Decius wrote:
This is from an official US Comptroller's report!

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.

what a load of crap
the only significant similarity is the way the US military is not drawn from a wide range of US society which reminds me of the crisis which led to the murder of Tiberius Gracchus

from wikipedia

Since legionaries were required to serve in a complete campaign no matter how long it was, soldiers often left their farms in the hands of wives and children. As estates in this situation went steadily into bankruptcy and were bought up by the wealthy upper class, latifundia or large estates, were formed. Furthermore, some lands ended up being taken by the state in war both in provinces in Italy and elsewhere. After the war was over much of the land would then be sold to or rented to various members of the populace.

When the soldiers returned from the legions, they had nowhere to go, so they went to Rome to join the mob of thousands of unemployed who roamed the city. Due to this, the number of men with enough assets to qualify for army duty was shrinking as was the military power of Rome. In 133 BC Tiberius was elected tribune of the people. Soon he started to legislate on the matter of the homeless legionaries.

Tiberius noted how much of the land was being concentrated into latifundia being held by owners of large estates and worked by slaves, rather than small estates owned by small farmers working the land themselves.

and i note the recent article on National Guard troopers whose jobs weren't kept open

"declining moral standards" every generation has people who complain about declining moral standards

the US has a lousy president but the parallels with Rome especially imperial Rome are thin
and as for Gracchus crisis -- he was murdered in 132 BC and Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410 AD
the political lesson of Rome is don't let the Republic fall and have a series of dictators who promise stability and do morally dubious acts "for the good of the republic" when the republic no longer really exists
the Republic fell because people chose short term stability over liberty

ubernoir wrote:
the political lesson of Rome is don't let the Republic fall and have a series of dictators who promise stability and do morally dubious acts "for the good of the republic" when the republic no longer really exists
the Republic fell because people chose short term stability over liberty

Sorry, I'm missing how this separates Rome from W/Dick. Doesn't that comment bear striking similarity to now?

I have to agree with Mike that your closing argument doesn't do much to disprove purported similarities between the US and Rome before it's collapse.

Nonetheless, to stay on topic, the original article is far too thin to justify even a as much effort has been expended on the specific issue of 21'st century USA as a new Roman Empire.

The other points, that we're on the path towards a serious, potentially devastating crisis, also aren't new. Many of us have been saying that for years, unsurprisingly.

It's nice that the C.G. is stepping up like this, I applaud it, but spurious analogizing doesn't help the point get made. I mean really, the fall of Rome? How many people have more than a passing knowledge of it? It's too abstract. Unfortunately, for most people in the US, all descriptions of true social collapse are too abstract. I can only hope he manages to convince a few people in a position to do something with the knowledge. The rest of the country is too stupid, clearly.

ubernoir wrote:
"declining moral standards" every generation has people who complain about declining moral standards

I've yet to read the comptroller's full statement and I'm not an expert on the fall of Rome. (U.S. schools spend annoyingly little time on "other people's" history. This tends to produce people who think that every important thing in the past happened here. This is the root cause of a great deal of this country's problems understanding and communicating with the rest of the world... They just don't know much about the rest of the world, and what they do know they assume isn't very important because they've never been told to focus on it. It also tends to create knowledge gaps about rather important subjects such as this one...)

Your quote seems to indicate that the root cause of the fall of Rome is centralization of economic power... the death of the middle class. Is this an accurate take-away?

the Republic fell because people chose short term stability over liberty

What sort of liberty? Economic? Social?

I do think the US has a non-trivial problem with overconsumption. We're a country that coasts along on debt. We have big houses and big cars and we don't own them.

The real problem begins with you start paying off your credit card bills with borrowed money. I think we're starting to do that. You can't juggle forever. Eventually, you miss a throw.

Decius wrote:
the Republic fell because people chose short term stability over liberty
What sort of liberty? Economic? Social?

I do think the US has a non-trivial problem with overconsumption. We're a country that coasts along on debt. We have big houses and big cars and we don't own them.

The real problem begins with you start paying off your credit card bills with borrowed money. I think we're starting to do that. You can't juggle forever. Eventually, you miss a throw.

i really shouldn't blog when i've been drinking which i had when i wrote that

ok the fall of Rome and it's connection to Tiberius Gracchus (plus this is my interpretation from my own reading and not something I learned at school)
the crisis that occured when Gracchus was murdered was to do with the army
because of the latifundia soldiers who returned from military service couldn't make a living and, as I quoted, ended up in Rome unemployed. This was to create a huge political crisis in the first century BC with Sulla and then later Julius Caesar this revolved around what happened to veterans (Sulla i'm a little hazy about). One of the causes of the Sulla's dictatorship then Caesar's was getting the Senate to appropriately reward veterans. The members of the Senate were the big landowners who controlled the what had previously been publically owned land (the latifundia) and parcels of this land would previously and should have gone to army veterans after a war. The Senate didn't want to relinquish control of this lucrative land so Sulla and then later Julius Caesar broke with tradition and used the army as a political weapon. The Roman army destroyed the republic. Like modern Pakistan, Thailand, Burma etc and a string of 20th century examples; it was control of the army which was key to political power (in the case of Rome being Emperor). Being Emperor was about how many legions you had.
However the ethnic make up of the Roman army changed during the first centuries AD until, by the time of Alaric's sack of Rome in 410 AD, ethnically the Roman armies and the barbarian hordes where indistinguishable. It was not a Roman (of Rome) civilian army. It was like expecting the Iraqi army to defend Washington DC from Iranians (ish parallel). Alaric could easily have been another Emperor.
What prevents the army from taking control in Britain, Germany and the US etc is tradition and ideolgy. By crossing the Rubicon Caesar broke tradition; he used the army to settle a political dispute, like Musharraf.
The US has no political tradition of direct military involvement in politics. The various schemes helping US veterans financially to enter higher education is an extraordinarily far sighted legislation it encourages a civilian army. Yes the poorest currently bare the brunt of military service but it gives the veterans a huge stake in the society they have fought to defend, through education and... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

ubernoir wrote:
Rome fell because of it's army. The Republic fell because the army became the political force. Won't happen in America on current trends. The future citizens of the army have a real stake in their society through educational entitlements resulting from military service unlike Roman veterans. The sack of Rome happened because the Roman army was no longer an army of Romans but clearly the US has a citizen army.
many of the choices made for short term political stability versus political liberty are seen in countries like Turkey, Thailand, Burma, Pakistan. We know in the West that the short term political stability that army interference in politics buys is far outweighed by the longer term political instability it creates. The army is not in the longer term a force for political stability when it periodically interferes in politics worse it is a destabalising influence in the longer term. The choice of Caesar was the choice of Musharraf. He saw corruption in the legislature and the judiciary, his own political power and the chaos in recent polical history. He thought the political class was incapable of putting its own house in order and he heard the siren call for a strong leader and the stability that would bring. With the question of remuneration for the army as a lever Caesar could manipulate the troops and their loyalties.

While I appreciate the analysis, I'm not sure it's hitting the point. Yes, the Roman Republic was replaced by Caesar, but much of the structure was retained afterwards. The core proposition however is the fall of the Empire, and Caesar is the birth of the empire. The parallel is not Caesar crossing the Rubicon, but the slow collapse of the empire following the death of Marcus Aurelius. Arguably you could also make comparisons to Julio-Claudian dynasty as well, but a comparison to the fall of the Republic is not the target.

Be that as it may, even the comparison you are trying to say is not accurate is, when you include the ongoing privatization of the military via things like Blackwater, KBR and Halliburton. Given that trend I would contend your assessment of a manipulable army is incorrect. It is, and it may be available to the highest bidder.

ubernoir wrote:
i really shouldn't blog when i've been drinking which i had when i wrote that

Thanks for all this detail. This is interesting...

What prevents the army from taking control in Britain, Germany and the US etc is tradition and ideolgy. By crossing the Rubicon Caesar broke tradition; he used the army to settle a political dispute, like Musharraf.

I don't see the U.S. Army engaging in a coup. However, there are troubling developments.

In particular, the increasing privatization of U.S. military capability may disconnect the tactical capability from that sense of citizenship that you speak of. It isn't occurring on a large enough scale that it presently threatens that sort of impact, but it could continue to expand.

Furthermore, the nature of anti-terrorism involves the military in domestic affairs. The entire premise of the War on Terror, and specifically fights over FISA, Habeas Corpus, and cases like Jose Padilla involve the use of military capabilities and practices against domestic targets.

(Footnote: The UK has taken a different tact and they have gone back to talking about Terrorism as a criminal issue and not a military issue. I find this somewhat comforting, although I still think the UK is becoming a surveillance society. However, I think the problem in the UK is fundamentally different than it is in the US and this is driving the difference in approach moreso that these kinds of philosophical questions.)

These things compose most of the intellectual criticisms against the Bush administration; that these changes are myopic not because they cause wide spread difficulty now, but because they undermine democracy over long periods of time. Your discussion of the fall of the Roman Republic seems to fit right in to this criticism. Would you agree?

In regard to debt, yes, you're right, debt does generate wealth, and can expect wealth to increase and the cost of providing a particular standard of living to decrease over time. I think the problem when you talk about entitlement programs is that the standard of living that people expect to have goes up over time as the general wealth and technological sophistication of the society improves, and so people's expectations in regard to medical treatment and pensions increase over time. Its possible, ney likely, that for both demographic and technological reasons our expectations have become disconnected from what we can reasonably provide. The view that technological advances will fix everything is as wishful in the case of entitlements as it is in the case of energy sustainability.

Furthermore, this issue is locked in the kind of partisan gridlock that keeps a number of issues stalled out in American politics. The Republican point of view is we should provide as little as we can get away with, and the Democratic point of view is that there is absolutely no problem. Often this sort of gridlock is used intentionally when both sides must pander to interests but truly desire to maintain the status quo. Its always been my impression that the interests in question desire to maintain the status quo because the people involved will be dead when this comes to fruition, and my generation will be left holding the hot potato when the fuse runs out.

The only alternative I can see is to repair the demographic problem with a massive influx of immigration: exactly the sort that Bush administration failed to achieve recently.

Decius wrote:

Furthermore, the nature of anti-terrorism involves the military in domestic affairs. The entire premise of the War on Terror, and specifically fights over FISA, Habeas Corpus, and cases like Jose Padilla involve the use of military capabilities and practices against domestic targets.

(Footnote: The UK has taken a different tact and they have gone back to talking about Terrorism as a criminal issue and not a military issue. I find this somewhat comforting, although I still think the UK is becoming a surveillance society. However, I think the problem in the UK is fundamentally different than it is in the US and this is driving the difference in approach moreso that these kinds of philosophical questions.)

These things compose most of the intellectual criticisms against the Bush administration; that these changes are myopic not because they cause wide spread difficulty now, but because they undermine democracy over long periods of time. Your discussion of the fall of the Roman Republic seems to fit right in to this criticism. Would you agree?

yes

Decius wrote:

In regard to debt, yes, you're right, debt does generate wealth, and can expect wealth to increase and the cost of providing a particular standard of living to decrease over time. I think the problem when you talk about entitlement programs is that the standard of living that people expect to have goes up over time as the general wealth and technological sophistication of the society improves, and so people's expectations in regard to medical treatment and pensions increase over time. Its possible, ney likely, that for both demographic and technological reasons our expectations have become disconnected from what we can reasonably provide. The view that technological advances will fix everything is as wishful in the case of entitlements as it is in the case of energy sustainability.

i'm not clear what you mean by entitlements

i was trying to say that military service leading to access to higher education -- higher education leads to better jobs and an expanded social and economic horizon for those individuals and it avoids one of the Roman pitfalls ie the emergance of an army whch doesn't emerge from and have an investment in the society it is defending -- we have already seen calls for letting others defend the US and the West by proxy rather than enact our own defence

i would prefer a different way since I deplore the inequality of the situation where the West is defended only by its poor who use the military as a stepping stone into prosperity and the wealth which should be more evenly distributed -- i loath the inequalities our respective societies create as a matter of intent (the argument that inequality motivates wealth creation -- the reasoning behind the Bush tax cuts) however i do not have a remedy for the ills of... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]