"For, as in the Roman State, when there are no more worlds to conquer and no rivals to destroy, nations exchange the desire for power for the the lover of art, and so by a gradual, yet continual, enervation and decline turn from the vigorous beauties of the nude to the more subtle allurements of the draped, and then sin...k to actual eroticism and ultimate decay. "
Winston Churchill, The River War, 1899.
Hmmmmmm...
Winston Churchill, The River War, 1899.
Hmmmmmm...
I disagree. Rome died bedause of liberal immigration policies. Rather than control the borders and actually limit the number of immigrants each year, th borders became more and more porous until they ceased to exist as anything more than marks on a map.
That this happened was the result of permanent garrisons of Limitani, Legions acting as border guards, as it were. Now, it wasn't the permant structures, the forts and roads and such that was the flaw, it was that garrisons were permanently stationed in one place, rather than rotated from site to site. As a result, they became familiar with the folks across the border, their sons and daughters began to intermarry, Lating morphed to a new vulgati and pretty soon the governments began to blend as well. Both cultures blended into something not wuite Roman, and not quite Gaul, or German, or Vandal, etc. these then became, in effect, new nations, small states as it were, with their own government.
It was a cancer that spread across and up and down the border, then further inland until Roman government became useless. What was once Europe was now an amalgam of city-states and slightly larger actors, and the rest is history.
had Rome rotated it's legions from place to place, rather than allow them to put down roots, it is possible that such an end might never have occured.
Perhaps because of the Roman's Empire's decaying culture, people yearned for something else and weren't too concerned about mixing it up with other cultures?
I think Churchill's quote above can applied to the US. We are pretty soft as a nation. Our public education makes men without chests. Less then what 2% has served or is serving the military.
My take is that America was made great due to our sense of adventure. You know like Robert Robers, Lewis&Clark, making dams, railroads, skyscrapers, highways, going to the moon. Seems like we have lost this and need to get our groove back. Yeah making tech gadgets is cool but what end do they serve? Seems like on the whole just for our entertainment and not for any productive purpose.
I think we need our Space Program to get our groove back. What else are we doing?
Just as failure to control Muslim immigration killed the Byzantine side of things.
Rome lasted almost a thousand years and the Soprano's didn't have anything to do with it. Part of the downfall was also attributed to lead in the water pipes. Oh well. What they needed was a good plumber.
I'm not sure I agree with Churchill completely though. As if eroticism wasn't there earlier.
I don't see NASA as a solution. Whatever it is it would have to be inspiring, strong, uniting. I'm not even sure there is a solution. It's definitely not Obama.