Julius Caesar transformed the Roman Republic into an Empire, from a democratic to a strictly autocratic rule. Proceeding this, Emperors fought their wars, pillaged the people of early Europe and enslaved many people. This constant warring among people led to the final overthrow of the Western Roman Empire in the late 400's. High taxes, inflation, devaluation of the currency, food shortages, water shortages and environmental impacts of farmland led people away from the once prosperous city state. Rome had seen three transitions through its history; a Kingdom, a Republic and finally an Empire.
As I reflect on the history of the Roman Experiment, I can't help but think of the times that we live in today, in modern day America. America was founded on the principal of freedom which early patriots fought for (which is quite ironic given what the early patriots did to native Americans) with little money and almost no support, but that of France. Today we look at ourselves becoming the very oppression that we were running away from, not so long ago. Our institutions breaking us down into ethnic groups, our President pandering to every advocacy group that seeks to steal taxpayer dollars for their own little pet issue, and our laws becoming redundant and ridiculous. Taxes being raised, private property rights being eroded with every government intrusion, these are the things that are happening now.
Surely, I can say that I can never think that any outside force will break us apart, but I do contend that our own policies to one another will lead us right to our own consequences that all of us will have to face. We're being divided into rich and poor, black and white, this religion or that, gay or straight, etc etc. We have found so many reasons that we should not unite that I can see many people living here feeling no shame in supporting causes that in some way hurt one another. The productive in this country are penalized for having too much and the poor are awarded with stipends that support and encourage lives of non productive behavior. How can non productive behavior help this country in any sense? Millions of immigrants came here searching for a country that allowed them to be free to be able to live and work for what they wanted. Nowadays some immigrants get to come here and apply for welfare and social security benefits. This is a blatant abuse of the system, yet the system actually encourages these situations as a premise for needing to take more money from the productive in this country.
No country will ever be able to penetrate us and so long as we stand against a foe; it will be our own social institutions and economic policies that bring us down. Right now, the United States of America is living on borrowed time in terms of an economic, then an entire societal calamity. We have few precious moments to act on addressing our fiscal situation and if we do not, there will no longer be a United States. A civil war will shatter the union and like in any war, many innocents will die.
They say that history always repeats itself; unfortunately, if we continue walking down this road with these economic policies with Presidents more concerned about pandering, throwing parties and taking lavish taxpayer funded vacations, spending money this country does not have, it will happen. A certain ideology has been stoking the flames for racial and class division, in recent years here and I can smell a slight hint of something along the lines of a French Revolution; but there will be more sides than just the rich and the poor. There will be the people vs. the elites, then people with certain ideologies fighting one another.
The United States must address its fiscal problems or there will cease to be an America in the future.
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