRC that the christian population of Israel has declined from 37% to 1% within the last 15 years as the jews, with tacit government approval, extend their ethnic cleansing campaign.
Life in Israel, from the experience of a Palestinian citizen. Another fine example of our shared values…
Not All Israeli Citizens Are Equal
By YOUSEF MUNAYYER
Published: May 23, 2012
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I’m a Palestinian who was born in the Israeli town of Lod, and thus I am an Israeli citizen. My wife is not; she is a Palestinian from Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Despite our towns being just 30 miles apart, we met almost 6,000 miles away in Massachusetts, where we attended neighboring colleges.
A series of walls, checkpoints, settlements and soldiers fill the 30-mile gap between our hometowns, making it more likely for us to have met on the other side of the planet than in our own backyard.
Never is this reality more profound than on our trips home from our current residence outside Washington.
Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport is on the outskirts of Lod (Lydda in Arabic), but because my wife has a Palestinian ID, she cannot fly there; she is relegated to flying to Amman, Jordan. If we plan a trip together — an enjoyable task for most couples — we must prepare for a logistical nightmare that reminds us of our profound inequality before the law at every turn.
Even if we fly together to Amman, we are forced to take different bridges, two hours apart, and endure often humiliating waiting and questioning just to cross into Israel and the West Bank. The laws conspire to separate us.
If we lived in the region, I would have to forgo my residency, since Israeli law prevents my wife from living with me in Israel. This is to prevent what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once referred to as “demographic spillover.” Additional Palestinian babies in Israel are considered “demographic threats” by a state constantly battling to keep a Jewish majority. (Of course, Israelis who marry Americans or any non-Palestinian foreigners are not subjected to this treatment.)
Last week marked Israel’s 64th year of independence; it is also when Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” during which many of Palestine’s native inhabitants were turned into refugees.
In 1948, the Israeli brigade commander Yitzhak Rabin helped expel Lydda’s Palestinian population. Some 19,000 of the town’s 20,000 native Palestinian inhabitants were forced out. My grandparents were among the 1,000 to remain.
They were fortunate to become only internally displaced and not refugees. Years later my grandfather was able to buy back his own home — a cruel absurdity, but a better fate than that imposed on most of his neighbors, who were never permitted to re-establish their lives in their hometowns.
Three decades later, in October 1979, this newspaper reported that Israel barred Rabin from detailing in his memoir what he conceded was the “expulsion” of the “civilian population of Lod and Ramle, numbering some 50,000.” Rabin, who by then had served as prime minister, sought to describe how “it was essential to drive the inhabitants out.”
Two generations after the Nakba, the effect of discriminatory Israeli policies still reverberates. Israel still seeks to safeguard its image by claiming to be a bastion of democracy that treats its Palestinian citizens well, all the while continuing illiberal policies that target this very population. There is a long history of such discrimination.
In the 1950s new laws permitted the state to take control over Palestinians’ land by classifying them “absentees.” Of course, it was the state that made them absentees by either preventing refugees from returning to Israel or barring internally displaced Palestinians from having access to their land. This last group was ironically termed “present absentees” — able to see their land but not to reach it because of military restrictions that ultimately resulted in their watching the state confiscate it. Until 1966, Palestinian citizens were governed under martial law.
Today, a Jew from any country can move to Israel, while a Palestinian refugee, with a valid claim to property in Israel, cannot. And although Palestinians make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population, the 2012 budget allocates less than 7 percent for Palestinian citizens.
Tragically for Palestinians, Zionism requires the state to empower and maintain a Jewish majority even at the expense of its non-Jewish citizens, and the occupation of the West Bank is only one part of it. What exists today between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is therefore essentially one state, under Israeli control, where Palestinians have varying degrees of limited rights: 1.5 million are second-class citizens, and four million more are not citizens at all. If this is not apartheid, then whatever it is, it’s certainly not democracy.
The failure of Israeli and American leaders to grapple with this nondemocratic reality is not helping. Even if a two-state solution were achieved, which seems fanciful at this point, a fundamental contradiction would remain: more than 35 laws in ostensibly democratic Israel discriminate against Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.
For all the talk about shared values between Israel and the United States, democracy is sadly not one of them right now, and it will not be until Israel’s leaders are willing to recognize Palestinians as equals, not just in name, but in law.
Yousef Munayyer is executive director of the Jerusalem Fund.
If I aw Palestinian I would be pissed off, for sure. However,what happened to the Jews was far, far,far worse. Palestinians were hit with unintended consequence. Have their Arabbrethren raised a single finger to assist them? Hell no. The plight of the Palestinians suits the purposes of those that want Israel destroyed.
Z – Israel is a foreign menace? For fuck sake, get a clue. A few million people surrounded by hundreds of millions that oppose them in all things. Israel is a peaceful nation. They have shown remarkable restraint. Take a look at Syria and the atrocities there, the atrocities of the Iraq/Iran war, the behavior of Sunnis vs Shiites, the suicide bombers, etc etc etc. And you think Israel is the foreign menace. What a joke.
That said, they all need to be left alone. If they live they live. If they die they die. Nothing outsiders do will change that.
Z- why don’t the US give the land back to the Indians, open up the US nuclear sites to inspection, giveRussia backAlaska, apologize to all damaged parties, et al,? Do you know anything about history? To the victor the spoils. Israel didn’t start that war,or any of the wars. They were under imminent threat. They won a war against an aggressor and you want them to hand back the annexed land? And why would they do that when their neighbors want them dead and refuse to offer peace?
Seriously, what one art are you thinking.
Should read “what are you thinking”.
Llpoh, all I can say is that I am just dumbfounded by those regulars here who do not recognize the extent that Israel and it’s proxies represent a threat to our independence and liberty. Jim Trafficant could set you straight. I wonder if he reads this blog…
Israel started (obviously) the 1948 war, and also the 1967 war. It also attempted to sink the USS Liberty and kill all the surviors because it was recording evidence of Israeli atrocites against the egyptians.
http://www.gtr5.com/
Those who think Israel is even remotely our ally need their heads examined.
The Israeli Supreme Court building was financed by Dorothy Rothschild and is a monument to the Illuminati. This is fact not fiction. Anyone who has read Kings in the Old Testament will know the rulers of Israel were judged by whether they followed after God or Baal. Not all of them followed the one true God, but rather built alters and places of worship to honor pagan idols. Other rulers followed who tore down these places of worship and followed after God Almighty.
The history of Judaism is one of much failure, while redemption has been through it’s heroes and prophets, all of whom believed God and his Word. We are in a struggle to the death with the god of this world (II Corinthians 4:4), and it will end only when Christ returns. In fact, Revelation goes into a lot of detail in this matter.
AWD mentions the last anti christ killed 20 million, presumably referring to Stalin. The Devil must raise up an anti-Christ in every generation, because he doesn’t know when Christ will return.
“Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.” – I John 2:18 (ESV)
Cheney was a good bet in the previous administration, Obama is a good bet in this one. I just don’t think Biden has got it in him. You know they’re going to stick close to those nuclear codes.
If it were within man to save himself, then Jesus Christ would not have needed to die on the cross. Our salvation is from above, not in this world.