American Minute with Bill Federer
The Fall of Rome - Are There Lessons We Can Learn?
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THE FALL OF ROME
was a culmination of external and internal factors.
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GREAT WALL OF CHINA
By 220AD, the Later Eastern Han Dynasty had extended sections of the
Great Wall of China
along its Mongolian border.
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This resulted in the Northern Huns attacking west instead of east.
This caused a domino effect of displaced tribes migrating west across Central Asia, and overrunning the
Western Roman Empire.
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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.
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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."
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LOSS OF COMMON LANGUAGE
At first immigrants assimilated and learned the Latin language. They worked as servants with many rising to leadership.
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But then they came so fast they did not learn Latin, but instead created a mix of Latin with their own Frankish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Germanic and Anglo tribal tongues. (Romance Languages)
The unity of the
Roman Empire
began to dissolve.
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WELFARE STATE
"Bread and the Circus!"
Starting in 123 BC, the immensely powerful
Roman politician,
Gaius Gracchus
began appeasing citizens with
welfare, a free monthly dole (hand-out) of grain.
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Roman poet Juvenal
(circa 100 AD) described how
Roman emperors
controlled the masses by keeping them ignorant and obsessed with self-indulgence.
This way, they would be distracted and not throw them out of office, which they might have done if they had realized the true dire 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."
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Juvenal
continued:
"Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce; and everyone would shamelessly cry, 'Long live the King' ...
The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them."
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Marcus Tullius Cicero
wrote:
"The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease."
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John Stossel,
host of "Stossel" on the
Fox Business Network
and author of
"No They Can't: Why Government Fails, but Individuals Succeed,"
wrote in his article
"Are We Rome Yet?"
(7/11/13, www.johnstossel.com):
"
The president the Foundation for Economic Education, Lawrence Reed, warned that
Rome,
like America, had an expanding welfare state. It started with 'subsidized grain.' The government gave it away at half price.
... But the problem was that they couldn't stop there - a man named Claudius ran for Tribune on a platform of free wheat for the masses. And won. It was downhill from there ...
Soon, to appease angry voters,
emperors
gave away or subsidized olive oil, salt and pork. People lined up to get free stuff."
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Will and Ariel Durant
wrote in
The Lessons of History
(1968, p. 92):
"The concentration of population and poverty in great cities may compel a government to choose between
enfeebling the economy with a dole
(government handout of bread) or running the risk of riot and revolution."
In
The Great Ages of Man-Barbarian Europe
(NY: Time-Life Books, 1968, p. 39), one
Roman
is recorded as stating:
"Those who live at the expense of the public funds are more numerous than those who provide them."
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VIOLENT, SENSUAL ENTERTAINMENT
The
Circus Maximus
and
Coliseum
were packed with crowds of
Romans
engrossed with violent entertainment, games, chariot races, and until 404 AD, gladiators fighting to the death.
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John Stossel
wrote:
"Nero
traveled with 1,000 carriages.
Tiberius
established an 'office of imperial pleasures,' which gathered 'beautiful boys and girls from all corners of the world' so, as Tacitus put it, the
emperor
'could defile them.'
Emperor Commodus
held a show in the Colosseum at which he personally killed five hippos, two elephants, a rhinoceros and a giraffe."
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The value of human life was low.
Slavery and sex-trafficking abounded, especially of captured peoples from Eastern Europe.
"Slavs," which meant "glorious" came to have the inglorious meaning of a permanent servant or "slave."
(Great Ages,
p. 18).
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Gerald Simons
wrote in
Great Ages of Man-Barbarian Europe
(NY: Time-Life Books, 1968, p. 20):
"In the causal brutality of its public spectacles, in a rampant immorality that even Christianity could not check."
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CHURCH WITHDRAWAL FROM INVOLVEMENT
A hyper-pietism movement swept the church, teaching that the way to truly follow Christ was to withdraw from public involvement, give away all one's money and live as a poor beggar or join a monastery. It was an early version of separation of church and state.
Richard A. Todd
wrote in
"The Fall of the Roman Empire"
(Eerdmans' Handbook to the History of Christianity,
Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Co., 1977, p. 184):
"The church, while preaching against abuses, contributed to the decline by discouraging good Christians from holding public office."
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BIRTH CONTROL, PLANNED PARENTHOOD, & FEWER CHILDREN
Roman families had fewer children.
Up until 374 AD, when a
Roman mother
bore a child, she would lay it at the father's feet. If he picked it up, they would keep it.
If he did not pick it up, feeling it was a financial burden or looked unhealthy, the mother would have to put the baby in a box and leave it outside, exposed to the weather to die.
Early Christians condemned this inhumane practice with the same pro-life arguments used today against the abortion industry.
Some
Romans
sold unwanted children into slavery.
The
Durants
wrote in
The Story of Civilization,
Vol. 3-Caesar and Christ (Simon & Schuster, 1944, p. 134):
"Children were now luxuries which only the poor could afford."
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The
Durants
observed that as
Roman culture advanced, women waited longer to have children and had fewer of them,
yet in
less advanced
cultures women began having
children sooner
and had
more
of them.
Thus, inevitably, the
less advanced cultures overrun the more advanced ones.
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Julius Caesar
noticed this and tried to counter it, as the
Durants
wrote:
"Family limitation
played some part in the history of Greece and
Rome.
It is amusing to find
Julius Caesar
offering (59 B.C.)
rewards
to
Romans
who had
many children,
and
forbidding childless women
to ride in
litters
(chairs on poles carried by porters)
or wear jewelry.
Augustus renewed this campaign some forty years later, with like futility.
... Birth control
continued to
spread
in the
upper classes
while
immigrant stocks
from the
Germanic North
and the
Greek or Semitic East
replenished and altered the population of Italy."
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One of the lessons the
Durants
observed was biological:
"The ...
biological lesson of history
is that
life must breed.
Nature has no use for organisms ... that cannot reproduce ...
She does not care that a
high birth rate
has usually accompanied a
culturally low civilization,
and a
low birth rate
a
civilization culturally high;
and she (here meaning Nature) sees to it that
a nation with a low birth
rate shall be periodically
chastened by some more virile and fertile group."
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IMMORALITY, INFIDELITY, & LOSS OF VIRTUE
There was court favoritism, the patronage system, injustice in the legal system, infidelity, bathhouses rampant with homosexuality, sexual immorality, gluttony, and gymnasiums ("gym" being the Greek word for naked).
5th-Century historian
Salvian
wrote:
"For all the lurid
Roman
tales of their atrocities ... the barbarians displayed ... a good deal more fidelity to their wives."
(Great Ages,
p. 13.)
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Salvian
continued:
"O
Roman people
be ashamed; be ashamed of your lives. Almost no cities are free of evil dens, are altogether free of impurities, except the cities in which the barbarians have begun to live ...
Let nobody think otherwise, the vices of our bad lives have alone conquered us ...
The Goths lie, but are chaste, the Franks lie, but are generous, the Saxons are savage in cruelty ... but are admirable in chastity ... What hope can there be for the
Romans
when the barbarians are more pure than they?"
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Samuel Adams
wrote to John Scollay of Boston, April 30, 1776:
"The diminution of public virtue is usually attended with that of public happiness, and the public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.
... 'The
Roman Empire,'
says the historian, 'must have sunk, though the Goths had not invaded it. Why? Because the
Roman virtue
was sunk.'"
As
Roman virtue
declined, the number of laws increased.
Cornelius Tacitus
wrote:
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."
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CLASS WARFARE
City centers were abandoned by the upper class, who bought up farms from rural landowners and transformed them into palatial estates.
The
Durants
wrote in
The Story of Civilization
(Vol. 3-Caesar and Christ, Simon & Schuster, 1944, p.90):
"The
Roman landowner
disappeared now that ownership was concentrated in a few families, and a proletariat (working class) without stake in the country filled the slums of
Rome."
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Inner cities were destabilized, being also plagued with lead poisoning, as the plumbing that brought water into the city was made out of lead pipes. ("plumb" is the Latin word for "lead.")
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HIGH TAXES
Welfare and government jobs exploded, especially with
emperors
wanting to honor themselves by leaving legacies of massive public building projects, such as bath houses, coliseums, parade grounds, etc.
Taxes became unbearable,
as "collectors became greedy functionaries in a bureaucracy so huge and corrupt."
Tax collectors
were described by the historian Salvian as "more terrible than the enemy."
(Great Ages,
p. 20).
Arther Ferrill
wrote in
The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation
(New York: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1986):
"The chief cause of the agricultural decline was high taxation on the marginal land, driving it out of cultivation."
Wealth began to flee the Empire, and with it, the spirit of liberty and patriotism.
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President William Henry Harrison
warned in his Inaugural Address, 1841:
"It was the beautiful remark of a distinguished English writer that 'in the
Roman senate Octavius
had a party and
Antony
a party, but the
Commonwealth
had none' ...
"The spirit of liberty had fled, and, avoiding the abodes of civilized man, had sought protection in the wilds of Scythia or Scandinavia; and so under the operation of the same causes and influences it will fly from our Capitol and our forums."
More recently,
John F. Kennedy
observed, January 6, 1961:
"Present tax laws may be stimulating in undue amounts the flow of American capital to industrial countries abroad."
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OUTSOURCING
Rome's economy stagnated from a large trade deficit, as grain production was outsourced to North Africa.
Gerald Simons
wrote in
Great Ages of Man-Barbarian Europe
(NY: Time-Life Books, 1968, p. 39):
"As conquerors of North Africa, the Vandals cut off the Empire's grain supply at will. This created critical food shortages, which in turn curtailed
Roman
counterattacks."
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EXPLODING DEBT & COINAGE DEBASEMENT
As the
Roman economy
declined, those unable to pay their mortgages abandoned their properties, renounce their
Roman citizenship,
and went off to live with the barbarians.
As a result,
Emperor Diocletian
decreed that
people could never run away from their debts,
thus tying them and their children to the land in perpetuity, creating the
feudal system.
Rome
was crippled by huge government bureaucracies and enormous public debt.
Rather than curb out-of-control government spending,
Roman emperors
decided to debase coins by mixing them with cheaper base metals. This devalued their monetary system and caused exponential inflation.
The
Durants
wrote in
The Lessons of History
(p. 92):
"Huge bureaucratic machinery was unable to govern the empire effectively with the enormous, out-of-control debt."
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John Stossel
wrote:
"To pay for their excesses,
emperors
devalued the currency.
Nero reduced the silver content of coins to 95 percent. Then Trajan reduced it to 85 percent and so on. By the year 300, wheat that once cost eight
Roman dollars
cost 120,000
Roman dollars."
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In
Great Ages of Man-Barbarian Europe
(NY: Time-Life Books, 1968, p. 20),
Gerald Simons
wrote:
"The Western
Roman economy,
already undermined by falling production of the great
Roman estates
and an unfavorable balance of trade that siphoned off gold to the East, had now run out of money."
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Rolf Nef
of Global Research, wrote in
"Falling Empires and their Currencies" (1/5/07,
www.globalresearch.ca):
"When empires fall, their currencies fall first. Even clearer is the rising debt of empires in decline, because in most cases their physical expansion is financed with debt ...
The common thing is that the currencies of each and every one of these falling empires lost dramatically in value ...
... The
Roman Empire
existed from 400 B.C. to 400 A.D. Its history is the history of physical expansion, like the history of almost all empires.
Its expansion was driven by a citizen soldier army, paid in silver coins, land and slaves from occupied territories. If there was not enough silver in the treasury to conduct a war, base metals were added to coin more money.
... That is to say, the authorities debased their currency which presaged the fall of the Empire. There was a limit to the expansion. The empire became over-stretched, running out of silver money, and eventually went under, overrun by barbarian hordes."
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The noted astronomer
Nicolaus Copernicus
observed:
"Nations are not ruined by one act of violence, but gradually and in an almost imperceptible manner by the depreciation of their circulating currency, through its excessive quantity."
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Richard W. Fisher,
President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, remarked before the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco, California, May 28, 2008:
"We know from centuries of evidence in countless economies, from ancient
Rome
to today's Zimbabwe, that running the printing press to pay off today's bills leads to much worse problems later on.
The inflation that results from the flood of money into the economy turns out to be far worse than the fiscal pain those countries hoped to avoid."
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John Stossel
added:
"Rome's
government, much like ours, wasn't good at making sure subsidies flowed only to the poor, said Reed: 'Anybody could line up to get these goods, which contributed to the ultimate bankruptcy of the
Roman state.'
... As inflation increased,
Rome
... imposed wage and price controls. When people objected,
Emperor Diocletian
denounced their 'greed,' saying, 'Shared humanity urges us to set a limit.' Doesn't that sound like today's anti-capitalist politicians? ...
...
Rome
enforced controls with the death penalty - and forbid people to change professions.
Emperor Constantine
decreed that those who broke such rules 'be bound with chains and reduced to servile condition."
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DEEP STATE ESTABLISHMENT POLITICIANS
The
Roman emperor
usurped so much power, that the
Roman Senate,
instead of ruling
Rome
and defending the rights of the people, existed only to maintain their own positions.
Common people were discourage from getting involved in politics. The
Durants
wrote in
The Lessons of History
(p. 92):
"The educated and skilled pursued business and financial success to the neglect of their involvement in politics."
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John Stossel
wrote in his article
"Are We Rome Yet?":
"Historian Carl Richard said that today's America resembles
Rome.
The
Roman Republic
had a constitution, but
Roman leaders
often ignored it.
'Marius
was elected consul six years in a row, even though under the constitution (he) was term-limited to one year.'
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Ben Franklin
addressed the Constitutional Convention, June 2, 1787:
"There are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men ... ambition and avarice -- the love of power and the love of money ...
Place before the eyes of such men a post of honor, that shall, at the same time, be a place of profit, and they will move heaven and earth to obtain it ..."
Franklin
added:
"What kind are the men that will strive for this profitable preeminence, through all the bustle of cabal, the heat of contention, the infinite mutual abuse of parties, tearing to pieces the best of characters? It will not be the wise and moderate, the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the trust.
It will be the bold and the violent, the men of strong passions and indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits. These will thrust themselves into your government and be your rulers."
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Harry S Truman
stated April 3, 1951:
"Without a firm moral foundation, freedom degenerates quickly ... into anarchy. Then there will be freedom only for ... those who are stronger and more unscrupulous than the rank and file of the people."
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DEFENSE CUTS & OVER-EXTENDED MILITARY
Emperors realized that if they kept citizens preoccupied with endless external wars, the citizens would be distracted from complaining about internal problems and political strife.
Though the
Roman military
was superior and marched with speed on a system of highly advanced
Roman roads,
the
Roman Legions
were over-extended and strained fighting continual conflicts from the Rhine River to the Sassanid Persian Empire.
Roman borders
were over-extended and border patrol troop strength was cut back to dangerously low ranks.
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Stossel
wrote:
"Eventually,
Rome's empire
was so large - and people so resentful of centralized control - that generals in outlying regions began declaring independence from
Rome."
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LOSS OF PATRIOTISM
Will and Ariel Durant
noted in
The Lessons of History,
that
Rome's
rapid demographic change threatened the patriotic impulse to defend it:
"Very probably this ethnic change reduced the ability or willingness of the inhabitants to resist governmental incompetence and external attack."
Non-Roman citizens
were enlisted into the
Roman military,
being offered citizenship in exchange for their military service.
This carried a risk, for how could they be expected to defend
Roman borders
from invading
Germanic tribes,
when, in many cases, those tribes were their relatives.
Non-Roman soldiers
who defected carried their military training with them to the enemy.
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The
Durants
wrote in
The Story of Civilization
(Vol. 3-Caesar and Christ, Simon & Schuster, 1944, p.90):
"The new generation,
having
inherited world mastery, had no
time or
inclination to defend it;
that readiness for war which had characterized the
Roman landowner
disappeared."
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With the increase of invading hordes,
Roman legions
had to be recalled from the frontiers to protect the city of
Rome
itself.
It was at this time that young
Saint Patrick
was kidnapped from
Roman Britain
and sold as a slave in Druid Ireland, which he later evangelized.
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TERRORIST ATTACKS
The law of nature demonstrates that weakness invites attack.
As
Rome
exhibited weakness,
Attila the Hun,
"The Scourge of God," attacked with an army of a half-million soldiers.
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Christians thought
Attila
was the anti-christ as he killed, by some estimates, 20 million people.
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After attacking cities in Persia, North Africa, and Eastern Europe,
Attila
took his army with battering rams and siege towers and sacked the European cities of:
Strasbourg, Worms, Mainz, Cologne, Trier, Metz, Reims, Tournai, Cambrai, Amiens,
and
Beauvais.
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When
Attila
headed toward
Paris
in 451, young
Saint Genevieve
convinced the inhabitants not to flee but instead to pray.
She began a
"prayer marathon,"
after which
Attila
inexplicably bypassed
Paris
and instead attacked
Orleans.
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Aquileia
was an Italian city on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It was the 9th largest city in the world, with over 100,000.
Attila
so completely decimated
Aquileia
that the inhabitants fled into marshy lagoons, hammered logs into the sand, and built platforms to live on. This grew into the city of
Venice.
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When
Attila
headed toward Italy in 452,
Pope Leo
rode out to persuade him to spare
Rome.
The Pope's mission was successful, but it only delayed the fall of
Rome
by a few decades.
Finally, in 476, barbarian
Chieftain Odoacer
attacked. This is considered the date of the
fall of Rome, September 4, 476.
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LESSONS FROM THE FALL OF ROME
Future generations can learn from the factors that led to the
fall of Rome:
*open borders;
*loss of common language;
*welfare state;
*violent, sensual entertainment & sex-trafficking;
*church withdrawal from involvement;
*birth control, planned parenthood, & fewer children;
*immorality, infidelity, & loss of virtue;
*class warfare;
*high taxes;
*out-sourcing;
*exploding debt & coinage debasement;
*deep state, establishment politicians;
*defense cuts & over-extended military;
*loss of patriotism;
*terrorist attacks.
The
Durants
wrote in
The Lessons of History
(p. 89-90):
"Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) ... divided history into ... two periods:
-one of
centripetal organization,
unifying a culture in all its phases into a unique coherent, and artistic form;
-the other a period of
centrifugal disorganization,
in which creed and culture decompose in division and criticism, and end in chaos."
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John Stossel
wrote:
"At FreedomFest,
Matt Kibbe,
president of FreedomWorks, also argued that America could soon collapse like
Rome
did.
'The parallels are quite ominous - the debt, the expansionist foreign policy, the arrogance of executive power taking over our country,' says Kibbe. 'But I do think we have a chance to stop it ...'"
Stossel
added:
"The triumph of liberty in not inevitable ... Empires do crumble.
Rome's
lasted the longest.
The Ottoman Empire lasted 623 years. China's Song, Qing and Ming dynasties each lasted about 300 years. We've lasted just 237 years so far ..."
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Concluding,
Stossel
commented on America:
"We've accomplished amazing things, but we shouldn't take our continued success for granted.
Freedom
and
prosperity
are not natural. In human history,
they're rare."
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American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
[email protected]
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