Are We in Waning Times like Rome?

Throughout human history, there have been approximately 60 empires, some longer lived than others - Roman Empire, Persian, Mongol, Ottoman, Han Dynasty, Umayyad Caliphate, Spanish Empire, Russian Empire, and the British Empire. They left significant traces in both eastern and western civilizations.

The Mongol Empire of the 13^th and 14^th centuries was the most contiguous empire in history. The Umayyad Caliphate comprised 4 million square miles.

The Han dynasty ruled from 206 B.C. for 400 years.

The Ottoman (Islamic) Empire occupied parts of three continents during 16^th and 17^th centuries. It “collapsed in the early years of the 20^th century.”

Persian Empire (Achaemenian) under Cyrus the Great occupied lands from Iran to Central Asia and Egypt. It fell in 333 B.C.

The Spanish empire, at its height in the 1700s stretched over 5.3 million square miles. This colonial empire existed from 1492 until 1649 (the decline) or 1976, depending on who you ask. It controlled parts of Africa, Europe, Oceanic islands, and both Americas.

The Russian Empire controlled 8.9 million square miles at its height in 1895. Historians agree that this empire and the Little Ice Age had played important roles in stopping Napoleon’s conquest of Europe.

The British Empire, now a shadow of its former self, controlled a quarter of the planet and of its population. A few of the former colonies remain part of the Commonwealth of Nations to this day.

Hitler’s Third Reich (empire), as he proclaimed it, was supposed to last a thousand years. It lasted a little over a decade, from 1933 until its pronounced defeat in 1945 by the Allies in WWII.

The Roman Empire was established in 27 B.C. by Augustus Caesar who proclaimed himself the first Emperor of Rome. Rome itself was founded in 753 B.C.

Then there was the Holy Roman Empire which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Headed by a Holy Roman Emperor, this “polity” developed in the Early Middle Ages in Europe and lasted almost a thousand years until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.

Nobody can dispute the fact that America has tried to be too many things to too many people and that, in the end, we appear to have failed. We have not advanced democracy around the world as politicians claimed because most countries did not want our “democracy.”

We are not a democracy nor an empire, we are a Constitutional Republic. When the mainstream media repeated the lie of democracy ad nauseam, people eventually believed it.  

Merriam-Webster Dictionary quoted James Madison who wrote, “In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.”

In 507 B.C., Athenian leader Cleisthenes introduced demokratia, “rule by the people,” from the Greek words, demos (people) and kratos (power). Demokratia had three institutions, the ekklesia (a group who wrote laws and devised foreign policy); the boule (council of representatives from the ten Athenian tribes); and the dikasteria (courts in which citizens presented cases to a group of jurors chosen by lottery). The lottery had to be rigged since the rich were chosen more often than the poor. Demokratia lasted two centuries. Academics renamed it direct democracy as opposed to modern representative democracy. Academics love to play with words and meanings to suit their agenda.

Democracy was not power to the people (demos-people, kratos-power) because out of 100,000 Athenian citizens only 40,000 were part of the demos who voted, male citizens older than 18.

Dikasteria chose by lot 500 jurors every day from a pool of male citizens older than 30. Aristotle said that dikasteria “contributed most to the strength of democracy because the jury had unlimited power.” Athenian citizens “used dikasteria to punish or embarrass their enemies.”  Sounds familiar?

The Roman Empire stretched all over Europe and North Africa. It lasted more than a thousand years if one takes into account the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) which ended with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 A.D. and its capture by the Turks.

This Eastern Roman Empire, more Greek in life and language, furthered Roman learning, and law within its walls.

The advance of the Roman Empire was always halted by the barbaric tribes in the north and east – Franks, Saxons, Alemanni, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Alans, and Huns.

At its height, Rome, the seat of the Roman Empire, was a superb megalopolis of more than one million people.

In 410 A.D., historians describe a hot August night when a slave opened “the gates of a starving Rome and the Gothic armies camped outside flooded the “Eternal City.” Hordes of Germanic barbarians ransacked Rome for three days.

St. Jerome, a native of Rome, wrote, “When the brightest light on the whole Earth was extinguished, when the Roman Empire was deprived of its head, when, to speak more correctly, the whole world perished in one city, I was dumb with silence.”  

Rome stood unconquered for 800 years. The Roman Empire never recovered after this sacking of Rome and, in 476 A.D., the last emperor, Romulus Augustus, was deposed by his own German commanders.

Alaric’s Goths were not exactly interested in destroying Rome, they wanted the Roman way of life. Alaric had asked for land for his men and the title of allied commander but was denied. More Roman soldiers were recruited from the ranks of these barbarians who felt no allegiance to Rome.

King Gaiseric destroyed much more of Rome in 454 A.D., but the end of the empire is associated with Alaric’s attack in 410 A.D. because the psychological blow to the Roman citizenry was so shocking that it became impossible to overcome.

The Western Roman Empire had stretched too far from Rome and its borders were exceedingly more difficult to defend against the constant invasions.

The excessive use of lead as sweetener, in cosmetics, and in lead pipes that carried water everywhere, caused chronic lead poisoning and infertility as evidenced by skeletons found in Cirencester which contained ten times the amount of normal lead concentration. People suffered from paralyzed limbs and headaches, classic symptoms of lead poisoning. Fertility declined, and no encouragement from emperors to produce more children changed the down spiral.

Other historians believe that “mad emperors, corrupt politicians, the lust for power, sexual perversion, and paranoia destroyed the empire from within.” You can add to that envy and treachery.

Some autocratic emperors ruled only for their own benefit, greed, power, and vengeance, but some spent Rome’s wealth for the common good. Murder in cold blood often removed their enemies, real and imagined. Other emperors were so crazy that they committed unspeakable horrors just because they could.

Greed and corruption were so entrenched that “Six men owned half the land in the province of Africa, according to the historian Pliny the Elder.”   

The main lessons from the Roman Empire's demise are that it fell because of greed, corruption, immorality, debauchery, inability to defend its vast borders, massive invasion from poor neighbors who envied the Roman lifestyle and its riches and wanted lands and wealth, and potential lead poisoning which led to population decline. It is important to note that the Roman Empire's decline and fall were not carefully orchestrated from within, by its own Curia and Senators, its fall happened gradually over hundreds of years. 

Even though our country is a Constitutional Republic, many Americans today believe that it is a democracy, others an empire, and some an experiment. The lie of democracy and empire has been repeated so many times that it has become the truth for most.

Considering the off the cliff’ purposeful direction that our country is following, this question is legitimate, are we in the waning years of its former greatness?

Sunset Over an Empire

As the sun is setting, it is casting long shadows of objects on the white sandy beach. I never get tired of watching its beauty reflected on the ocean whipped endlessly by the currents. If the weather cooperates, we have a good chance of experiencing again the sunset’s beauty across the sky.

The churning ocean, the shimmering lakes and rivers, the land, the deep gorges, the forests, and the mountains, will be bathed in the last hues of intense orange, pink, and purple before darkness falls.

But the sunset of our ‘empire’ we call a constitutional republic is hard to watch. Its demise is painful, sad, and depressing because it is self-destructive and purposeful, aided by the ignorance and laziness of we the people.

Many from the left seem eager and willing to replace capitalism with communism. The answer to the obvious question of why is simple. Because they have no historical background or actual knowledge that would help them understand the evils of communism. Teachers, Hollywood, and the press have lied to them about communism, directly, or by omission.

One public school teacher in Arlington, Virginia, told her class that “communism is people continuously giving gifts to each other.” Tell that to the millions living under communism who received the gift of a bullet for not bending their knee quick enough to the theft by the communist rulers.

One American commented that her “grandfather received the gift of ‘beatings’ every night for months until he was forced to give up his farm to the lazy people in the village.”

E. Merkel wrote, “Americans frequently quote parts of the New Testament and say that it supports Socialism/Communism. Which of course betrays the fact that they have no understanding of Christianity or Christian principles. With the original first century Christians, giving was completely voluntary, out of the goodness of their hearts and knowledge of the ‘gift’ they had been given. Socialism/Communism completely removes the ‘voluntary’ aspect.”

Few Americans understand what communism is. Although they are told by those who survived the communist regime and fled it, Americans turn a blind eye and deaf ear. The most basic questions they should ask themselves is, if communism is so great, why were millions of communist subjects killed by the Communist Party, and why so many escaped and fled to this country if communism was so great?

“Communism indoctrinates children to make up false accusations against their parents and neighbors; the culprits are disappeared but the snitches are assured the favors of the communist police state. Communism destroys beautiful art, buildings, and statuary they label bourgeois. They destroy beauty because not everyone and everything else is beautiful. They have misery, starvation, and murder in gulags. After the Bolsheviks’ initial promises never panned out, people realized that they sold their souls to the communist devils for lies.”

Under the communist regime, people were isolated, worn out, hungry, and deprived of their ability to resist. Remember the isolation from loved ones, from church, from social gatherings, social distancing, solitary confinement, and forced isolations during Covid-19? We were forced to comply or else be arrested, just like they forced us to comply with the communist party rule.

Because people were paid so extraordinarily little, they could not afford to travel far and certainly not abroad. They thus restricted our movement to a small radius of the place where we were born and lived. Village people were not allowed to move to the city without the explicit approval of the Communist Party.

Information was censored, meetings and gatherings were forbidden, media was dominated by the state rule 24/7. No other views were allowed. Again, this is remarkably like the 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns and how the police state managed the population and curtailed its freedoms. I could go to the swimming pool at the gym, but I had to wear a mask.

We were worn out by tension and fear under communism and by the inability to find enough food or any food at all, medicines, medical care, and by having to stand in interminable lines for basic food items like bread, milk, sugar, flour, and cooking oil.

Remember the contradictory “advice” and constant fear drilled into Americans from the White House platform of Dr. Fauci about Covid-19? You had to stay home, not permitted to socialize, or exercise even outdoors in large parks.

They closed National Parks, state parks, and even regional parks. They closed clean and safe building facilities and brought out port-o-potties in a huge state park nearby. When parks were allowed to reopen eventually, people were wearing masks alone in the woods; that is what abject fear had reduced them to – automatons who did things that made no logical sense.

The Communist Party cultivated an environment of fear and despair, not unlike the Covid-19 lockdowns and the accompanying irrational fears created by carefully crafted public announcements and artificial decrees that violated people’s rights and freedoms. The futility to resist eventually dominated everybody’s behavior. They knew who was in charge, the police state, and they had guns and lots of jails.

Even though demands were illogical and contradictory, people were habituated to following orders or else they were refused basic needs. Why the arbitrary six feet between people and all the other arbitrary and ridiculous dictates? If people disobeyed, they were refused entry into grocery stores, restaurants, public places like parks, pharmacies, etc. Similar scenarios happened under communist rule. People had to obey, or they had their freedoms taken away for good and their families never saw them again.

Why did the communists allow snitches and their own echelons of apparatchiks to shop for better and more food than the rest? To show everyone who was in charge and to create and maintain an army of faithful foot soldiers.

Why were entire economies shut down then only a few businesses were allowed to reopen at a reduced capacity? The virus recognized those to be safe and stayed away?

Surveillance was developed around the world, money created from nothing to pay people to stay home and “be happy,” medical care and hospitals became torture places instead of deliverers of care; to this day, people do not trust them and doctors because they refused care when people needed it.

Why shame people and ostracize them when they were non-compliant? It is a tactic that the communists used a lot. Fear and a sense of helplessness and dependence heightened to unbelievable levels. Depression, despair, divorces, and suicides increased.

Trivial demands split society and families, i.e., family members had to stand apart and wear masks to dinner in their own homes, random limits on the number of people allowed to be in a group, even in their own homes, the use of sanitizers endlessly during the day and on all objects people touched.

The habit of compliance drilled into people’s minds is evident today when some people are still wearing masks, still injecting themselves with Covid-19 vaccine boosters, and still sanitizing their hands with chemicals instead of washing them.

People have become so irrational and woke that, even when presented with factual and logical evidence to the contrary of what they believe, they reject those facts and stick with their irrational beliefs.

Yuri Bezmenov said in a 1984 interview about the four stages of ideological subversion, that when human beings reject reality in front of their eyes, the brainwashing is complete. FULL INTERVIEW with Yuri Bezmenov: The Four Stages of Ideological Subversion (1984) (youtube.com)

When that happens to many Americans, the sun will set on the most successful constitutional republic in the history of the world, and the ‘empire’ will rest at the bottom of the dustbin of history and darkness will fall enduringly.

 

 

 

 

The End of an Empire

Our Constitutional Republic died a peaceful death on November 6, 2012. Having reached the point of no return in a comatose state after years of progressive and illegal immigration assaults, the fabric of conservative society is now completely unraveled and Uncle Sam’s America is no more.

The United States of America is now relegated to the dust bin of history as a “has been” empire. The Shining City on the Hill, the hope of so many millions since July 4, 1776, no longer exists. What rises from the ashes is a country that few of us will recognize, like, or learn to accept submissively.

After 236 years of existence, a new country emerges today, run by secular progressives who rejected our Constitution, what we stand for, and who we are as a nation. The Supreme Court will be forever altered after its last conservative members will be replaced by the liberal academics who call themselves “progressives.” The rule of law will be implemented by Executive Orders, making Congress irrelevant.

The communist motto “Forward” that resonated with so many ignorant Americans will plunge us into many years of darkness from which we will never be able to recover. We have proven our Founding Fathers right, they did give us a Constitutional Republic and we were unable to maintain it.

The forces of the failed communist fundamental transformation that were driven underground in many places around the world, resurfaced with a vengeance in the United States and have now taken over.

How long we will still have freedom of speech, movement, assembly, and control of our private property remains to be seen. Faith and churches will be driven underground, allowing secularism to prosper and take deep roots among the progressives whose God is Mother Earth.

The welfare dependent Americans, unions, and illegal aliens have chosen for the rest of us the dark path of serfdom to big government and to socialist utopia.

Who would have guessed that the very people who were complaining that the government is not extricating them from disaster or giving them the help they needed in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, would vote for the very politicians who turned their backs on needy Americans after the lights went dark when the political photo opportunities ended?

Who would have guessed that Americans were as ignorant and irresponsible as to choose fiscal destruction over fiscal sanity for their children and grandchildren, secularism and communism over faith, dependence over personal responsibility and self-reliance?

Americans have been protesting for the last four years the dismal state of the economy and the direction of our country, the corruption of our politicians, and the loss of personal and economic freedom.

Rallies in support of conservatism overwhelmed venues for Mitt Romney while rallies for our bumbling President became scarcer and scarcer. Yet, miraculously, at the ballot box, our President won all over the country.

We lost seats in the Senate. Americans chose liars and cheats to be their Senators and Representatives, rejecting those who protected the Constitution. The candidate from Massachusetts who claimed direct American Indian lineage to Pocahontas is now a Senator, having defeated Scott Brown. Representative Allen West lost his seat by a narrow margin but the infamous Wasserman Schultz from Florida kept hers. 

Americans chose high unemployment, reduction of our military, communist indoctrination of their children, and loss of personal freedoms unlike we have never seen before in this country.

I am saddened by the loss of millions and millions of American soldiers who have died to preserve freedom yet we lost it on November 6, 2012. Those buried in cemeteries around the world and at Arlington must be rolling in their graves today. We shamelessly allowed their sacrifice of blood and treasure to go in vain. We have no honor because we let down all the soldiers who fought in recent times and returned home limbless with lives shattered from physical and mental wounds of war.

I mourn today the loss of my adopted country. I have fought hard over the last four years to prevent its overt and accelerated destruction but the darker forces stronger than many of us have overcome concerted efforts by millions of Americans to maintain the Republic. Mediocrity, sloth, godlessness, dependence, cowardice, using the law selectively or ignoring it, and hopeless corruption will define the new country. Only God can save us now with his mercy and grace.