In response to:

Glenn Beck, National Decline And The Story Of The Roman Empire

PecosPete.38 Wrote: Apr 28, 2012 11:32 AM
Whenever I think of the fall of Rome, I think of the barbarians overrunning the empire; we have our share of barbarians overrunning our country. By barbarians, I mean those who seek to destroy, not contribute. Each person, no matter how uneducated, uninformed, uncultured, can contribute according to his/her own gifts & talents. Some of the best contributors to the world's arts: music, writing, painting, dance, theatre, etc have come from miserable backgrounds. Everyone has something to contribute.Those who do NOT contribute are celebrated by this administration.
Dave M Wrote: Apr 28, 2012 12:45 PM
Most of it is attitudinal among the citizens.
After the disater at Cannae the Roman Republic never even considered surrender or a "Cease-Fire".
In the 400 ADs a much wealthier and populous empire could not even muster enough of its own citizens to defend Rome. The main combat forces ceased to be the legions . In modern terms it would be like recruiting illegal aliens as the main source of manpower for the Army and paying the Mexican and Canadian Armies to do the bulk of the fighting for us.
dahni Wrote: Apr 28, 2012 12:54 PM
Thanks, that jogged my memory a little more. Citizens stopped fighting for their country and started hiring mercenaries, I believe. My favorite Son-in-Law is a Marine. He trains the newbie Marine wannabees. His feeling, over the last 10 years, is that more and more just want food and shelter and a little money to party with. They do not want to work to improve. His last comment to me was that after serving in Kuwait, Segovia and Iraq twice he had some hisitation to going into combat with a lot of his trainees... scary.
In my last installment in this series I argued that talk show host Glenn Beck was raising legitimate concerns about the state of the nation, but that he had a history of predictions of imminent disasters which did not pan out. Why didn’t they? After all, the left really does have a strong totalitarian bent. No nation is guaranteed eternal life, let alone eternal prosperity and hegemony. And the United States is, indeed, aggressively moving in the wrong direction.
 
So why didn’t the dollar collapse? Why is it still the reserve currency of the...
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