Shades of the Roman Empire?
Posted: Friday, December 05, 2008
by straight talk
Well a few years ago when I started to write I was drawn to the realities of our society today and the Late Great Roman Empire in its dying moments. The similarities are striking, although many care not to acknowledge them giving excuse or reason after reason why they don't apply.
So simply speaking lets stick to basics even though many might say too vague. One we use the poor and lower income families to fight our wars. In this case we are considering mercenaries, that is foreigners to fill our depleted ranks. Do we use slave labor? Well certainly one can argue that. We do pay them, if one could call that pay, and we now have millions of illegal people roaming all over the nation. Serve in the army and get citizenship, live here awhile and get citizenship. Yes become a Roman citizen and get free rights and privileges like any other Roman [oh sorry] American.
Then we have the haves of society. Living in opulence, catered to devoid of any relationship with the peons, peasants, working class but feeling for them. feeling their pain and suffering. Hey that sounds about right. Of course we have the intellectuals, also extremely liberal and granting whatever they could and always wanting to take from the rich to give to the poor, yes, the only problem they took first divs. Yes much like today
So we also have the foreign wars. How strange that is even very similar. The Romans always fighting in the provinces, that is the average and poor and these troops served for years, just like ours and yes when they came home what did they find? I'll let figure that one out.
Yes and it became so bad nothing was produced by Rome and they became the biggest consumers in the known world. Yes and they imported even their labor. Hey who wants to work in the hot fields, right? Yes and pretty soon their culture was destroyed. Piece by piece until while it was called Rome, there wasn't really much left of the real original Rome. Hey now that even sounds very familiar.
So what happened to Rome? Well very simply it fell from within. Gee how strange. Oh sure the barbarians broke down the gates but really it was the demise of their culture, ideals, way of life work ethic and perspective that really did them in. Oh and yes they hung around a few more years but never again were they what they once was.
Hey it at least took them a lot longer to reach that point. We did it all in just a few hundred years. Well that was America, no more.
Robert T. Melaccio Sr. 2008 Copyright 2008 Robert Melaccio Sr.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)You know Mr. Melaccio, when I got out of the service in 1969 I was sitting in a bar when someone ask me what I thought of the American system. That is, the way things were back then. I said to him "Have you ever heard of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire?" Yes it seemed as though we were heading for doomsday back then. I keep on believing things are better today than they were back then.Please log in to respond to this comment.Davis, I really don't know how they are better, really. One could write pages about the differences and the deterioration of our society morally, ethically and in other ways. We seem to have lost what we were and what e stood for and that my friend is everything. Best wishes.Please log in to respond to this comment.
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