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<\/p>\nAs some of you know, I\u2019m an aficionado of ancient history. I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss what happened to Rome and based on that, what\u2019s likely to happen to the U.S.<\/p>\n
Spoiler alert: There are some similarities between the U.S. and Rome.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But before continuing, please seat yourself comfortably. This article will necessarily cover exactly those aspects you\u2019re never supposed to talk about\u2014religion and politics\u2014and do what you\u2019re never supposed to do, namely, bad-mouth the military.<\/p>\n
There are good reasons for looking to Rome rather than any other civilization when pursuing to see where the U.S. is headed. Everyone knows Rome declined, but few people understand why. And, I think, even fewer realize that the U.S. is now well along the same path for pretty much the same reasons, which I\u2019ll explore shortly.<\/p>\n
Rome reached its peak of military power around the year 107, when Trajan completed the conquest of Dacia (the territory of modern Romania). With Dacia, the empire peaked in size, but I\u2019d argue it was already past its peak by almost every other measure.<\/p>\n
The U.S. reached its peak relative to the world, and in some ways its absolute peak, as early as the 1950s. In 1950 this country produced 50% of the world\u2019s GNP and 80% of its vehicles. Now it\u2019s about 21% of world GNP and 5% of its vehicles. It owned two-thirds of the world\u2019s gold reserves; now it holds one-fourth. It was, by a huge margin, the world\u2019s biggest creditor, whereas now it\u2019s the biggest debtor by a huge margin. The income of the average American was by far the highest in the world; today it ranks about eighth, and it\u2019s slipping.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not just the U.S.\u2014it\u2019s Western civilization that\u2019s in decline. In 1910 Europe controlled almost the whole world\u2014politically, financially, and militarily. Now it\u2019s becoming a Disneyland with real buildings and a petting zoo for the Chinese. It\u2019s even further down the slippery slope than the U.S.<\/p>\n
Like America, Rome was founded by refugees\u2014from Troy, at least in myth. Like America, it was ruled by kings in its early history. Later, Romans became self-governing, with several Assemblies and a Senate. Later still, power devolved to the executive, which was likely not an accident.<\/p>\n
U.S. founders modeled the country on Rome, all the way down to the architecture of government buildings, the use of the eagle as the national bird, the use of Latin mottos, and the unfortunate use of the fasces\u2014the axe surrounded by rods\u2014as a symbol of state power. Publius, the pseudonymous author of The Federalist Papers<\/em>, took his name from one of Rome\u2019s first consuls. As it was in Rome, military prowess is at the center of the national identity of the U.S. When you adopt a model in earnest, you grow to resemble it.<\/p>\n A considerable cottage industry has developed comparing ancient and modern times since Edward Gibbon published The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire<\/em> in 1776\u2014the same year as Adam Smith\u2019s Wealth of Nations<\/em> and the U.S. Declaration of Independence<\/em> were written. I\u2019m a big fan of all three, but D&F<\/em> is not only a great history, it\u2019s very elegant and readable literature. And it\u2019s actually a laugh riot; Gibbon had a subtle wit.<\/p>\n There have been huge advances in our understanding of Rome since Gibbon\u2019s time, driven by archeological discoveries. There were many aspects he just didn\u2019t know, because he was as much a philologist as an historian, and he based his writing on what the ancients said about themselves.<\/p>\n There was no real science of archeology when Gibbon wrote; little had been done even to correlate the surviving ancient texts with what was on the surviving monuments\u2014even the well-known monuments\u2014and on the coins. Not to mention scientists digging around in the provinces for what was left of Roman villas, battle sites, and so on. Therefore Gibbon, like most historians, was to a degree a collector of hearsay.<\/p>\n And how could he know whom to believe among the ancient sources? It\u2019s as though William F. Buckley, Gore Vidal, H. L. Mencken, Norman Mailer, and George Carlin all wrote about the same event, and you were left to figure out whose story was true. That would make it tough to tell what really happened just a few years ago\u2026 forget about ancient history. That\u2019s why the study of history is so tendentious; so much of it is \u201che said\/she said<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n In any event, perhaps you don\u2019t want a lecture on ancient history. You\u2019d probably be more entertained by some guesses about what\u2019s likely to occur to the U.S. I\u2019ve got some.<\/p>\n Let me start by saying that I\u2019m not sure the collapse of Rome wasn\u2019t a good occurrence. There were many beneficial aspects to Rome\u2014as there are to most civilizations. But there was much else to Rome of which I disapprove, such as its anti-commercialism, its militarism and, post-Caesar, its centralized and increasingly totalitarian government. In that light, it\u2019s worth considering whether the collapse of the U.S. might not be a good occurrence.<\/p>\n So why did Rome fall? In 1985, a German named Demandt assembled 210 reasons. Some of them include racial degeneration, homosexuality, and \u201cexcessive freedom<\/em>\u201d. Most are redundant. Some are just common sense\u2014like bankruptcy, loss of moral fiber, and corruption.<\/p>\n Gibbon\u2019s list is much shorter. Although it\u2019s pretty hard to summarize his six fat volumes in a single sentence, he attributed the fall of Rome to just two causes, one internal and one external: religion and barbarian invasions, respectively. I think Gibbon was essentially right about both.<\/p>\n While accepting Gibbon\u2019s basic ideas on religion and barbarians, I decided to break down the reasons for Rome\u2019s decline further, into 10 categories: political, legal, social, demographic, ecological, military, psychological, intellectual, religious, and economic\u2014all of which I\u2019ll touch on. And, as a bonus, toward the end of this article, I\u2019ll give you another, completely unrelated, and extremely important reason for the collapse of both Rome and the U.S.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t have to agree with my interpretation, but let\u2019s see what lessons are on offer from the history of Rome, from its semi-mythical founding by Romulus and Remus in 753 BCE (a story that conflicts with Virgil\u2019s tale of Aeneas and the refugee Trojans) to what\u2019s conventionally designated as the end of the Western empire in 476 AD, when the child-emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed by Odoacer (a Germanic general who was in charge of what passed for the Roman army\u2014which by then was staffed almost entirely with Germanic mercenaries who had no loyalty to the idea of Rome). It looks a lot like the American experience over the last couple of hundred years. First conquest and expansion, then global dominance, and then slippage into decline.<\/p>\n Political<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s somewhat misleading, however, to talk about a simple fall of Rome, and much more accurate to talk about its gradual transformation, with episodes of what paleontologists describe as \u201cpunctuated disequilibrium<\/em>.\u201d There were many falls.<\/p>\n Republican Rome fell in 31 BCE with the accession of Augustus and the start of what\u2019s called the Principate. It almost disintegrated in the 50 years of the mid-3rd century, a time of constant civil war, the start of serious barbarian incursions, and the destruction of Rome\u2019s silver currency, the denarius.<\/p>\n Rome, as anything resembling a free society, fell in the 290s and then changed radically again, with Diocletian and the Dominate period (more on this shortly). Maybe the end came in 378, when the Goths destroyed a Roman army at Adrianople and wholesale invasions began. Maybe we should call 410 the end, when Alaric\u2014a Goth who was actually a Roman general\u2014conducted the first sacking of Rome.<\/p>\n It might be said the civilization didn\u2019t really collapse until the late 600s, when Islam conquered the Middle East and North Africa and cut off Mediterranean commerce. Maybe we should use 1453, when Constantinople and the Eastern Empire fell. Maybe the Empire is still alive today in the form of the Catholic Church\u2014the Pope is the Pontifex Maximus wearing red slippers, as did Julius Caesar when he held that position.<\/p>\n One certain reflection in the distant mirror is that beginning with the Principate period, Rome underwent an accelerating trend toward absolutism, centralization, totalitarianism, and bureaucracy. I think we can argue America entered its Principate with the accession of Roosevelt in 1933; since then, the president has reigned supreme over the Congress, as Augustus did over the Senate. Pretenses fell off increasingly over time in Rome, just as they have in the U.S.<\/p>\n After the third century, with constant civil war and the destruction of the currency, the Principate (when the emperor, at least in theory, was just the first among equals) gave way to the Dominate period (from the word dominus<\/em>, or lord<\/em>, referring to a master of slaves), when the emperor became an absolute monarch. This took place with the ascension of Diocletian in 284 and then, after another civil war, Constantine in 306. From that point forward, the emperor no longer even pretended to be the first among equals and was treated as an oriental potentate. The same trend is in motion in the U.S, but we\u2019re still a ways from reaching its endpoint\u2014although it has to be noted that the president is now protected by hundreds, even thousands, of bodyguards. Harry Truman was the last president who actually dared to go out and informally stroll about DC, like a common citizen, while in office.<\/p>\n In any event, just as the Senate, the consuls, and the tribunes with their vetoes became impotent anachronisms, so have U.S. institutions. Early on, starting with the fourth emperor, Claudius, in 41 AD, the Praetorians (who had been set up by Augustus) showed they could designate the emperor. And today in the U.S., that\u2019s probably true of its praetorians\u2014the NSA, CIA, and FBI, among others\u2014and of course the military. We\u2019ll see how the next hanging-chad presidential election dispute gets settled.<\/p>\n My guess is that the sheeple (the Romans called them the capite censi<\/em>, or head count) will demand a strong leader as the Greater Depression evolves, the dollar is destroyed, and a serious war gets underway. You have to remember that war has always been the health of the state. The Roman emperors were expected, not least by their soldiers, to always be engaged in war. And it\u2019s no accident that the so-called greatest U.S. presidents were war presidents\u2014Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR. And let\u2019s not forget the self-proclaimed war president Baby Bush. Military heroes\u2014like Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower\u2014are always easy to elect. My guess is that a general will run for office in the next election, when we\u2019ll be in a genuine crisis. The public will want a general partly because the military is now by far the most trusted institution of U.S. society. His likely election will be a mistake for numerous reasons, not least that the military is really just a heavily armed variant of the postal service.<\/p>\n It\u2019s wise to remember Gibbon\u2019s words about the military: \u201cAny order of men accustomed to violence and slavery make for very poor guardians of a civil constitution<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n (to be continued<\/em>)<\/p>\n Author: Doug Casey<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n yogaesoteric <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As some of you know, I\u2019m an aficionado of ancient history. I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss what happened to Rome and based on that, what\u2019s likely to happen to the U.S. Spoiler alert: There are some similarities between the U.S. and Rome. But before continuing, please seat yourself comfortably. This article will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[382],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions-1602-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94321,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94314\/revisions\/94321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/fall-of-roman-empire-e1664482775260.jpg\")
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\nSeptember 29, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n