The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon is an epic masterpiece that tells the story of how empires end.
It is a six volume comprehensive outlook on the last days of the Roman empire, published between 1776 and 1789, at the time of the founding days of the United States.
Gibbon studied how a decline in civic virtues, stern morality and discipline ended up causing disorder, injustice and the end of the empire.
Corruption became the norm, the incorruptible destroyed, the liar prevailed, those who pushed for traditional virtues became the enemy of state, writes historian of comparative religions and founder of The Herland Report, Hanne Nabintu Herland at WND.
The fall of the American Empire: When cheating, cunning powerplays that destroy justice becomes socially acceptable among the elites, their example carry precedence further down the ranks.
As the population watches how the liar is honored as a hero – they all begin to follow the same path.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” said the martyred Christian preacher and not so popular anymore, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
He is no longer an icon in today’s Marxist movements such as Black Lives Matter.
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The fall of the American Empire: “As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters,” writes Gibbon and echo the very same problem today.
As the American election is melting down in allegations of voter fraud, lies and cheating, upcoming lawsuits, a public out of touch with its media, the last days of Rome comes to mind.
As lack of justice and order, violence, street wars and drugs prevail, the United States looks more like a mafia system that makes the 1930s Chicago mobsters seem like children at play.
We are watching yet another Republic fall apart from lack of upholding its historic and traditional virtues.
Or will the current political upheaval finally produce the draining of the Washington swamp of corruption, collusion and unfair power play?
Are too many aware of the corruption now for this to quiet down? Will the end result be a more honest America that returns to its former greatness? Many doubt it.
To return America to its glory days will require decades of hard work, having outsourced its manufacturing jobs and high tech to China and other cheap labor nations.
When law and order breaks down, any Republic cannot be saved from the oncoming hordes of “barbarians”- meaning those who are not born and bred in the nation, sharing its initial cultural values.
Edward Gibbons spoke of this, how the very lack of civic virtues produced the disorder that allowed the takeover by Germanic tribes and other groups outside the Roman Republic – called barbarians – to finally sack Rome.
Gibbon writes in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that when a civilization is at its zenith, with power and influence over many other cultures, it often develops an understanding that it represents the noblest and most advanced civilization known in history. In these moments of self-exaltation, a blind sense of invincibility prevails.
The Christian writer and icon who had fled Rome for its hedonism and lack of justice, St. Gerome, tells how the very same elite ladies that loved the vanity, orgies and decadence of Rome later begged in the streets of Palestine.
The end of Rome was brutal, they all fled for their lives, scattered to far away places such as the Judea province in today’s Israel. St. Gerome’s statue in the monastery next to the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, stands as a reminder of the end of Roman glory.
Today, the irony is that billionaire’s wealth may buy air time for propaganda at the news channels and pay the politicians running for office, yet fail to provide good leadership: That of a man who seeks to do justice to the nation’s population.
Who thinks of the people, the working class today?
Which politicians or billionaires paying them does something about the inner city schools, the horrifyingly low standard that millions in the United States grow up in?
Gibbons is known for his view that the political “Christian values” negatively impacted Rome and criticized its corrupt clergy, the close links between the political elite and the religious establishment.
The fall of the American Empire: He asserts that Rome fell due to weakened Roman values, yet forgot that the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire – where Christianity was implemented as core value system by emperor Constantine – lasted 1000 years longer than Rome.
Martin Luther King Jr. famously states: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
It remains to be seen whether the American Republic will descend into further chaos or whether the darkness will be overcome.
