The meme about the Roman Empire was suddenly everywhere. I had no idea what it meant. It was just an inside joke that I didn’t get. Finally, it was explained in detail by the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh:
He explains it pretty well, but I just kept thinking, is it only men who think about this? Do that many women making those videos really think it’s so odd or funny that men think about the Roman Empire? I guess I must not think the way a typical woman (if there is such a thing) thinks because a week doesn’t go by where I do not contemplate the Roman Empire.
I think about the rise and fall. I think about the emperors themselves and am endlessly fascinated by them. I think about how Rome was built (not in a day!) and how they ate or used the bathroom, their odd sexual proclivities, what could have been so bad that it collapsed the empire, and why Christianity seemed to be a necessary fix for the failings of the Romans.
I think and write often about the Gladiators as entertainment, the bacchanalias, the torture of animals…it’s endless. I suppose because it does seem like our society or our empire on the Left, is nearing its own moment of collapse. It’s hard NOT to think about Rome.
The meme itself is funny if you think collapsing empires are funny. Or that men who might think about them are ridiculous. I don’t know how anyone can NOT think about the Roman Empire.
A continental civilization that worked to integrate numerous diverse groups via trade and technological innovation, which eventually failed because of massive debt as a consequence of military adventurism and bloated civil services in urban areas, but more generally because Rome ultimately lost a sense of itself.
And the less diverse Eastern Roman Empire in Byzantium lasted a 1000 years longer than the Western Empire in Rome. Diversity destroyed the Western Empire's self of itself and led to its collapse. As an amusing aside I see the Left is now trying to blame the fall of Rome on "climate change" and "pandemics." Can the left really be that ensorcelled?
I can understand why the Left ridicules people who think about the Roman Empire. The Left is intentionally imploding Western Civilization to bring about chaos, fear and barbarian tyranny. The Roman Empire is a cautionary tale about how to stave off that outcome so Rome must be erased from memory.
Did it. Thanks for the recommendation. Here's mine to you on the same topic: A Scanner Darkly, book written by Philip K Dick 1977; film directed by Richard Linklater 2006.
The thing is (and I agree completely with your comment) they imagine that they will be able to build utopia out of the ruins, with them presumably at the helm. They believe the “new human” will evolve overnight finally freed from the tyrannical repression of Western Civ.
I think they are fools much like the middle management bureaucrats portrayed in “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” who haven’t the slightest notion that civilization is built on affordable energy, and that flushing toilets, refrigerators, and trash removal is way more important than “self actualization” or gender expression.
The far Left despises history. It's the west they openly hate, but they're really ignorant about any other civilizations and cultures as well. Progressivists hate the past as a rule.
The left ridicules anyone who isn't in lockstep with them. It's genius and served two equally critical (to their mission of indoctrination) purposes: 1) To get the online masses of SJWs to flame anyone to the right of Stalin, and 2) To further the indoctrination of their sheep flock by instructing them "who is bad" and who TO ridicule.
If you haven't noticed how shockingly homogenous (NOT a mean term...look it up) the liberal hive-mind is, just compare posts on any of the liberal websites to what the MSM talking heads say. It's media kool-aid imbibed most willingly.
As a woman, I too think about the Roman Empire, but in the sense it's interesting to think of civilizations in general. The idea others built gorgeous structures we can still see today. Also, the vastness of the Roman's reach is also intriguing to me.
Regarding men, though, I remember the first time I was in England, I told my boyfriend how cool it was to think we were in a place the Romans once lived. (Born and raised in California, makes this is knowledge a big deal.) He had no idea the Romans had even been in England. So there, a woman
So the Empire ended somewhere around the 480's AD. But the Republic ended with Julius Caesar and ulitmately his "nephew" Octavian (Augustus.)
To run for office, you had to make a personal appearance in Rome. Caesar was off fighting battles. But Caesar's enemies were waiting in Rome to arrest him for a bunch of Trumped up charges. He was presented with a problem. Generals were not allowed to bring their armies with them to Rome. But if he went to Rome he'd be arrested. He asked for an OK to run for office without coming to Rome. The Senate said "no"; doubtless thinking the walls were closing in.
So he brought his army with him. Caesar said, as he crossed the Rubicon, "they brought it on themselves."
The so-called Progressives, here and now, have ended the Republic we knew. The Empire phase is next.
1. The rule of simplification - reducing all data to a simple confrontation between 'Good and Bad', 'Friend and Foe'.
2. The rule of disfiguration - discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies.
3. The rule of transfusion - manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one's own ends.
4. The rule of unanimity - presenting one's viewpoint as if it were unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people: draining the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star-performers, by social pressure , and by 'psychological contagion'.
5. The rule of orchestration - endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.
I read quite a bit of the post you suggested. Your ideas make a lot of sense to me. I worked in the public schools many years ago. Thank God I left when I did, because for me, it felt like a slow death. I could not stand watching how kids were subjected to mediocre teachers with little or no knack for reflective, critiical or visionary thought.🫣 It was like staggering through a parched wasteland where not even a shriveled up cactus could be found!🥺.
I can certify that the claim is false, as I am a woman and I frequently think about the Roman Empire. I have been doing so for decades, and when I visited Rome I was enthralled. More recently I wonder if the Romans felt like I have been feeling for some years now, the sense of stress all around, the sense that the nation is trending towards explosive fragmentation. I have talked about this subject to a lot of people. One male friend immediately shared a bunch of details of what he had read about what the Romans were doing while their society was crumbling. It was a very different time and culture but humans might have some similar reactions to the awareness that their civilization is disintegrating.
I have looked for books (unsuccessfully) that would describe the feelings of those who were there as it ended. The last Centurion leaving Britain had to have felt something was wrong as he turned off the light…
I also think about the Roman empire! Particularly the fall of the republic. During the 1960s it was common to refer to the Kennedy brothers as the Gracchi. The Roman elite betrayed their class and civilization. Just as ours, described by Christopher Lasch in 1995!
On Christianity and the “dark ages”--it’s important to also understand the role of fanatics in the early days of Constantine, and the deliberate destruction of knowledge and books. Read Catherine NIxey’s The Darkening Age. some of it was evidently state-sponsored, sorry to say. Just like Antifa.
What’s also very scary is how so many skills and features of civilization got completely buried and lost (2-story construction, cleanliness, pipes and running water, etc etc).
My brother gave me a copy of Gibbon for my last birthday. I’m hoping that Victor Davis Hanson, who really knows the ancient world, will write a book about the parallels.
I’m a woman and I think about the Roman Empire a lot. Its strength, organization, discipline. Its forging one empire out of many disparate parts. I admire it, while regretting its excesses, cruelty, and abuses. I lived in Mexico for a few years, and visited Los Arcos del Sitio, built by the Spanish in imitation of the aqueducts built by their Roman forebears. I walked on Hadrian’s Wall when I was in England. I visited the ruins of Ostia Antica near Rome, and saw the statue of a bull underground: erected by foreign Roman soldiers permitted to practice their religious cult. They were extremely impressive, and brought the Pax Romans to all of their huge empire.
My Dad was in the Air Force, stationed at NATO outside Paris, so we traveled a lot, needless to say. I remember standing with him in Rome, looking out at its hills (I was about 12 at the time) and my Dad analyzing the fall of Rome. "The fat, lazy man sits at the top of the hill, forgetting the lean, hungry man, stares up from the bottom, plotting his way to the top." What the left forgets is this is a cycle, and whoever sits on top, needs to beware the lean, hungry man.
Any civilization that's capable of building beautiful roads, bridges, towns, cities, aquaducts, baths, schools, and fortresses; providing a legal system, literacy, economic prosperity, defense, medicine, and entertainment throughout most of the known world for five centuries, is worth contemplating and even - in many cases - imitating. They did all of this without electricity, engines, algebra, explosives, printing presses, or massive government regulations and bureaucracy. How did they motivate slaves to produce such immortal beauty and art? Every nation required slave labor, but the Romans produced unparalleled elegance and quality. Their art and literature are a wonder of the world.
Too bad we've failed to be nearly as enduring or effective. Now we're collapsing. The Romans tried to keep the barbarians out. We're inviting them in and paying them to destroy us.
Apart from philosophical ideas associated with the Romans, Greek, Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, there is the political ideas, and the manner in which their society met challenges, outside threats, and ultimately suicide. There is also much literature, that frequently considers these things. Right now our society has been usurped by malevolent oligarchs and is in near free fall. Our currency is beginning to fail, our military is virtually helpless and our internal officials are at war with the people. Illusion is one of the great expenditures of our civilization, and not inconsequential deceptions but fundamental. We are going the way of the Roman, except faster and with much greater potential for a violent end, perhaps even of all human life. So this period like many, is analyzed to try to predict how the collapse will come about with the hopes of trying to avert it, or survive it. The U.S. has been the preeminent cultural and economic and military power for nearly a century and all of these things will not survive five years.
If you just got a diagnosis of lung cancer, one of the first things you would ask is how long you had, and how did others deal with this condition. Same here. Men think about these things. Women do not, and then vote for Biden because someone told them he cares about the climate and racism and that these trivialities matter.
My mom divorced my dad when me and my brother were 6 & 3. She referenced “feminism” ( this was mid-1970’s). My family has been a mess ever since and I never became the man I think I could be...
Yes and me and my brother continue to pay the price.
I’ve heard about the CIA- hippy connection but had a hard time believing it until only recently. Doesn’t the Frankfurt School have something to do with it?
The only connection is that Robert Hunter and Ken Kesey both took LSD under the auspices of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program at Stanford. If anything that unleashed forces that went way beyond what the establishment could control. Sometimes I do wonder about Owsley, who came from a prominent Kentucky political family.
Not this woman and many like me. I have never voted for a Dem and the thought of Biden as a choice is outlandish. You make a good point though, too many white liberal women vote with their ‘feelings’ instead of common sense or facts. Their feelings are based on propaganda and falsehoods, but they follow the ‘current thing’ and react accordingly.
I think often of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao because those are the most recent train wreck civilizations we seem intent on repeating. When I do think more ancient, I go all the way back to Noah, his sons, the Nephilim. How strange to live when giants did and when your great grandparents could outlive you because human lifespans were decreasing.
Glad I joined this discussion group.... been carrying around a lot of disdain for wokeism, and constant exposure to the 'party-line' here in the Bay Area, can be exhausting. By checking in here, at least I feel less alone with the every day barrage of delusional thinking!😶🌫️
Hi Seva, I have a close friend in Evanston, & she tells me about how much "the boat is sinking" there.It's all so sad. Also, I'm replying here about how Commodus, unfortunately, helped to sink Rome's boat:
I get what you mean about the fatally flawed decisions that Commodus made. The way his character was portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in The Gladiator, I'm not surprised that Commodus had some serious childhood challenges. And, probably not much parent education available to Marcus Aurelius in those days!🥴It's too bad that a wise school psychologist or therapist was not around to offer some badly needed family guidance. Or maybe therapy would not have helped at all.😵💫Either way, these lines from the Gladiator are a sad hint of what Commodus was processing about his dad:
"I search the faces of the gods... for ways to please you, to make you proud. One kind word, one full hug... where you pressed me to your chest and held me tight. Would have been like the sun on my heart for a thousand years. What is it in me that you hate so much"?😔
Hi Judy. Could be Commodus was also insane due to lead poisoning. As for Chicago, here’s a good one about our Woke mayor’s plan to deal with “food deserts” in black areas on the south side. Truly insane. The Woke white leftists love Brandon Johnson though because they know he’s just as nuts as they are. Bernie Sanders even came to Chicago in the recent election to tell people Brandon is ideally suited to be the mayor of Chicago, the best man for the job. Truly insane. God only knows where we’ll all end up.
Who was predisposed to lead poisoning?
“The nobility and the rich, who drank up to 2 L wine per day, would thus have been predisposed to lead poisoning.”
“Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Pushes Socialist Grocery Stores To Combat Walmart Leaving Due To Theft.” (12 min)
Hi Seva, I'm still trying to get the hang of my Substack account & following up on our last correspondence. As you describe Chicago politics, I'm thinking it may be just as nuts there, as it is here. We have almost no police. I mean very very few law enforcement officials can be found on the streets.
My husband tells me that he sees people running stop signs a lot, and of course car theft & robberies are rampant all over this city.
I frequently try to picture how my beautiful dad (who died in '74 ) would feel if he came back to life right now.
There would just be no way to explain this to any of my deceased relatives.
Quite a few of my neighbors are very far to the left, and I don't know how they can live with so little awareness of what's really going on.
They're just so comfy & nestled in with their New York Times & Washington Post subscriptions.😶🌫️
I live in a working class neighborhood on the northwest side, well within city limits but not nearly as bad as much of the city. South and west sides are mostly black and pretty much war zones and No-Go zones that people avoid. Trendy areas like Bucktown and River North have rampant crime with carjacking and people being robbed mid-day as they’re walking down the street and a car pulls up, black guys jump and and rob them and then go back to their car and drive off to their next victim. Police are often ordered not to pursue them and even when they’re caught they’re often just released again. If you want to follow the civilizational collapse of Chicago which is happening nation-wide I highly recommend following the Chicago crime site CWBChicago. They do a very good job of covering the ever worsening social breakdown.
“Carloads of robbers committed an hour-long string of robberies from the North Side to downtown Chicago this morning, robbing at least 14 people, many of whom were physically attacked. Chicago police said they have not arrested anyone for the crimes.”
“At least 14 robbed in violent, hour-long robbery spree overnight; 78-year-old beaten by muggers.”
The worst is yet to come. Read up on the ghastly and dreadful twentieth century, especially Hitler’s Nazis (Race obsessed fanatics) and Mao’s Red Guard (Equal Outcomes obsessed fanatics). “History does not repeat itself, but ideas do.”
“Our condition is forever precarious; even basic human decency can shatter and vanish in an instant.”
“Maoism had unique traits but Leys nonetheless always saw it as a member of what he called the “great totalitarian family”—ideologies produced by patterns of thought found across human societies, from tiny shipwrecked pre-Enlightenment microcosms to vast 20th century nations.”
“History does not repeat itself, but ideas do.”
“Analyst of Totalitarianism-Reading Simon Leys Today.”
I watched Rome on HBO however long ago it was when it first came out. I watched it again last year. I'll do that from time to time to see how things have aged. It's still fantastic IMO.
Years ago I read the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Abridged was long enough TYVM) by Edward Gibbon. Amazing it was written in 1776. Some people were writing a Declaration of Independence, other about the Roman Empire. Go figure. Guess men have been thinking about the Roman Empire for a long time. If I still had a wife, I'd tell her I think about it every day, which is way less than how often she'd think about the dumb Kardashians or whatever. Maybe that's why we're divorced.
I think there is a good argument to be made concerning the collapse of The Roman Empire due to the lead aquaducts that supplied all the water to the city of Rome.
Lead poisoning destroys the brain, leads to madness and lowers the IQ of each successive generation.
You nailed my sentiments, Sasha! I no longer ask why they fell. Rather, I ponder how we can somehow convey their "fallen learnings" to a bunch of Americans asleep at the spiritual wheel, high level leaders especially.
The whole "what caused Rome to collapse" thing--and what happened afterwards--just fascinates me to no end. (Man here writing.)
One of the best books I've read recently is Bryan Ward-Perkins's The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. Lots of cool stuff like how the size of the typical cow shrank after the Fall to what it had been during the Iron Age, and not only did people forget the recipe for concrete but they also lost the skills to make thatched roofs and clay tiles. Houses weren't made of stone and brick anymore. Pottery became simplified and crude. Decorated tableware disappeared. Amphorae of wine stopped being shipped around the Mediterranean.
Makes me think of how after America collapses, those miserable few who manage to survive the great starvation will tell their children about this thing called the internet . . . and how we used to have water piped right into our houses . . .
We have far more in common with the twentieth century than any ancient empire yet here we are following along the same path once again to insanity and destruction. Too many learn nothing at all from the past whether ancient or recent. That means humanity is not capable of changing and avoiding the abyss. That’s why I believe only AI can save our sinking ship. Hope springs eternal. We will soon see what fate has in store for us.
I am a woman and I think about the Roman Empire (particularly the eastern Roman Empire) pretty much every day. I am particularly fascinated with the Battle of Adrianople through the end of the Theodosian Dynasty.
I think about Rome and the rest of history on a daily basis. I think about the inventions, military operations, how the government worked and how changes were made. But I also think about how the daily chores were accomplished and how women functioned within those periods, something not mentioned in the video above. I was tasked with doing a presentation for women's history month many years ago and I decided to talk about how women accomplished their daily tasks throughout history. The usual program talks about professional women, and this wasn't meant to slight them (I'm retired military) but I always felt the traditional roles women have filled have always been slighted. I'm happy to say the audience was fascinated.
The fact that they attack the 2A at every opportunity, and really want to disarm us, is evidence that they still consider it in their way. Remember that during the lock-downs in the U.S. we did not have the extremes of covid camps and such that other countries did. When it came time to go to peoples houses and drag them off it was difficult to face that firepower. Things like that remain invisible because they are things that didn't happen. Places where organized crime does not run protection rackets on businesses because of the 2A do not show up in crimes prevented statistics. Home invasions that do not occur do not show up in crimes prevented statistics.
I think of Rome all the time. The degradation of the Republic then the fall of the Empire.
Corrupt Senators, people on the dole distracted by free entertainment (gladiators, chariot races, etc), lack of morality & sexual hedonism, abandoning unwanted children to die or be enslaved, and most especially the people slowly invading the Empire and refusing to assimilate (which is where all the romance languages developed).
So many more things to ponder, but you get the drift.
If you're unusual for a woman, then so am I. Granted my undergrad is in Classics and my honor thesis was on Roman Gaul, so my thinking about it regularly could have something to do with that 🤷
I think about how the democrats have become a strange combination of Hitler’s Nazis (Race obsessed fanatics) and Mao’s Red Guard (Equal Outcomes obsessed fanatics). Certainly a very unfortunate development not only for us but for the entire world since when we go down the world, already quite fragile, will be dragged down with us. Only God knows what fate has in store for our fallen world as we slide ever closer to the abyss.
I talk about the book the 2000 Year Leap to to people I know and get to know. 2000 years between Rome and the establishment of self governance in the US.
Roman architecture, since I was a boy, has fascinated me almost as much as the Roman senate and the emperors.
The aqueduct, the Colosseum...how could anyone not be fascinated with what people of that era were able to achieve?
Chuckles... I DO think of the Roman Empire every week and how it fell and compare it to the state of our current republic and its decline. Matt is right when we say "nothing" and also correct when stating men and women complement each other. The most important thing I have learned raising three self-sufficient young adults is just that: kids need both a mother and a father. I was raised by a single mother(toughest person I have ever met) and know the difference.
I did already watch that. It is quite damning. Tucker is always very good. Why are European economies collapsing and countries becoming impoverished? Because, as Tucker says, “If you don’t have cheap natural gas you can’t run a continent.” And why did Sleepy Joe order the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany? So our ally Germany wouldn’t be able to change their mind and make a deal with Russia to get it turned back on to save their economy and the rest of Europe as well. With friends like Sleepy Joe, who needs enemies? Just imagine how much this discredits America globally. How truly awful for us and for our entire world.
We had no inflation under Trump due to his US energy independence policies. Biden's (oligarchs controlling him) deliberate destruction of our energy will bring about their depopulation agenda.
I’m one with you, Sasha! I’ve always thought I was born with an extra dose of testosterone! 😂 A politician streaming live sex online is pretty Roman Empire-ish! But most revealing is the physical mutilation of children in our Roman Coliseum of gender games. How can this be happening? This may actually be driven by women and the men are too afraid to speak up.
The impact of the Roma Empire radiates thru the centuries. Until 1752 or so, the English and therefore their colonies, all fell under the use of the Julian calendar Said calendar marked the first day of each New Year as the 'Ides of March', that way no one could forget what befell Julius Caesar in the Romas Senate so many years ago. Pope Gregory had created the Gregorian calendar many years prior to its acceptance by the English. When the English finally turned away from the Julian calendar the English lost 1 year and 11 days. For instance, when James Oglethorpe landed in the America's to found Georgia, it was February 1, 1732.....yet it is now held in the 'history' books that Georgia was founded on Feb. 12, 1733. Since very few of the general population could read or write, then quantum shift had very little impact on their day to day lives....those that could read and write would denote this shift by showing the date as 1733/34 or whatever the date might be. Very few cultures continue to radiate onto the modern world. The Five Books of Moses, the various Gospels, the Dead Sea Scrolls, all appear to pulse from the basic tenants of life and later from the Roman existence.....The basis of mankind imamates from a life surrounded by and based on religion. As the World turns....Brother Logan
From ancient Rome to a contemporary sexism -- great!
Are you familiar with a book by Nikołaj Aleksandrowicz Maszkin (ros. Николай Александрович Машкин, History of Ancient Rome, which was issued in Soviet Russia? The influence of the Communist Regime is visible even in the ancient Rome...
Regarding ancient cultures, ancient Greece has always appealed more to me than ancient Rome...probably because they were so into nature, beauty & philosophy. But I've always loved reading about both cultures: when feeling lost, I've leaned on Plato; & when everything is just going 'nutso', I've been inspired by people like Marcus Aurelius. He seemed like a decent human being.
But his son, Commodus was insane and did a lot that eventually destroyed Rome.
“Commodus wasn’t just a dangerous, egotistical maniac, though—he was part of the reason the Roman Empire fell. He devalued the Roman currency, sparking off a chain reaction that would ultimately bring on Rome’s collapse.”
10 Insane Facts About Emperor Commodus Left out of ‘Gladiator.’
Biden is fiddling while the USA collapses. Why? Because he doesn’t know where he is, anymore; he just reads the puppet master’s (whoever that, is) teleprompter.
Luckily I don’t read anything but substack so I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
But...I’m a gen x woman and I think about Rome maybe on the daily. In so many scenarios. I also watch a lot of British history shows that often talk about the Roman occupation in Britain. Is that what we’re talking about?
I’m with you Sasha. I see all current events in the light of past history, maybe because I’m a history geek (read Will and Ariel Durant’s History of Civilization right through when I was in Jr. High).
I was 13 or 14. Being obsessive and driven, not to mention a geek contributed to the accomplishment, if such it was. Besides, I always wanted to know All The Stories (ref. The Black Ships by Jo Graham).
Agreed, Sasha, agreed. Just absurd that Matt W. thinks all of us gals, like his wife, are thinking about furniture & baby clothes. Oh, please. That abstract thought is a private preserve of males? Or only the odd woman makes it there? I agree that there are many sex differences, but tendency to and capacity for abstract thought isn't one of them. I'd say I live there with great pleasure & curiosity for the greater part of the 24/7 we cycle through each week, even with a job, elder care, a grown child, a husband & the errands of daily life. And here in Brooklyn 20 years ago, I met plenty of hipster dads who thought an astonishing amount about which t-shirts their 5 year old would sport day-to-day. It's a function of personality/mind/temperament how you think, not strictly sex, as Walsh assumes & presumes.
I love studying the Roman Empire and ancient history, talking about it and how can one not contemplate the times of bread and circuses we are living in.
I may be wrong but am pretty sure it was like 192 days of the year were party days like no wonder the Vandals didn't want it. I'm all about keeping it so at least our kids want it. Do you ever study the Estruscans? How Rome became Rome? If we don't study history how can all of us plan for the future? Look this biological heterosexual woman loves talking about that stuff, don't let it interfere with your self esteem there's plenty of us that will dish about Pompeii and Spartacus with you. :)
I’m with you, I have contemplated the Roman Empires horrible abuses of power and feel we are coming ever closer to some sort of breaking point with our own Caesar like figures who seem to not have anyone stopping their gross overreaches. I wouldn’t give Matt Walsh or anyone else on the Daily Wire much thought. I also think it’s very demeaning the way he spoke about women in that clip. I never listen to them anymore
Romulus kills Remus and founds a city—a city founded on violence, perpetuated by violence. Rome has many gods, including the august Caesar. But in the end, the religion of Rome is Rome. Virgil writes, "Rome shall extend her empire to earth's end, her ambition to the skies . . ."
Well, says Augustine of Hippo, we’ve heard that story before, and Rome is just the latest chapter: Cain kills Abel and goes on to found a city based on violence. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is the story of two cities, formed by two loves: Babel/Babylon, the earthly city formed by the love of self, even to the contempt of God. Salem/Jerusalem, the heavenly city, by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. “The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord.” And therefore the stunning virtues of the Romans, examples often putting Christians to shame, were actually glorious vices.
But how different is the liberal state, ultimately?
The liberal state, too, is founded on a vision of violence: Cede authority for protection! Accountable to nothing other than the autonomous self! Isn’t our liberalism now of the metaphysical, “believe-in-yourself-above-all” kind? (Rather than the live-and-let-live-because-we’ve-had-enough-of-war kind?) So what’s the difference?!
But the big question for me: Will Christians rise to the occasion, with sacrificial service, as civilization wanes? Are there soldiers today like the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste? Or are we Christ-followers in name only?
I think that the fall of the Roman Empire was very damaging, for a very simple reason: it greatly increased the extent of borders, which (for a very long time) greatly increased the extent of cross-border raiding. I am pretty sure it was the peasants, not the nobles, who wound up suffering much higher death-rates.
I also think that, even given the limited evidence we have to work with, the primary cause is fairly clear:
the nobles succeeded too well in oppressing the peasants. (That also seems to be true about the Byzantine Empire and the Icelandic "Free State".) The armies of the Western Empire, by the "end stage", had become ridiculously small. Since the peasants could not, if they were going to keep being oppressed, be allowed to "bear arms", matters eventually reached the point where "German" came to mean "soldier", and from that point the end result was predictable. Power proceeds from the edge of a sword.
Two other "secondary" causes seem worth noting.
First, the Roman Empire paid for spices with gold, which is to say that it paid for renewables with non-renewables. The Eastern Empire was economically strong enough that it could survive this. The Western Empire was not.
Second, once most non-Romans had been assimilated, fear of the barbarians no longer served to motivate unity, and the result (again predictable) was disunity. Roman democracy was only a tradition, not a conclusion based on any *principles*, such as those later created by the Enlightenment, so that there was really nothing to stop it from being eliminated. In fact, the end of democracy was generally celebrated at the time, as democracy had become what might be called a "tyranny of the nobility". It is worth noting that rejection of Enlightenment principles endangers democracy in the West.
Machiavelli maintained that the trouble started when Rome's army ceased to be made up of the people when war came and was replaced by a professional army, leading to what you described. And the army had the power to remove an emperor. No wonder the second amendment was incorporated. The Federalist papers shows how much the founding fathers were influenced by history.
Machiavelli would not have held any view that was out of the question. But the army became professional at the time of Marius, in the late 100s B.C., and the armies did not start to routinely remove emperors till the middle part of the 200s. Yet the empire lasted till beyond the middle 400s. So it seems that the chronology is somewhat problematic.
Given that the first thing the Romans did when they conquered any area was disarm the populace, a connection with the the 2nd amendment seems probable, though I do not know whether this is mentioned in the Federalist Papers.
“Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms? - James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46.
I think the powerful are usually against the 2A because it undercuts their power. The rest is spin. I found that I had saved the quote in my file of 2A quotes. I have a substack essay of just quotes I collected, some might surprise most people. I also have one on 2A thoughts.
The great increase in firepower has created some fair questions. But 1) being killed in a true mass shooting (not the fake ones that are from domestic violence) remains a very rare cause of death, and 2) the invention of drones, which greatly increase the firepower of the government, means that some increase in the firepower of ordinary citizens is a necessary (though not necessarily sufficient) corrective. I fear that the combination of drones and surveillance may well land us in 1984, just 40 years too late ...
Here’s a very strange but beautiful video of a waltz that switches back and forth from past to present. Our fallen world is a terrible place full of evil but we do have many beautiful things here so it’s not all bad. No denying that.
“It is because it can be loved by us, it is because it is beautiful, that the universe is a country. It is our only country here below. Let us love the country of here below. It is real; it offers resistance to love. It is this country that God has given us to love. He has willed that it should be difficult yet possible to love it.” Simone Weil. (1909-1943)
“Freedom and God are objects of faith, not of knowledge; in other words, freedom and God are infinite abysses whose bottoms cannot be sounded by knowledge.” Simone Weil. 1909-1943
My favorite period is the ghastly and dreadful twentieth century which is quite relevant for us since it’s the history of our grandparents, parents and even many of us alive now. A few years ago I read a book called “The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European” by Stefan Zweig about pre-WW1 Vienna and pre-WW11 Europe in general. Very interesting to read of how European Civilization was overwhelmed by the irrational side of human nature and plunged into a nightmare. Very distressing to see how our entire Western Civilization is being overwhelmed by the irrational and heading down that same very dark path. It is spooky how similar our situation is. A fascinating book but quite distressing to realize that if we’d had the type of weapons we now have 100 years ago it’s highly unlikely we’d be here now. I believe human nature is simply too unstable for humanity to survive and only AI can save our sinking ship. Here’s a couple of videos I just watched this morning about how amazing it is and how fast it’s advancing. Hope springs eternal.
“I'm talking about models that are like two or three orders of magnitude maybe four orders of magnitude on from where we are and we're not far away from that we're going to be training models that are 1,000x larger than they currently are in the next 3 years even at inflection with the compute that we have will be 100x larger than the current Frontier models in the next 18 months you can start to see why AGI means so much more than just a chatbot.”
“AGI Will Not Be A Chatbot-Autonomy, Acceleration, And Arguments Behind the Scenes.” (15 min)
People don't think period. All most have ever known is they do what they want with absolute apathy. They don't know about the founding of America or our beloved Constution and Bill of Rights. They know nothing except getting high and getting laid. No personal responsibility. They just continue to vote for their own destruction. I know it sounds like I have no hope. I do have hope but not in people. They long to be taken care of not for freedom. I have hope through God. I ask all those who do know what we're heading for to go back to God now . He's our only hope.
God does not intervene in our affairs. Only Satan does and he interferes 24/7. The “Prince of Darkness” is always with us. That’s why we need AGI. Perhaps though the reason why AI is advancing so rapidly is because God realized Satan is too tough for us so he’s sending AGI to help us fight the dark side. That’s my best guess of what’s going on here. It’s always darkest just before dawn. Soon the sun will shine and all will be well with the world. All’s well that ends well. Hope springs eternal.
“For he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Matt 5:45.
Unless and until a man exercises that free will by asking God to intervene, God has “limited” Himself to allowing us to come to our conclusions and inevitable outcomes influenced by evil.
“ I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live”
A continental civilization that worked to integrate numerous diverse groups via trade and technological innovation, which eventually failed because of massive debt as a consequence of military adventurism and bloated civil services in urban areas, but more generally because Rome ultimately lost a sense of itself.
Nope. Nothing there speaks to me at all.
The biggest destroyer of Empires.
Sophistry that the populace falls for.
AKA. PC, Trans, Climate Crisis, Covid, Must get Vaxed, Hate Vax Questioners, Hate Trump, Hate Trump Supporters, Illegals , Systemic Racism on and on.
Elegantly put.
And the less diverse Eastern Roman Empire in Byzantium lasted a 1000 years longer than the Western Empire in Rome. Diversity destroyed the Western Empire's self of itself and led to its collapse. As an amusing aside I see the Left is now trying to blame the fall of Rome on "climate change" and "pandemics." Can the left really be that ensorcelled?
I can understand why the Left ridicules people who think about the Roman Empire. The Left is intentionally imploding Western Civilization to bring about chaos, fear and barbarian tyranny. The Roman Empire is a cautionary tale about how to stave off that outcome so Rome must be erased from memory.
We have a uni party. It’s been that way since Kennedy was taken out.
We are run by The CIA.
Read operation Gladio
Watch Drugs as weapons against us.
Did it. Thanks for the recommendation. Here's mine to you on the same topic: A Scanner Darkly, book written by Philip K Dick 1977; film directed by Richard Linklater 2006.
Substance D that dopamine.
The thing is (and I agree completely with your comment) they imagine that they will be able to build utopia out of the ruins, with them presumably at the helm. They believe the “new human” will evolve overnight finally freed from the tyrannical repression of Western Civ.
I think they are fools much like the middle management bureaucrats portrayed in “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” who haven’t the slightest notion that civilization is built on affordable energy, and that flushing toilets, refrigerators, and trash removal is way more important than “self actualization” or gender expression.
I hope for the best, but fear for the future.
Yes. I feel the same way...I'm hoping for the best , but fearing for the future!
ALL history must be erased from memory...and never taught in school or at home. In this way we arrive at "the end of history", a communist goal.
The Khazarian goal.
The far Left despises history. It's the west they openly hate, but they're really ignorant about any other civilizations and cultures as well. Progressivists hate the past as a rule.
The left ridicules anyone who isn't in lockstep with them. It's genius and served two equally critical (to their mission of indoctrination) purposes: 1) To get the online masses of SJWs to flame anyone to the right of Stalin, and 2) To further the indoctrination of their sheep flock by instructing them "who is bad" and who TO ridicule.
If you haven't noticed how shockingly homogenous (NOT a mean term...look it up) the liberal hive-mind is, just compare posts on any of the liberal websites to what the MSM talking heads say. It's media kool-aid imbibed most willingly.
As a woman, I too think about the Roman Empire, but in the sense it's interesting to think of civilizations in general. The idea others built gorgeous structures we can still see today. Also, the vastness of the Roman's reach is also intriguing to me.
Regarding men, though, I remember the first time I was in England, I told my boyfriend how cool it was to think we were in a place the Romans once lived. (Born and raised in California, makes this is knowledge a big deal.) He had no idea the Romans had even been in England. So there, a woman
informs a man about the Romans!
Oldest canal in the Netherlands was built by the Romans...
must take my Bf there so I can boast some more...
So the Empire ended somewhere around the 480's AD. But the Republic ended with Julius Caesar and ulitmately his "nephew" Octavian (Augustus.)
To run for office, you had to make a personal appearance in Rome. Caesar was off fighting battles. But Caesar's enemies were waiting in Rome to arrest him for a bunch of Trumped up charges. He was presented with a problem. Generals were not allowed to bring their armies with them to Rome. But if he went to Rome he'd be arrested. He asked for an OK to run for office without coming to Rome. The Senate said "no"; doubtless thinking the walls were closing in.
So he brought his army with him. Caesar said, as he crossed the Rubicon, "they brought it on themselves."
The so-called Progressives, here and now, have ended the Republic we knew. The Empire phase is next.
Yes, "Trumped up" is the term...couldn't make this stuff up, nobody would believe it...
" Empire ended somewhere around the 480's AD"
More like 406 AD when the Germanic invasions crossed into Gaul and Hispania
Point taken; but i’m more worried for our Republic than our Empire.
The Five Rules of Propaganda
1. The rule of simplification - reducing all data to a simple confrontation between 'Good and Bad', 'Friend and Foe'.
2. The rule of disfiguration - discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies.
3. The rule of transfusion - manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one's own ends.
4. The rule of unanimity - presenting one's viewpoint as if it were unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people: draining the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star-performers, by social pressure , and by 'psychological contagion'.
5. The rule of orchestration - endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.
I don’t know where these Five Rules originated, but they define the Democratic Party’s tactics with precision.
I read that they were known in the Middle Ages and appear in one or more books from the time. You can search the internet for 5 rules of propaganda.
Wouldn’t surprise me
Thanks for posting these rules, David. I'm sure most current national & international 'indoctrinators' know them well!
I think so. They should be posted in all school rooms but I don’t think they will be. Check out my essay Things Not Taught in School.
I read quite a bit of the post you suggested. Your ideas make a lot of sense to me. I worked in the public schools many years ago. Thank God I left when I did, because for me, it felt like a slow death. I could not stand watching how kids were subjected to mediocre teachers with little or no knack for reflective, critiical or visionary thought.🫣 It was like staggering through a parched wasteland where not even a shriveled up cactus could be found!🥺.
Ouch
https://drp314.substack.com/p/things-not-taught-in-school
We went back under the Crown with that act.
The invention of The CIA is what sealed our fate
I reject the notion that because some TikTok bimbos never think about the Roman Empire, therefore no women do...unjustified assumption.
I can certify that the claim is false, as I am a woman and I frequently think about the Roman Empire. I have been doing so for decades, and when I visited Rome I was enthralled. More recently I wonder if the Romans felt like I have been feeling for some years now, the sense of stress all around, the sense that the nation is trending towards explosive fragmentation. I have talked about this subject to a lot of people. One male friend immediately shared a bunch of details of what he had read about what the Romans were doing while their society was crumbling. It was a very different time and culture but humans might have some similar reactions to the awareness that their civilization is disintegrating.
I have looked for books (unsuccessfully) that would describe the feelings of those who were there as it ended. The last Centurion leaving Britain had to have felt something was wrong as he turned off the light…
Yeah, the historians didn't focus much on the inner lives of the people, so much as the wars and political power struggles.
I notice Tik Tok and Instagram seem to be making young women shallow, vain, and stupid.
I think those are the types of women that want to be seen on tictok
I also think about the Roman empire! Particularly the fall of the republic. During the 1960s it was common to refer to the Kennedy brothers as the Gracchi. The Roman elite betrayed their class and civilization. Just as ours, described by Christopher Lasch in 1995!
On Christianity and the “dark ages”--it’s important to also understand the role of fanatics in the early days of Constantine, and the deliberate destruction of knowledge and books. Read Catherine NIxey’s The Darkening Age. some of it was evidently state-sponsored, sorry to say. Just like Antifa.
What’s also very scary is how so many skills and features of civilization got completely buried and lost (2-story construction, cleanliness, pipes and running water, etc etc).
My brother gave me a copy of Gibbon for my last birthday. I’m hoping that Victor Davis Hanson, who really knows the ancient world, will write a book about the parallels.
I’m a woman and I think about the Roman Empire a lot. Its strength, organization, discipline. Its forging one empire out of many disparate parts. I admire it, while regretting its excesses, cruelty, and abuses. I lived in Mexico for a few years, and visited Los Arcos del Sitio, built by the Spanish in imitation of the aqueducts built by their Roman forebears. I walked on Hadrian’s Wall when I was in England. I visited the ruins of Ostia Antica near Rome, and saw the statue of a bull underground: erected by foreign Roman soldiers permitted to practice their religious cult. They were extremely impressive, and brought the Pax Romans to all of their huge empire.
My Dad was in the Air Force, stationed at NATO outside Paris, so we traveled a lot, needless to say. I remember standing with him in Rome, looking out at its hills (I was about 12 at the time) and my Dad analyzing the fall of Rome. "The fat, lazy man sits at the top of the hill, forgetting the lean, hungry man, stares up from the bottom, plotting his way to the top." What the left forgets is this is a cycle, and whoever sits on top, needs to beware the lean, hungry man.
Indeed, beware those deplorable, bitter-clingers in the valleys.😉
That's why I make sure to give myself a. big, sunny greeting, every day!
Any civilization that's capable of building beautiful roads, bridges, towns, cities, aquaducts, baths, schools, and fortresses; providing a legal system, literacy, economic prosperity, defense, medicine, and entertainment throughout most of the known world for five centuries, is worth contemplating and even - in many cases - imitating. They did all of this without electricity, engines, algebra, explosives, printing presses, or massive government regulations and bureaucracy. How did they motivate slaves to produce such immortal beauty and art? Every nation required slave labor, but the Romans produced unparalleled elegance and quality. Their art and literature are a wonder of the world.
Too bad we've failed to be nearly as enduring or effective. Now we're collapsing. The Romans tried to keep the barbarians out. We're inviting them in and paying them to destroy us.
Apart from philosophical ideas associated with the Romans, Greek, Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, there is the political ideas, and the manner in which their society met challenges, outside threats, and ultimately suicide. There is also much literature, that frequently considers these things. Right now our society has been usurped by malevolent oligarchs and is in near free fall. Our currency is beginning to fail, our military is virtually helpless and our internal officials are at war with the people. Illusion is one of the great expenditures of our civilization, and not inconsequential deceptions but fundamental. We are going the way of the Roman, except faster and with much greater potential for a violent end, perhaps even of all human life. So this period like many, is analyzed to try to predict how the collapse will come about with the hopes of trying to avert it, or survive it. The U.S. has been the preeminent cultural and economic and military power for nearly a century and all of these things will not survive five years.
If you just got a diagnosis of lung cancer, one of the first things you would ask is how long you had, and how did others deal with this condition. Same here. Men think about these things. Women do not, and then vote for Biden because someone told them he cares about the climate and racism and that these trivialities matter.
CIA knows that emotionalism brings about their Regime.
It’s called Sophistry.
Gloria Steinem was CIA. Look how that sophistry destroyed Family, Society, Children, Motherhood and Fatherhood.
Destroying strong masculinity was also part of it.
Calling men Misogynistic for conversations about Emotionalism.
It’s all a long game to destroy us from within.
My mom divorced my dad when me and my brother were 6 & 3. She referenced “feminism” ( this was mid-1970’s). My family has been a mess ever since and I never became the man I think I could be...
By design. The Propaganda worked.
The hippy movement was CIA. Sex, Drugs, Rock n Roll.
Grateful Dead had some sort of CIA connection.
Many of the R&R. Bands dads, were high up in the military.
CIA funded Ms magazine also.
Steinem boyfriend for 10 yrs was Stanley Pottinger. The clean up/ Cover up guy for the CIA. Friends w Epstein later on.
Pottinger son, is the guy who pushed for World Lockdowns
The best way to control the opposition is to lead it.
CIA Hippie Mind Control: Inside Laurel Canyon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2GjY8DN-7I
Yes!
Yes and me and my brother continue to pay the price.
I’ve heard about the CIA- hippy connection but had a hard time believing it until only recently. Doesn’t the Frankfurt School have something to do with it?
Read Operation Gladio
It will give you an idea of how infiltrated we are. By design
Yes, Frankfurt School.
Prescott Bush, Dulles Brothers, Tri Lateral Commission, Rockefeller, City of London banking.
But without him she would have been like a fish without a bicycle!
Grateful Dead / CIA ? Do you have any proof or have you been dosed ? I can hear Garcia laughing hysterically.
The only connection is that Robert Hunter and Ken Kesey both took LSD under the auspices of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program at Stanford. If anything that unleashed forces that went way beyond what the establishment could control. Sometimes I do wonder about Owsley, who came from a prominent Kentucky political family.
Stay ignorant.
Not my problem.
If you actually gave a damn, you’d research for yourself, instead of outing yourself as the feckless dullard you are.
Not this woman and many like me. I have never voted for a Dem and the thought of Biden as a choice is outlandish. You make a good point though, too many white liberal women vote with their ‘feelings’ instead of common sense or facts. Their feelings are based on propaganda and falsehoods, but they follow the ‘current thing’ and react accordingly.
I just recently watched a video about Marcus Aurelius and stoicism.... interesting guy!
I think often of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao because those are the most recent train wreck civilizations we seem intent on repeating. When I do think more ancient, I go all the way back to Noah, his sons, the Nephilim. How strange to live when giants did and when your great grandparents could outlive you because human lifespans were decreasing.
Except, it was CIA/ M16 that allowed those regimes.
Than destroyed em.
Maoism is alive and well.
Look how our government is turning children away from parents.
The Nazis used Gay men to enforce Acts of terror. Brown Shirts.
Also turned children away from parents.
It’s CIA/ M16 regime Coups and operatives worldwide that stage wars, Famine, and other atrocities.
Drugs, Trafficking and weapons all by our great CIA
https://drp314.substack.com/p/the-securing-of-power
I have no comment, And, I always have a comment.
Glad I joined this discussion group.... been carrying around a lot of disdain for wokeism, and constant exposure to the 'party-line' here in the Bay Area, can be exhausting. By checking in here, at least I feel less alone with the every day barrage of delusional thinking!😶🌫️
I live in the Bay Area too and no you are not alone!
I live in Chicago. We’re all in the same boat which is sinking.
Hope there’s enough lifeboats for us!
Hi Seva, I have a close friend in Evanston, & she tells me about how much "the boat is sinking" there.It's all so sad. Also, I'm replying here about how Commodus, unfortunately, helped to sink Rome's boat:
I get what you mean about the fatally flawed decisions that Commodus made. The way his character was portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in The Gladiator, I'm not surprised that Commodus had some serious childhood challenges. And, probably not much parent education available to Marcus Aurelius in those days!🥴It's too bad that a wise school psychologist or therapist was not around to offer some badly needed family guidance. Or maybe therapy would not have helped at all.😵💫Either way, these lines from the Gladiator are a sad hint of what Commodus was processing about his dad:
"I search the faces of the gods... for ways to please you, to make you proud. One kind word, one full hug... where you pressed me to your chest and held me tight. Would have been like the sun on my heart for a thousand years. What is it in me that you hate so much"?😔
Hi Judy. Could be Commodus was also insane due to lead poisoning. As for Chicago, here’s a good one about our Woke mayor’s plan to deal with “food deserts” in black areas on the south side. Truly insane. The Woke white leftists love Brandon Johnson though because they know he’s just as nuts as they are. Bernie Sanders even came to Chicago in the recent election to tell people Brandon is ideally suited to be the mayor of Chicago, the best man for the job. Truly insane. God only knows where we’ll all end up.
Who was predisposed to lead poisoning?
“The nobility and the rich, who drank up to 2 L wine per day, would thus have been predisposed to lead poisoning.”
“Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Pushes Socialist Grocery Stores To Combat Walmart Leaving Due To Theft.” (12 min)
Black Conservative Perspective. Sept 18, 2023
https://youtu.be/b36-H2eTQ48?si=2M5ug6-4edGvH1C0
Hi Seva, I'm still trying to get the hang of my Substack account & following up on our last correspondence. As you describe Chicago politics, I'm thinking it may be just as nuts there, as it is here. We have almost no police. I mean very very few law enforcement officials can be found on the streets.
My husband tells me that he sees people running stop signs a lot, and of course car theft & robberies are rampant all over this city.
I frequently try to picture how my beautiful dad (who died in '74 ) would feel if he came back to life right now.
There would just be no way to explain this to any of my deceased relatives.
Quite a few of my neighbors are very far to the left, and I don't know how they can live with so little awareness of what's really going on.
They're just so comfy & nestled in with their New York Times & Washington Post subscriptions.😶🌫️
Are you living right in the heart of Chicago?
I live in a working class neighborhood on the northwest side, well within city limits but not nearly as bad as much of the city. South and west sides are mostly black and pretty much war zones and No-Go zones that people avoid. Trendy areas like Bucktown and River North have rampant crime with carjacking and people being robbed mid-day as they’re walking down the street and a car pulls up, black guys jump and and rob them and then go back to their car and drive off to their next victim. Police are often ordered not to pursue them and even when they’re caught they’re often just released again. If you want to follow the civilizational collapse of Chicago which is happening nation-wide I highly recommend following the Chicago crime site CWBChicago. They do a very good job of covering the ever worsening social breakdown.
“Carloads of robbers committed an hour-long string of robberies from the North Side to downtown Chicago this morning, robbing at least 14 people, many of whom were physically attacked. Chicago police said they have not arrested anyone for the crimes.”
“At least 14 robbed in violent, hour-long robbery spree overnight; 78-year-old beaten by muggers.”
CWBChicago. Sept 21, 2023
https://cwbchicago.com/2023/09/chicago-at-least-14-robbed-violent-crime-spree-north-side-downtown.html
The worst is yet to come. Read up on the ghastly and dreadful twentieth century, especially Hitler’s Nazis (Race obsessed fanatics) and Mao’s Red Guard (Equal Outcomes obsessed fanatics). “History does not repeat itself, but ideas do.”
“Our condition is forever precarious; even basic human decency can shatter and vanish in an instant.”
“Maoism had unique traits but Leys nonetheless always saw it as a member of what he called the “great totalitarian family”—ideologies produced by patterns of thought found across human societies, from tiny shipwrecked pre-Enlightenment microcosms to vast 20th century nations.”
“History does not repeat itself, but ideas do.”
“Analyst of Totalitarianism-Reading Simon Leys Today.”
https://quillette.com/2020/09/28/analyst-of-totalitarianism-reading-simon-leys-today/
I watched Rome on HBO however long ago it was when it first came out. I watched it again last year. I'll do that from time to time to see how things have aged. It's still fantastic IMO.
Years ago I read the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Abridged was long enough TYVM) by Edward Gibbon. Amazing it was written in 1776. Some people were writing a Declaration of Independence, other about the Roman Empire. Go figure. Guess men have been thinking about the Roman Empire for a long time. If I still had a wife, I'd tell her I think about it every day, which is way less than how often she'd think about the dumb Kardashians or whatever. Maybe that's why we're divorced.
I think there is a good argument to be made concerning the collapse of The Roman Empire due to the lead aquaducts that supplied all the water to the city of Rome.
Lead poisoning destroys the brain, leads to madness and lowers the IQ of each successive generation.
You nailed my sentiments, Sasha! I no longer ask why they fell. Rather, I ponder how we can somehow convey their "fallen learnings" to a bunch of Americans asleep at the spiritual wheel, high level leaders especially.
The whole "what caused Rome to collapse" thing--and what happened afterwards--just fascinates me to no end. (Man here writing.)
One of the best books I've read recently is Bryan Ward-Perkins's The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. Lots of cool stuff like how the size of the typical cow shrank after the Fall to what it had been during the Iron Age, and not only did people forget the recipe for concrete but they also lost the skills to make thatched roofs and clay tiles. Houses weren't made of stone and brick anymore. Pottery became simplified and crude. Decorated tableware disappeared. Amphorae of wine stopped being shipped around the Mediterranean.
Makes me think of how after America collapses, those miserable few who manage to survive the great starvation will tell their children about this thing called the internet . . . and how we used to have water piped right into our houses . . .
Shoot--now I'm compelled to read it again--
Well, I guess I'm a man then. I think about ancient empires quite a lot and furniture not much at all.
I'm sure that some nice doctor will affirm your gender based on that much.
wb
What is "wb," Libertarian?
“Welcome back” 😄
Thanks!
We have far more in common with the twentieth century than any ancient empire yet here we are following along the same path once again to insanity and destruction. Too many learn nothing at all from the past whether ancient or recent. That means humanity is not capable of changing and avoiding the abyss. That’s why I believe only AI can save our sinking ship. Hope springs eternal. We will soon see what fate has in store for us.
Say it ain’t so, Joe!
I am a woman and I think about the Roman Empire (particularly the eastern Roman Empire) pretty much every day. I am particularly fascinated with the Battle of Adrianople through the end of the Theodosian Dynasty.
I think about Rome and the rest of history on a daily basis. I think about the inventions, military operations, how the government worked and how changes were made. But I also think about how the daily chores were accomplished and how women functioned within those periods, something not mentioned in the video above. I was tasked with doing a presentation for women's history month many years ago and I decided to talk about how women accomplished their daily tasks throughout history. The usual program talks about professional women, and this wasn't meant to slight them (I'm retired military) but I always felt the traditional roles women have filled have always been slighted. I'm happy to say the audience was fascinated.
I will probably never think about the Roman empire until I am being sent into a coliseum to be eaten by large hungry animals.
Soon. Very soon. Gov Hochel is fighting for Covid Camps again
Gun control, because people will not willingly get in the boxcars.
https://drp314.substack.com/p/some-second-amendment-thoughts
True enough, but like Biden told us.
He has Drones and Such to pulverize us.
Look at Lahaina.
Gov Green is in NY doing his masters bidding.
Blaming Climate Change.
When it’s the CIA/DOD destroying our weather and creating hotter fires.
Geoengineeringwatch.com
The fact that they attack the 2A at every opportunity, and really want to disarm us, is evidence that they still consider it in their way. Remember that during the lock-downs in the U.S. we did not have the extremes of covid camps and such that other countries did. When it came time to go to peoples houses and drag them off it was difficult to face that firepower. Things like that remain invisible because they are things that didn't happen. Places where organized crime does not run protection rackets on businesses because of the 2A do not show up in crimes prevented statistics. Home invasions that do not occur do not show up in crimes prevented statistics.
Hochel is fighting for Covid Camps, again.
Gavin I’m sure has em.
Inslee has em.
The Patriot Act did away w our Constitution.
Until we unite…
Agree, but always remember, the best laid plans of mice and men. Man plans, God laughs. But still, try to take a few of them with you.
I’m ready for a Holy Smite on these psychopaths
Saw your Fed Nazis in Florida article. Check out this (I am in Michigan)
https://drp314.substack.com/p/whitmer-kidnapping-plot
The east coast was the only one I gave up driving long haul to because I got tired of everyone on shipping docks there treating me like crap.
It is a shame that everyone thinks that the members of the Bush crime family originated in Texas.
The NY Lawyers moved to California in 60’s and 70’s.
CIA installed Gloria Steinem, destroying family, Parents, motherhood, Fatherhood and children. Now look us.
This has been a long planned out game.
Bush family/ CIA/ Nazis in NASA etc.
Dulles Brothers on and on.
Now it’s not covert.
Is it arrogance or is waking up?
I felt exactly like that during COVID. And often thought of the Christians huddled in the dark, meeting in secret.
I think of Rome all the time. The degradation of the Republic then the fall of the Empire.
Corrupt Senators, people on the dole distracted by free entertainment (gladiators, chariot races, etc), lack of morality & sexual hedonism, abandoning unwanted children to die or be enslaved, and most especially the people slowly invading the Empire and refusing to assimilate (which is where all the romance languages developed).
So many more things to ponder, but you get the drift.
If you're unusual for a woman, then so am I. Granted my undergrad is in Classics and my honor thesis was on Roman Gaul, so my thinking about it regularly could have something to do with that 🤷
All empires come to an end. Sir John Glubb wrote an essay on the stages of an empire from beginning to end. Looks like we are in the final phase.
http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
I think about the French Revolution.
I think about how the democrats have become a strange combination of Hitler’s Nazis (Race obsessed fanatics) and Mao’s Red Guard (Equal Outcomes obsessed fanatics). Certainly a very unfortunate development not only for us but for the entire world since when we go down the world, already quite fragile, will be dragged down with us. Only God knows what fate has in store for our fallen world as we slide ever closer to the abyss.
I talk about the book the 2000 Year Leap to to people I know and get to know. 2000 years between Rome and the establishment of self governance in the US.
Roman architecture, since I was a boy, has fascinated me almost as much as the Roman senate and the emperors.
The aqueduct, the Colosseum...how could anyone not be fascinated with what people of that era were able to achieve?
Chuckles... I DO think of the Roman Empire every week and how it fell and compare it to the state of our current republic and its decline. Matt is right when we say "nothing" and also correct when stating men and women complement each other. The most important thing I have learned raising three self-sufficient young adults is just that: kids need both a mother and a father. I was raised by a single mother(toughest person I have ever met) and know the difference.
Dramatic, life changing events are occurring right now, as Tucker points out, why aren't we focused on THIS ~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LeuNFhmlAc&t=1s
I did already watch that. It is quite damning. Tucker is always very good. Why are European economies collapsing and countries becoming impoverished? Because, as Tucker says, “If you don’t have cheap natural gas you can’t run a continent.” And why did Sleepy Joe order the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany? So our ally Germany wouldn’t be able to change their mind and make a deal with Russia to get it turned back on to save their economy and the rest of Europe as well. With friends like Sleepy Joe, who needs enemies? Just imagine how much this discredits America globally. How truly awful for us and for our entire world.
“We will bring an end to it. I promise you.”
Joe Biden. Feb 7, 2022
We had no inflation under Trump due to his US energy independence policies. Biden's (oligarchs controlling him) deliberate destruction of our energy will bring about their depopulation agenda.
I’m one with you, Sasha! I’ve always thought I was born with an extra dose of testosterone! 😂 A politician streaming live sex online is pretty Roman Empire-ish! But most revealing is the physical mutilation of children in our Roman Coliseum of gender games. How can this be happening? This may actually be driven by women and the men are too afraid to speak up.
I'm with you Sasha. But then I am a woman who majored in Math years ago, so perhaps my mind works more in line with the masculine brain.
The impact of the Roma Empire radiates thru the centuries. Until 1752 or so, the English and therefore their colonies, all fell under the use of the Julian calendar Said calendar marked the first day of each New Year as the 'Ides of March', that way no one could forget what befell Julius Caesar in the Romas Senate so many years ago. Pope Gregory had created the Gregorian calendar many years prior to its acceptance by the English. When the English finally turned away from the Julian calendar the English lost 1 year and 11 days. For instance, when James Oglethorpe landed in the America's to found Georgia, it was February 1, 1732.....yet it is now held in the 'history' books that Georgia was founded on Feb. 12, 1733. Since very few of the general population could read or write, then quantum shift had very little impact on their day to day lives....those that could read and write would denote this shift by showing the date as 1733/34 or whatever the date might be. Very few cultures continue to radiate onto the modern world. The Five Books of Moses, the various Gospels, the Dead Sea Scrolls, all appear to pulse from the basic tenants of life and later from the Roman existence.....The basis of mankind imamates from a life surrounded by and based on religion. As the World turns....Brother Logan
From ancient Rome to a contemporary sexism -- great!
Are you familiar with a book by Nikołaj Aleksandrowicz Maszkin (ros. Николай Александрович Машкин, History of Ancient Rome, which was issued in Soviet Russia? The influence of the Communist Regime is visible even in the ancient Rome...
Regarding ancient cultures, ancient Greece has always appealed more to me than ancient Rome...probably because they were so into nature, beauty & philosophy. But I've always loved reading about both cultures: when feeling lost, I've leaned on Plato; & when everything is just going 'nutso', I've been inspired by people like Marcus Aurelius. He seemed like a decent human being.
But his son, Commodus was insane and did a lot that eventually destroyed Rome.
“Commodus wasn’t just a dangerous, egotistical maniac, though—he was part of the reason the Roman Empire fell. He devalued the Roman currency, sparking off a chain reaction that would ultimately bring on Rome’s collapse.”
10 Insane Facts About Emperor Commodus Left out of ‘Gladiator.’
Listverse. Sept 18, 2017
https://listverse.com/2017/09/18/10-insane-facts-about-emperor-commodus-left-out-of-gladiator/
7 million illegals enter the US in the last two years, earily like the Visigoths?
Biden is fiddling while the USA collapses. Why? Because he doesn’t know where he is, anymore; he just reads the puppet master’s (whoever that, is) teleprompter.
Luckily I don’t read anything but substack so I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
But...I’m a gen x woman and I think about Rome maybe on the daily. In so many scenarios. I also watch a lot of British history shows that often talk about the Roman occupation in Britain. Is that what we’re talking about?
Sasha is talking about the fall of Ancient Rome and how we seem to be heading for the same fate.
I’m with you Sasha. I see all current events in the light of past history, maybe because I’m a history geek (read Will and Ariel Durant’s History of Civilization right through when I was in Jr. High).
I inherited The History of Civilization set 20 years ago. Still trying to work up the discipline to read it. I salute you!
I was 13 or 14. Being obsessive and driven, not to mention a geek contributed to the accomplishment, if such it was. Besides, I always wanted to know All The Stories (ref. The Black Ships by Jo Graham).
Agreed, Sasha, agreed. Just absurd that Matt W. thinks all of us gals, like his wife, are thinking about furniture & baby clothes. Oh, please. That abstract thought is a private preserve of males? Or only the odd woman makes it there? I agree that there are many sex differences, but tendency to and capacity for abstract thought isn't one of them. I'd say I live there with great pleasure & curiosity for the greater part of the 24/7 we cycle through each week, even with a job, elder care, a grown child, a husband & the errands of daily life. And here in Brooklyn 20 years ago, I met plenty of hipster dads who thought an astonishing amount about which t-shirts their 5 year old would sport day-to-day. It's a function of personality/mind/temperament how you think, not strictly sex, as Walsh assumes & presumes.
I love studying the Roman Empire and ancient history, talking about it and how can one not contemplate the times of bread and circuses we are living in.
I may be wrong but am pretty sure it was like 192 days of the year were party days like no wonder the Vandals didn't want it. I'm all about keeping it so at least our kids want it. Do you ever study the Estruscans? How Rome became Rome? If we don't study history how can all of us plan for the future? Look this biological heterosexual woman loves talking about that stuff, don't let it interfere with your self esteem there's plenty of us that will dish about Pompeii and Spartacus with you. :)
I’m with you, I have contemplated the Roman Empires horrible abuses of power and feel we are coming ever closer to some sort of breaking point with our own Caesar like figures who seem to not have anyone stopping their gross overreaches. I wouldn’t give Matt Walsh or anyone else on the Daily Wire much thought. I also think it’s very demeaning the way he spoke about women in that clip. I never listen to them anymore
The comments about women in the clip as well as many of the comments on this site are disgustingly misogynist and sexist.
Agree. They just can’t imagine a woman using her brain.
Romulus kills Remus and founds a city—a city founded on violence, perpetuated by violence. Rome has many gods, including the august Caesar. But in the end, the religion of Rome is Rome. Virgil writes, "Rome shall extend her empire to earth's end, her ambition to the skies . . ."
Well, says Augustine of Hippo, we’ve heard that story before, and Rome is just the latest chapter: Cain kills Abel and goes on to found a city based on violence. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is the story of two cities, formed by two loves: Babel/Babylon, the earthly city formed by the love of self, even to the contempt of God. Salem/Jerusalem, the heavenly city, by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. “The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord.” And therefore the stunning virtues of the Romans, examples often putting Christians to shame, were actually glorious vices.
But how different is the liberal state, ultimately?
The liberal state, too, is founded on a vision of violence: Cede authority for protection! Accountable to nothing other than the autonomous self! Isn’t our liberalism now of the metaphysical, “believe-in-yourself-above-all” kind? (Rather than the live-and-let-live-because-we’ve-had-enough-of-war kind?) So what’s the difference?!
But the big question for me: Will Christians rise to the occasion, with sacrificial service, as civilization wanes? Are there soldiers today like the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste? Or are we Christ-followers in name only?
The Roman Empire collapsed because of corruption, division, and invasion. Sound familiar?
I think that the fall of the Roman Empire was very damaging, for a very simple reason: it greatly increased the extent of borders, which (for a very long time) greatly increased the extent of cross-border raiding. I am pretty sure it was the peasants, not the nobles, who wound up suffering much higher death-rates.
I also think that, even given the limited evidence we have to work with, the primary cause is fairly clear:
the nobles succeeded too well in oppressing the peasants. (That also seems to be true about the Byzantine Empire and the Icelandic "Free State".) The armies of the Western Empire, by the "end stage", had become ridiculously small. Since the peasants could not, if they were going to keep being oppressed, be allowed to "bear arms", matters eventually reached the point where "German" came to mean "soldier", and from that point the end result was predictable. Power proceeds from the edge of a sword.
Two other "secondary" causes seem worth noting.
First, the Roman Empire paid for spices with gold, which is to say that it paid for renewables with non-renewables. The Eastern Empire was economically strong enough that it could survive this. The Western Empire was not.
Second, once most non-Romans had been assimilated, fear of the barbarians no longer served to motivate unity, and the result (again predictable) was disunity. Roman democracy was only a tradition, not a conclusion based on any *principles*, such as those later created by the Enlightenment, so that there was really nothing to stop it from being eliminated. In fact, the end of democracy was generally celebrated at the time, as democracy had become what might be called a "tyranny of the nobility". It is worth noting that rejection of Enlightenment principles endangers democracy in the West.
Machiavelli maintained that the trouble started when Rome's army ceased to be made up of the people when war came and was replaced by a professional army, leading to what you described. And the army had the power to remove an emperor. No wonder the second amendment was incorporated. The Federalist papers shows how much the founding fathers were influenced by history.
Machiavelli would not have held any view that was out of the question. But the army became professional at the time of Marius, in the late 100s B.C., and the armies did not start to routinely remove emperors till the middle part of the 200s. Yet the empire lasted till beyond the middle 400s. So it seems that the chronology is somewhat problematic.
Given that the first thing the Romans did when they conquered any area was disarm the populace, a connection with the the 2nd amendment seems probable, though I do not know whether this is mentioned in the Federalist Papers.
Federalist number 46 from the Federalist Papers:
“Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms? - James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46.
I am surprised, with all the debate I have heard about guns, that I have never heard this mentioned. I thank you for calling it to my attention.
I think the powerful are usually against the 2A because it undercuts their power. The rest is spin. I found that I had saved the quote in my file of 2A quotes. I have a substack essay of just quotes I collected, some might surprise most people. I also have one on 2A thoughts.
The great increase in firepower has created some fair questions. But 1) being killed in a true mass shooting (not the fake ones that are from domestic violence) remains a very rare cause of death, and 2) the invention of drones, which greatly increase the firepower of the government, means that some increase in the firepower of ordinary citizens is a necessary (though not necessarily sufficient) corrective. I fear that the combination of drones and surveillance may well land us in 1984, just 40 years too late ...
Took me a while to find it.
Of course, the threat to the emperor was always there.
I should have provided a summation.
1) Upward redistribution of wealth is dangerous.
2) Lack of belief in democratic principles is dangerous.
We are obviously seeing both of those now.
I’ve often wondered if the Roman emperors’ courts sent out for pizza.
Dairy Queen would’ve been a hit, since runners traveled to and from mountains carrying snow.
Collapse, yes. Roman Empire, no.
“What did the Romans ever do for us?” to quote Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which I seem to do on a regular basis...
OMG, all these years, I’ve been a woman trapped in a man’s body!
If only there’d been gender-affirming care when I was prepubescent.
I rarely think about the Roman Empire, and that’s only the parallels between the our decline and that of the Romans.
As history goes (and I am a history nerd), the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries hold more interest for me.
I should look into testosterone therapy😕
Here’s a very strange but beautiful video of a waltz that switches back and forth from past to present. Our fallen world is a terrible place full of evil but we do have many beautiful things here so it’s not all bad. No denying that.
“It is because it can be loved by us, it is because it is beautiful, that the universe is a country. It is our only country here below. Let us love the country of here below. It is real; it offers resistance to love. It is this country that God has given us to love. He has willed that it should be difficult yet possible to love it.” Simone Weil. (1909-1943)
Dimitri Shostakovich - The Second Waltz. (6 min)
https://youtu.be/IOK8Jb76ibc?si=GR7ctRl1ifO82RLh
Yes i agree but unless we turn back then we have no hope. He interviens when we do things in his name through prayer and then take action
“Freedom and God are objects of faith, not of knowledge; in other words, freedom and God are infinite abysses whose bottoms cannot be sounded by knowledge.” Simone Weil. 1909-1943
My favorite period is the ghastly and dreadful twentieth century which is quite relevant for us since it’s the history of our grandparents, parents and even many of us alive now. A few years ago I read a book called “The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European” by Stefan Zweig about pre-WW1 Vienna and pre-WW11 Europe in general. Very interesting to read of how European Civilization was overwhelmed by the irrational side of human nature and plunged into a nightmare. Very distressing to see how our entire Western Civilization is being overwhelmed by the irrational and heading down that same very dark path. It is spooky how similar our situation is. A fascinating book but quite distressing to realize that if we’d had the type of weapons we now have 100 years ago it’s highly unlikely we’d be here now. I believe human nature is simply too unstable for humanity to survive and only AI can save our sinking ship. Here’s a couple of videos I just watched this morning about how amazing it is and how fast it’s advancing. Hope springs eternal.
“The Dawn of Superintelligence.” (12 min)
Science Time. Aug 26, 2023
https://youtu.be/x1wnyopSKmA?si=0-8GzJudYj86tBQm
“I'm talking about models that are like two or three orders of magnitude maybe four orders of magnitude on from where we are and we're not far away from that we're going to be training models that are 1,000x larger than they currently are in the next 3 years even at inflection with the compute that we have will be 100x larger than the current Frontier models in the next 18 months you can start to see why AGI means so much more than just a chatbot.”
“AGI Will Not Be A Chatbot-Autonomy, Acceleration, And Arguments Behind the Scenes.” (15 min)
AI Explained. Sept 7, 2023
https://youtu.be/2bn3S4vOVN4?si=Q_froAls_k8qIYAK
People don't think period. All most have ever known is they do what they want with absolute apathy. They don't know about the founding of America or our beloved Constution and Bill of Rights. They know nothing except getting high and getting laid. No personal responsibility. They just continue to vote for their own destruction. I know it sounds like I have no hope. I do have hope but not in people. They long to be taken care of not for freedom. I have hope through God. I ask all those who do know what we're heading for to go back to God now . He's our only hope.
“I have hope through God.”
God does not intervene in our affairs. Only Satan does and he interferes 24/7. The “Prince of Darkness” is always with us. That’s why we need AGI. Perhaps though the reason why AI is advancing so rapidly is because God realized Satan is too tough for us so he’s sending AGI to help us fight the dark side. That’s my best guess of what’s going on here. It’s always darkest just before dawn. Soon the sun will shine and all will be well with the world. All’s well that ends well. Hope springs eternal.
“For he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Matt 5:45.
God gave man the gift of free will.
Unless and until a man exercises that free will by asking God to intervene, God has “limited” Himself to allowing us to come to our conclusions and inevitable outcomes influenced by evil.
“ I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live”
- Deuteronomy 30:19