[Regina]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Regina Regina:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

The Roman Empire declined because Romans became complacent and they permitted epic levels of immigration in the name of cheap labor for both industry and their military.

Maybe time to crack open a book now and again Bart. Even Google would give you a better idea of why it fell rather than you trying to apply your current views on actual history.

I've read Gibbon's three-volume masterpiece on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I'll be happy to send it to you if you'd like some light reading.

Fuck the PC nonsense that's on the web, Gibbon's work is definitive and always will be.

I'm calling bullshit on that one. Immigration isn't even an applicable term when speaking of Empires, especially the Roman Empire. Not to mention you using the term "cheap" labour, which is a modern reference and not one even remotely close to the fact they used slaves.
I'm sure you're referring to the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon, who felt the spread of Christianity was the main cause. The fact you have "read" all three of the six volumes should tell you that there is a little bit more to this fall then a non existent "immigration" policy and "cheap" labour. Those are your current views in your country and have no relevance to this history.

[N_Fiddledog]

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

That BioHistory theory just sounds like some kind of spin from r/k selection theory.

The original is better though.

Sorry dog but, that guy has got to be the worst speaker I've had the misfortune of listening to in the past 30 years, His speaking style really detracts from what he's trying to say and makes it almost impossible to concentrate on the message.

So, rather than listen to him run on ad nauseum and keep falling asleep I Googled Anonymous Conservative and came up with the written version of what I think he was trying to say and from what I read it all boils down to this:

$1:

The premise of this highly substantiated scientific work is that all of politics is really a battle between the K-strategist wolves within our society, designed to battle in a world of scarce resources and fierce competition, and the r-strategist rabbits, designed to freely graze the bounty of a sudden resource glut and rapidly explode in numbers to exploit such a glut.

http://anonymousconservative.com/

You're right, but you're wrong FOG.

Bill Whittle can be seen as boring there. You're mistaken to think of him as a bad speaker in general. Public speaking is how he makes his living and as a rule he's intelligent and fascinating. He's one of the best around.

What's up there though, is this other thing he does just for his fans. They send him questions on his facebook page, then he sits in front of a cam on livestream and rambles on for a couple hours. It's a regular thing. You have to be a fan to get it though. It's something different than his public speaking.

I've linked to the original piece by Anonymous Conservative before. Nobody clicks. They really should. People like you and me are open to the new perspective, and the other guys would get to pretend they're pissed off, which is what they seem to like to do.

[BartSimpson]

Regina Regina:

The fact you have "read" all three of the six volumes

I have the set as edited by David P. Womersley which is all eight books published in a very popular three volume set.

And not all labor in Rome was slave labor. The majority of labor was cheap, immigrant labor.

The notion that Christianity brought down the Empire is nonsense. That Christianity was allowed to rise in the first place was a symptom of the internal rot of the Empire every bit as much as the spread of Islam in the United Kingdom is a symptom of the rot of the British culture.

It is not the fault of the Muslims that Britain is declining. It is the fault of the British that they have created amongst themselves a moral and cultural vacuum that the Muslims are exploiting.

Want proof? Here's the liberal-socialist LA Times singing the praises of the immigration policies of the Roman Empire (all while managing to avoid any mention of the eventual outcome of those policies).

http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-murphy16jun16-story.html

If that policy was actually of any positive effect for Rome then you KNOW the socialists would HATE it.

[Thanos]

There were too many factors involved in the fall of Rome to get pointlessly bogged down on one or two talking points. It was a unique situation that had developed over centuries and was pretty much specific to Rome alone. Comparing modern Britain or any other Western state and saying the exact same factors back then are now occurring today is really kind of ridiculous.

I'd say this historian is full of shit just based on his choosing 100 BC as the date the collapse began. It's nonsense considering that Rome didn't reach the height of it's power and wealth until the Trajan/Hadrian/Antoninus Pius/Marcus Aurelius dynasty, which occurred over 200 years after the civil wars/Punic wars ripped apart the old republic.

[ShepherdsDog]

If Christianity was to blame, why did Constantinople and the eastern section of the Empire thrive for centuries past the loss of Rome? The rise of Islam, the Great Schism and the new European states that grew out of the Western Empire were the final nails in the coffin of the Caesars.

In the 6th century, Justinian even reconquered Italy, North Africa and southern Iberia. from the Goths and Vandals.

[Regina]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Regina Regina:

The fact you have "read" all three of the six volumes

I have the set as edited by David P. Womersley which is all eight books published in a very popular three volume set.

And not all labor in Rome was slave labor. The majority of labor was cheap, immigrant labor.

The notion that Christianity brought down the Empire is nonsense. That Christianity was allowed to rise in the first place was a symptom of the internal rot of the Empire every bit as much as the spread of Islam in the United Kingdom is a symptom of the rot of the British culture.

It is not the fault of the Muslims that Britain is declining. It is the fault of the British that they have created amongst themselves a moral and cultural vacuum that the Muslims are exploiting.

Want proof? Here's the liberal-socialist LA Times singing the praises of the immigration policies of the Roman Empire (all while managing to avoid any mention of the eventual outcome of those policies).

http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-murphy16jun16-story.html

If that policy was actually of any positive effect for Rome then you KNOW the socialists would HATE it.

You trotted out Gibbon, not me. He was the one who said Christianity was the source of it's downfall. I made no such claim and you touted reading his books...............from the 18th century. Nor would I base my opinions on a single source from nearly 200+ years ago.
And NO the "majority" of labour was not "cheap" but actually slave labour. "Rome’s economy depended on slaves to till its fields and work as craftsmen, and its military might had traditionally provided a fresh influx of conquered peoples to put to work. But when expansion ground to a halt in the second century, Rome’s supply of slaves and other war treasures began to dry up."
Many factors led to the downfall of Rome but immigration and cheap labour were not part of it at all.

[BartSimpson]

Gibbon has whole books written about his antipathy towards Christianity yet I agree with much of what he had to say. What I disagree with is the notion that Christianity was the principle cause of the decline. If Roman society and culture had been strong enough in the first place then Christianity would never have been allowed to take root.

[Thanos]

The internecine fighting that Christianity provoked probably didn't help internal harmony very much, which is probably what Gibbon meant. Everyone needs to toss out all those depictions of Rome from those silly 1950's and '60's movies like Ben-Hur. Those were just Christian apologetics deliberately designed to appeal to conservative Americans in order to boost box-office returns. In reality by the time the emperors had converted to Christianity they'd pretty much jettisoned any of the live-and-let-live/turn-the-other-cheek ethic that allegedly originated with Jesus. They gave back to the pagans as good as the pagans gave to them, if not moreso, and by the end of the empire were happily feeding non-Christians to lions and bears in the arenas as much as the pagan emperors had done to them. Moreover it was also pretty much the launch of the unending battle of Christianity against all paganism everywhere, an extirpation of dissenting beliefs that lasted over fifteen centuries and consumed hundreds of millions of lives, with the most memorable hi-lights of that particular policy/belief/attitude including things like the idiocy of the Crusades, the unrivalled murderousness of the Thirty Years War, 'witch hunts' by both Catholics and Protestants alike, the extermination of the South and North American Natives, the Bible-based justification by Christian whites for the institution of slavery in the Southern states, state and religious residential 'schools', and the culmination of every aspect of religious-based insanity humans are capable of displaying taking center stage in the Holocaust.

As with the pagan emperors the Christian emperors, followed by all the various Christian kings, and then by Islamic sultans/caliphs/etc., one thing was concretely proven. When religion is officially joined to the state all that results is repression, persecution, unhinged brutality, and the ability of the authorities to commit unchecked mass murder. Once a state is convinced that God is on it's side then the worst becomes an inevitability.

[Jabberwalker]

Regina Regina:

Batsy's head just exploded.

... wired by Lucas ...

[Freakinoldguy]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

That BioHistory theory just sounds like some kind of spin from r/k selection theory.

The original is better though.

Sorry dog but, that guy has got to be the worst speaker I've had the misfortune of listening to in the past 30 years, His speaking style really detracts from what he's trying to say and makes it almost impossible to concentrate on the message.

So, rather than listen to him run on ad nauseum and keep falling asleep I Googled Anonymous Conservative and came up with the written version of what I think he was trying to say and from what I read it all boils down to this:

$1:

The premise of this highly substantiated scientific work is that all of politics is really a battle between the K-strategist wolves within our society, designed to battle in a world of scarce resources and fierce competition, and the r-strategist rabbits, designed to freely graze the bounty of a sudden resource glut and rapidly explode in numbers to exploit such a glut.

http://anonymousconservative.com/

You're right, but you're wrong FOG.

Bill Whittle can be seen as boring there. You're mistaken to think of him as a bad speaker in general. Public speaking is how he makes his living and as a rule he's intelligent and fascinating. He's one of the best around.

What's up there though, is this other thing he does just for his fans. They send him questions on his facebook page, then he sits in front of a cam on livestream and rambles on for a couple hours. It's a regular thing. You have to be a fan to get it though. It's something different than his public speaking.

I've linked to the original piece by Anonymous Conservative before. Nobody clicks. They really should. People like you and me are open to the new perspective, and the other guys would get to pretend they're pissed off, which is what they seem to like to do.

So many rabbits.............. so little time.

[bootlegga]

andyt andyt:

It's also a different world, and controlling it doesn't look like ships and guns. When everybody has similar guns and bombs (including nuclear) you can't just push people around with your military the way you once could.

The French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch all had virtually the same military technology that Britain did, but Britain was the one that came out on top after after 1815.

andyt andyt:

I think the countries that will dominate are the ones that figure out how to organize themselves more effectively, so everybody is pulling in the same direction, and that have a handle on how to do more with less resources. We're bumping up against limits of growth.

Or we just get swamped by the mass of humanity that's got diddly squat. Look at what's happening in Europe with the migrants.[/quote]

Masses of humanity don't mean squat against better organization and technology - the British conquering India and Africa with a few hundred thousand troops is proof of that. And while militaries in the third world may have some similar technology as Western nations, better training and organization in Western militaries will keep the playing field uneven. Desert Storm is a perfect example of a 'powerful' third world nation taking on the West and decisively losing.

[andyt]

You didn't understand what I meant - has nothing to do with military.

[bootlegga]

andyt andyt:

You didn't understand what I meant - has nothing to do with military.

Economics and other soft power tools matter, but at the end of the day, the military will always be the final tool of choice for dealing with problem states if they stray too far from the accepted norm (assuming they don't do something stupid like attack you or an ally first (like Saddam in Desert Storm).