The Roman Empire's Lessons for America

I just read a Charles Krauthammer piece on Obama's socialist-leftist agenda and his bold descriptipn of it in his second inaugural address. And, rather than making me want to say 'Amen' for the hundredth time, Krauthammer's analysis made me think of the Roman Empire. Since its 'fall', we in the West have always used it to measure our own successes and failures - almost as a diagnostic tool to tell us where we are on the lifetime endgame of nations. That Obama is a socialist determined to expand ad infinitum the budget-destroying welfare handouts meant to buy the middle class can no longer be disputed. That his wife has ingratiated herself with military families by pretending to cater to their special needs is old news. But, we are slow to ask why. That's what turned my thoughts to Rome. Popular history has it that Rome was destroyed by barbarian invasions. That version skims over the real series of events. Rome became an Empire by crossing its southern borders into the eastern Mediterranean and its northern borders to 'pacify' what is today France, Germany and Britain. It was in search of territory to provide food and land for its growing non-Roman military population. Although officially forbidden, pillage and land grabs were expected of Rome's soldiers. They were meant to settle on the Empire's far borders to better protect the 'real' Romans. They were supported by barbarian mercenaries who soon co-opted and outnumbered them. And their pillage reduced the huge sums Rome paid to support her great armies. But the real price paid by Rome for its expansionist agenda - often justified as permitting the lex romana, the unequaled Roman law, to expand and take good government and administration to the 'barbarians' - was a weakening of the traditional ties of the enlisted military to their Rome-based generals and of these generals to their emperor. The chain of command was too extended to continue to engender the fierce loyalty of the Republic's military to their state because they were no longer trained in Rome nor did they directly swear loyalty to a Roman consul or general. The Empire was not the earlier Republic. It lacked the social cohesion because barbarians came to Rome to lobby, and they stayed, married, and changed the face of Rome itself. These same barbarians saw firsthand how over-extended Rome was fiscally...how weak her ties to her own military were...and the word went back to the north where barbarian tribal military units were still spartan. The rest is...as we like to say...history. ~~~~~ Back to Obama. He is president of an expansionist republic teetering on the brink of becoming an Empire. All that is required is sufficient welfare to prevent Americans from defending their freedom to refuse handouts. The 'real' Americans of every background who understand and love America's legal system are being co-opted by newcomers, many illegal immigrants, who truly need the handouts. The national budget is largely expended for the handouts and for the military, which will one day take over political power by simply controlling the budget and with it the handouts and the soldiers on the fringes of the Pax Americana, whose loyalties will be to their commanders, not to the President.. The rest - infrastructure, education, technology - are already being ignored. The 'barbarians' recognize this weakening process for what it is - territorial expansion under the false name of spreading democracy. They are infiltrating at the edges of the Pax Americana in faraway places with strange names, waiting their time. But they will strike. And they will win. The victory will be incremental and largely unnoticed. And poor Barack Obama, trapped in his 1930s socialist time capsule, doesn't even realize what is happening.