American Civilization=Roman Empire?

Great Debates
81

America won’t dramatically “fall”. It’ll still be around in 100 years, and still be a global power.

Its status as the world’s only superpower, of course, is a temporary thing. It’s been so for just a few minutes*, and will be so for only a few more minutes - a blip in the history books. It just seems more than that because we’re living through it.

To the literalists who will descend upon the word “minutes” like yapping pedantic poodles of war, this is obviously a turn of phrase. Figure it out or ignore it. Basic social intercourse 101.*

**Sorry about that. Just that several times in the last week I’ve had people descending upon turns of prhase because they can’t parse hyperbole, colloquialism, or exaggeration, and derive the point being made.

82

Ironically, the part which most closely resembled “political correctness”, namely, treating individual Germans as people and sometimes incorporating them into auxiliary units, had been successfully going on for hundreds of years by the time the Empire had declined. In its prime, Rome most certaily did not invite Germanic tribes to live in Italy, and on the few times they did so, it was a symptom of decline rather than a cause: they were already too weak to prevent them, or stand alone without outside help.

Do you think Rome would have lasted longer had it not held a multicultural view toward the Greeks? Do you think America’s strength will last longer if we lock out honest foreign workers with valuable skills simply because they don’t pray to the same sky fairy as you do? Or do you just mean we should be intolerant toward some foreign cultures and not others?

83

Nonsense. America is not retreating from anywhere (unless of course the ultra-leftists and the paleocons have their way) and unlike Rome it has the good will of half the world and the grudging tolerance of the rest.

84

About the only parallel (USA and the late Roman Empire) concerns the overextension of both powers. The USA is attempting to maintain military forces around the globe-while running enormous deficits.
In the late Roman Empire, the cost of maintaining the army was a huge burden-there was no adequate system of taxation, and the government resorted to debasing the currency (think the Fed printing up trillions$).
Eventually, the USA is going to have to cease being world policeman-because we cannot afford it. Are there any “barbarians” trying in invade and sack Washington? I don’t think so.

85

[QUOTE=RaleighRally]
The American empire will fall just like Rome, perhaps in 5-10 years.
[/QUOTE]

No. It will fall next Tuesday, OMG !

I thought multiculturalism (political correctness) had been invented in America in the 60s and forced upon Sweden ? Get your utter lack of facts straight.

86

Uh … no.

It’s true that part of the trouble in the 4th century lay with the handling of the foederati, the barbarians who were allowed to settle within the boundaries of the empire. But the foederati settlements were not in Italy. They were out on the frontiers. And the problem was that the foederati were never allowed to fully integrate into the empire. They were fighting for the Empire, keeping the borders safe, but they weren’t accorded the rights of Roman citizens. Eventually foederati allegiance to the Emperor broke down, leaving the Empire defenseless.

So, actually, the Empire collapsed not of too MUCH multiculturalism, but of too LITTLE. The process of integrating non-Romans into the imperial system that had worked so well with the other Italian tribes, with the Spanish, with the Gauls, with the Anatolians, with the Illyrians … stopped working in the 4th century. And the result was disaster.

87

As much as I would like to believe this, there are just too many holes in the dike for America to plug them all. And it isn’t just the lefties and the paleocons who are to blame for this. There are a huge number of Pubs and conservatives in general who deserve a huge share of the blame.

And of course, Old Man Entropy catches up with everything and everybody sooner or later. We like to think that if we only have enough scientific knowledge and sufficient political power to apply that knowledge, that we can somehow create a society which will be stable, prosperous and free, no matter what the changing circumstances that the passage of time may bring. The forces that determine the eventual fate of nations, empires and the human race itself will very likely be biological rather than political, and most likely we are in a deep state of denial when we tell ourselves that we only need the correct ideology and the political power to enforce that ideology

John Lennon once said that life is what happens while you’re making other plans. In a similar spirit, I would suggest that history is what happens while we preoccupy ourselves with ideology.

88

You know the whole, “Our armies are overextended! That means we’ll collapse!” thing is just nonsense. You know what will happen if we withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan? I mean, happen to the United States?

There’s no denying that the answer is, “Nothing.” Nothing bad is going to happen to us if we withdraw our legions from overseas. Where exactly are the barbarian hordes that are going to invade us? Please don’t answer, “Mexico”, because if you do you’ll be laughed at. If you answer “China” you’ll likewise be laughed at. Withdrawing our troops from overseas doesn’t mean the End of America, or the beginning of the End of America, unless you count losing the Vietnam war as the beginning of the End of America.

America is going to take a heap of wrecking before it finally staggers off the world stage. Rome declined and declined and declined for centuries before finally “falling”, if you can call it that, in 476. Except it didn’t actually fall, 476 wasn’t the collapse of the empire, it was just the replacement of an incompetant “Roman” emperor with a german cheiftan. And the other half of the Empire continued on for literally another thousand years, when the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453.

Or are we talking about the fall of the Roman Republic, rather than the Roman Empire? When exactly did the Roman Republic fall? With Julius? Octavian? Anthony? Or Sulla, or Marius? The Roman Republic took a long long time to fall, and while it was falling Rome itself was stronger than ever.

And this ignores the question of what would be going on in the rest of the world while America “falls”. What the heck does that even mean? Like, the fall of the British Empire, that covered a quarter of the globe, that the sun never set on? Well, the British Empire fell, and the people of Britian are better off today than they’ve ever been. Read George Orwell and how he thought that Britain’s wealth was dependent on exploiting the empire, and how once the empire was finished Britain would suffer a serious and permanent lowering of their standard of living. Well, it turns out the British Empire cost more to maintain than it ever generated.

So America loses its overseas Empire–which consists of what, exactly? Afghanistan? Iraq? Military bases in Bahrain and Germany and Japan? None of those things bring American citizens a dime. They cost money, a lot of money. It won’t be the End of America when we no longer have troops in Korea or Japan, any more that it was the End of America when we didn’t have troops in Vietnam. Yeah, it sucked for the South Vietnamese to be conquered and enslaved by the North. And it made the front pages of the newspapers here in America when the North finally rolled into Saigon. And then we tossed those newspapers in the trash and went on with our lives, because it turned out that we weren’t fighting for national survival in Vietnam. We were fighting for national pride and ego, but we survived losing that fight.

So our overseas “colonies”, if you can call them that, don’t generate any money for America. They cost money. The provide no direct benefit. Losing them would strengthen America, not weaken it. Not that I advocate withdrawing troops from Germany tomorrow. Just that if we did, nothing bad would happen.

I’d like the people who imagine an End of America scenario to point out other countries in the past 200 years that have “fallen” like the fall of Rome. France? Does the French Revolution count? The Revolution, after which French armies marched out and conquered most of Europe? The loss of the French Empire? The fall of Paris to the Nazis and the establishment of Vichy? The massacres of WWI? Does anyone seriously think life in France is worse in 2011 than it was in 1955, or 1930, or 1910, or 1876, or 1789?

Hell, life in the city of Rome today is better by any metric you care to choose than at any other era in history. So who’s predicting that people living in New York City in 2111 are going to look back at 2011 with envy? And if 2011 isn’t our peak, well, when was our peak? 1955? Seriously?

89

We don’t have any of them Phrygian caps anymore :frowning:

90

Well, that has got to be a bit low. Theodosius’ famous decree (against really anyone who wouldn’t join the Roman Catholic Church) came in 381, and they started killing right away. If the phenomenon lasted until 1400, that is more than 1000 years.

91

My point will look a lot better if you confine your observations to the portions of Julian’s career that went swimmingly, mmmkay?

As for conquering Persia, well there is another difference between Rome and America. W is in some ways a closer approximation of Alexander than Julian, in that he did effectively oversee the defeats of Iraq and Afghanistan, whatever else you think of the results.

Funny thing is, Julian is the conservative of his time. He was fighting to preserve the (really) old, (Hellenist) ways. Basically an anti-Christian conservative.

But they both imitated Alexander. What is the deal with conservatives and Alexander?

92

The Eastern Roman Empire, which became known as the Byzantine Empire, was thoroughly Christian. It survived until 1453.

The Holy Roman Empire can be considered a restoration of the Western Roman Empire. It too was thoroughly Christian. It survived until 1806.

E.O. Wilson, who wrote, Sociobiology, the New Synthesis, is not a Christian. In his book, On Human Nature he wrote that religion unifies a nation and makes it more durable.

93

I suppose not, but sheesh! The famous decree came as he was stepping out of his baptismal bath. So, all at once he converts, established the Catholic church, and suggests ripping the flesh from the bones of everyone else with iron combs. It is unique to him isn’t it? That should count for some share of the responsibility. At the least he isn’t really a ‘good guy’.

I suppose, but his reputation is far more humane. A critic thought he might have been more successful had he been more of a Hadrian.

94

In important respects the underlying condition of the U.S. economy is worse now than in the early 1930s. The national debt as a percentage of gross domestic product is much higher. The United States is no longer an oil exporting country. We import 70 percent of the oil we consume, along with many more of our consumer goods. We are no longer the world’s leading creditor country; we are the world’s leading debtor.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a great deal of polarization in the United States over the War in Vietnam and racial issues. Nevertheless, the U.S. economy had been growing since the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Most white Wallace supporters, most New Left Radicals, most black militants, and most black ghetto rioters were better off economically than ever before, and better off economically than their parents were at their ages.

This is not true now. Real after tax income for most Americans has declined since 1980, and even more since 2000.
http://investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=971&mn=389436&pt=msg&mid=10153698

A declining standard of living makes conflicts over economic issues zero sum games. In the conflict between red state and blue state America one can see the fault lines building for a civil war. The United States could collapse the way the Soviet Union collapsed. However, an American collapse, unlike the Soviet collapse, would be catastrophically violent. Too many Americans own guns. Too many on either end of the divide hate those on the other end.

95

First of all, I wouldn’t say he “established the Catholic Church”. Depending on how you define it, the Catholic Church existed either before he became emperor, with the establishment of Bishops and Patriarchs around the Empire or not until after the fall of the Western Empire, when the Bishop of Rome his asserted independence of the Byzantine Emperor and established a separation of church and state, with the Church not bound to secular power. Either way, it’s not Theodosius. Theodosius wasn’t even the first Emperor to patronize the church or get involved in its internal workings, or make illegal certain doctrines. Constantine did that. All Theodosius did was make paganism illegal and extend religious conformity to non-Christians in the empire; a big thing, to be sure, but not “establishing the Catholic Church”.

And you have your dates wrong. Theodosius was a fairly devout Christian from his youth, he (along with Gratian and Valentian) issued the Edict of Thessalonica mandating that the entire empire be Nicean Christian, in February of 380, was baptized in November of 380, actively moved against the Arians around the same time by exiling the Arian Patriarch of Constantinope and putting a Nicean in his place, banned sacrificing to pagan gods and taking auspices in the late 380s (Constantine had done the same thing), and really acted to stamp out paganism and destroy pagan temples from 389-395, when he died. And the question isn’t whether he’s a “good guy” or not. The question is whether he’s a good emperor or not, and that, you have to look at his record.

I suppose, but Julian was extremely ineffective as emperor. He spent most of his time trying to reestablish paganism, which didn’t really do much besides piss people off, weakened central authority and increase the autonomy of the cities, which caused the Empire trouble down the road, spent nine months in a pissing contest with the citizens of Antioch which got him hated there, and then launched an ill-thought out invasion of Persia, ignoring the Persian attempts to peacefully settle it, and got killed. That’s hardly a sterling record there. Julian was a decent general, a bad administrator, and a pretentious, uncharismatic pseudo-intellectual who spent his life trying to be Marcus Aurelius and failing utterly.

96

Wrong, it’s making a comeback into the projects. Check the latest rap vids, “Revolutionaires Bling Bling” they call it.

97

My Mom can knit you a Phrygian Cap if you really want one. Or some culottes, if you’re without them.

98

For some reason, this is the first thing that popped in my mind :).

99

The US is nothing like the Romans. The Romans faced different problems, they were enemies of Persia, were trying to pacify Mesopotamia and there was a major issue of religious zealots in Judea.

What problems does the US have which even compare?

100

Has the thread really gone this far without any mention of the book that tackles this precise question? (Short answer: no, but the exercise provides some perspective on both civilizations, and indeed some of the same dynamics are at work.)