A nation and a civilization are in great trouble when they can’t tolerate either the disease or the medicine. The USA is sick, but the Biden regime is delivering an endless series of wrong medications. The situation is even worse in Europe. If civilization is to survive, it needs a spiritual revolution.
We can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies.
Historian Livy (59 B.C. – A.D. 17) expressed this about the prolonged decline that ultimately led to the abolition of the Roman Republic.
Like a patient whose medicine proves worse than the disease, Livy lamented that the Romans knew that they had become corrupt and lawless.
This is written by Victor Davis Hanson in American Greatness. Hanson believes the same is happening in today’s USA. He could easily extend this to the entire Western civilization.
Hanson believes the fear of being met with accusations prevents openly discussing solutions. Every sensible American understands that the border must be closed, that the suicidal practice of catch-and-release cannot continue, that all criminal illegal migrants should be deported, and that the Trump wall should be completed with pressure on Mexico.
But then we shrug, “We can’t do that”—paralyzed in fear of being smeared as “xenophobic,” “nativist,” or “racist.”
A few years ago, I wrote something like this: If over the past year you haven’t been accused of being transphobic, racist, and misogynistic, well – then you’re probably part of the problem.
After all, you’re accused of being both transphobic and a misogynist if you dislike men destroying women’s sports (remember: Only trans women are real women).
But our generation seems to believe that you’re good if you accept that girls are raped in girls’ locker rooms in middle schools, that the poor oppressed Muslims rape our girls and beat up our boys, and call for genocide of Jews in our streets (from the river to the sea), with full support from a mostly anti-Semitic and LGBTQ-friendly Norwegian Parliament.
In the USA, they just let the debt grow, leaving it to their children and (non-existent) grandchildren to deal with. The attitude of Biden and his posse seems to be that only racists and right-wing nutjobs want to create a better future for their descendants.
You should feel sorry for a rapist from Afghanistan (who has lived in Iran for ten years). You should have sympathy for a murderer from Somalia or Syria. Then we should praise an endless line of female Islamists in full uniform. Even IS women deserve sympathy, they might have an «allegedly sick child», which was used as an argument here in Norway. Then money comes easy. But it seems impossible to find money for our own citizens.
Then they use climate hysteria to pretend they care about how hot it gets in the Sahara in the year 2100. We let this happen, it’s unforgivable.
The fall of the Roman Empire had many causes that we can recognize today.
They lost focus on the core. The Roman Empire grew too large. That’s what we’re experiencing today with the globalist focus. That’s why everyone hates Trump when he says Make America Great Again. Not Burkina Faso, Tibet, or the fictional product Palestine. But the USA, once The Land of the free and the home of the brave.
Borders become porous. The Roman Empire grew so large that they couldn’t control the borders. The solution was immigration – East Goths, West Goths, partially Huns and Vandals, were given near-free passage, with loose agreements to defend the borders against other «barbarians».
Our situation is far worse: the EU, USA, as well as Norwegian and Swedish politicians invite immigrants that we absolutely do not need. They promised us enrichment, but we got enormous costs, murders, terrorism, and rapes. An unsafe environment that costs us Norwegians hundreds of billions every year (we are only 4.3 million Norwegians) and creates a poorer and deeply divided population.
Economic decline. The economy of the Roman Empire stagnated; they introduced the first step towards the welfare state by distributing free grain to the masses to garner votes. Western economies are in a self-inflicted crisis due to climate hysteria, mass immigration, and (in Europe) a welfare state that rewards those who produce nothing at all.
A significant day for the Roman «welfare state» is when Emperor Aurelian in the year 274 declares that the right to welfare should be hereditary – this reminds a lot of our modern welfare societies here in Norway, where, for example, disability benefits seem to be a hereditary disease.
Aurelian also did something else that is extremely recognizable today: He changed the tradition of giving free grain to the people and instead gave them pre-baked bread. So, they shouldn’t just get free grain – they should be spared the minimum effort of baking bread themselves. Anyone feeling familiar with this?
Increased tax levels were the result, then as now. The productive Norwegian are fleeing to Switzerland today, as those who can flee California.
Bread and circuses. Roman politicians tried to pacify the population with panem et circenses. The people sold their freedom for free bread, gladiator fights, and horse races.
Reality shows and welfare states. History repeats itself.
Military fatigue. When military forces are outsourced, military competence is lost. The Romans lost interest in being soldiers. Fewer and fewer Romans wanted to serve in the legions. Military pride was seen as vulgar and outdated.
We haven’t outsourced our defense. Here in Europe, most have simply abolished defense. The USA is stronger, but with LGBTQ focus and fat camps, decay is evident there too.
Morale decay/decadence. The stories of decadence in the Roman Empire are countless. The tales surrounding Antony/Caesar/Cleopatra alone are probably enough to fill a couple of hours on “pornhub.com”. Caesar and Antony may have been immoral, but they weren’t decadent. They were real men, they had careers – and their achievements (and failures) resonate in history.
Then it got worse. Caligula allegedly appointed his horse as consul. One of the craziest stories about Caligula is that when he couldn’t find the enemy in war, he ordered some of his soldiers to dress up as enemies so he could kill them (and win the battle). This is so crazy that it almost has to be true (who would make up something like that, right?).
Nero killed his own mother, brother, his own wife and her unborn child, and drove Seneca to suicide, and in addition, he came up with new «sports» in the Olympics, such as lyre-playing, where he always won.
The question is whether Biden is much more respectable, as he flirts with little girls and sniffs their hair. Or what about the Norwegian politicians Raymond Johansen and Jonas Gahr Støre, playing gays in front of the Pride parade? Do you remember the alcoholic Juncker, stumbling around Brussels as a EU-president nobody voted for? It didn’t get much better with von der Leyen.
Demographic collapse. The last couple of hundred years of the (Western) Roman Empire they saw a significant decline in birth rates. This is also a frightening phenomenon in today’s Europe: We don’t even bother to reproduce. In the USA, the situation is slightly better, but there too, the number of abortions is rising while birth rates are declining.
There are several other elements that explain the tragic collapse of the Roman Empire. There was division between East and West after the establishment of Constantinople. The Justinian Plague struck the Eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantine Empire), including the capital Constantinople, in the years 541–542 AD. There were also significant climate changes, entirely without modern carbon emissions being the explanation.
The division between East and West is also evident today. Woke-infected politicians in the West are furious with Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, etc., which want to preserve their national cultures and interests. Von der Leyen & co. should be reminded that the Eastern Roman Empire survived almost a thousand years longer than the Western Roman Empire. This could easily repeat itself. But if Western Europe falls, it is doubtful whether Central Europe can survive for a thousand years.
The consequences of the fall of the Roman Empire were dramatic and set back the development of our philosophy, history, and science by many hundreds of years. The consequences of The Fall of the Roman Empire, Episode 2, will be the death blow to any hope of a free, dynamic, and progressive Europe.
Without Europe, the world is a poorer place. That must be allowed to be said about a continent that has fostered Galileo, Shakespeare, Leibniz, Newton, Descartes, Hegel, Kant, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Darwin, Einstein, Goethe, Hamsun, Munch … I could go on for hours, but I challenge my readers to list something similar from the Islamic world (Persians and Indians are not accepted examples).
Hanson writes that people try to ignore the disaster as long as it doesn’t happen in their own neighborhood. I have pointed this out before: Even if you live in safe areas, you must have some empathy for the children who don’t? Moreover, if you just let things go on as they are, safe areas will be something we read about in history books.
Societies do not always collapse from a lack of wealth, invasion, or natural catastrophes.
Most often, they know what is destroying them. But they are so paralyzed by their fear that the road to salvation becomes too painful to even contemplate.
So they implode gradually, then suddenly.
The quote from Hemingway is a fitting conclusion. Just like with bankruptcy, the disaster occurs: First gradually, then suddenly.
