(An excerpt) …During the winter of AD 408-409, (the barbarian chieftain) Alaric, and his invading barbarian army once again moved north into the Italian peninsula. The army swarmed and pillaged its way south until it arrived at the gates of the West Coast city of Portus, the harbor city that supplied Rome with food and goods from its overseas trading partners. Encountering little resistance, the Goths captured the city and cut off all food shipments to Rome. Over the next eighteen months, Alaric’s army mounted three sieges of Rome, each ending in a stalemate. Honorius, (the current Roman Emperor) cowered in Ravenna. There he was able to make only the feeble gesture of sending a small contingent, some 4,000 troops, to aid in manning Rome’s walls. Some sources tell us these troops were ambushed and massacred on their way. But it may very well be that they deserted. No one knows. What is clear is they didn’t show up. What is known is that Roman army regiments located in Italy, many of which were all-Barbarian units loyal to Stilicho (the barbarian commander of the Roman military), simply disappeared. Certainly some defected to Alaric while other non-Barbarian regiments presumably went home.
Meanwhile the Gothic hoards under Alaric continued to grow in size, taking on defectors, runaway slaves, and the displaced farmers and craftsmen unable to earn a living in the collapsing economy. Alaric’s most pressing problem was finding the means to feed his massive flock. At this very late date, he still hoped to gain a contract and a command from the Roman government so that he could induct his men into the army and reward them with land and money. He still believed in the greatness of the Empire. Honorius had neither the ability nor the military assets to lead an attack on the invaders…
…When news arrived that the city of Rome had been sacked for the first time in 800 years, the civilized world was shocked. Alaric died a year later. His life was that of a hero of Greek tragedy. He killed what was most dear to him, the concept of Rome…( end of excerpt)
In my forthcoming book, Lessons from Fallen Civilizations, I identify ten immutable principles that repeatedly contribute to the fall of great civilizations. One of these is Immutable Law # 7 – With the loss of fiscal solvency comes a loss of sovereignty. When a barbarian army was poised to sack Rome, in 410 AD, for the first in 800 years, the Emperor was powerless to oppose it because the empire was insolvent. It could not even ensure that a small contingent of 4,000 troops would report for duty in an effort to defend its spiritual center, Rome.
The Failed Romano/Euro Model
The central questions we Americans now face are these: Is President Obama moving us in the direction of the feckless Emperor, Honorius? Has his reckless indebtedness made our ability to fund American global military operations more and more suspect? Stop to consider Europe. From the standpoint of its military preparedness, it has been a dead man walking for quite some time. Were it not for s US commitment to its defense during the cold war, Europe’s first language today would be Russian. Consequently, no one now even argues the point that a nation can have both a world class welfare state and be the world’s leading military power.
As Mark Helprin writes, “Britain has no fixed-wing aircraft carriers…fewer than 200 tanks and 200 combat aircraft…Germany has the most powerful land forces in Europe, but only one-sixth the tanks and artillery of Iran…No European air force except Russia’s is superior to Saudi Arabia’s.” So weak is Europe it could not stop a genocidal war on its own soil such as that which broke out in the Balkans during the early 1990’s. Nor could it remove from power a tiny corrupt third-world regime in Libya commanded by a lunatic without the help of American military power. As Helprin points out, prior to World War I, Britain kept a lid on the entire Middle East by itself, so far has England now fallen from power. Europe is now so weak that in Helprin’s view, it is more vulnerable to Russian conquest than any time during the cold war, given Putin’s demonstrated designs on reestablishing his country’s place on the world stage (and I would add, his ability to play Obama for the fool that he is).
Is Obama Hollowing out America’s Ability to Defend Itself?
Early in 2009, outside the fawning main stream media, it was widely reported that on Obama’s first trip to China, he received a ‘dressing down” from the Chinese officials who told him that his stated plans (to dramatically expand the American welfare state) threatened their return on roughly a trillion dollars in treasuries. Few outside the progressive establishment press missed the rich irony of the communist investors decrying Obama’s collectivist plans. Three years into the Obama administration, he had so mismanaged our economy; the market for US treasuries had now fallen apart. Not only had the international credit agencies downgraded America’s credit rating for the first time in US history, but the Communist Chinese were not buying our treasuries and neither was the American public.
Lawrence Goodman, formerly an official of the US Treasury observed in the Wall Street Journal that today 61% of US treasuries are now purchased by the Federal Reserve. In 2009, the world and US investors alike purchased 6% of US GDP in American treasuries. Now only .9% of GDP can be sold on the open market. In just three years of the Obama administration, the full faith and credit of the United States had fallen by 70%. In Lessons from Fallen Civilizations, my eighth immutable law governing the fall of great civilizations reads, debasing the currency always destabilizing the governing authority.
Why Obamacare is the Anvil Which Will Destroy the Camel’s Back
If we are to conclude that Obamacare will not be the straw that will break the economy’s back but rather the anvil, we need only look at the deplorable history of Medicare and Medicaid to understand why our economy will fail quickly and decisively if this horrible law is fully implemented.
In his remarks to Donald Verrilli, the a Solicitor General defending the Obamacare law Supreme Court Justice, Sam Alito, educated him on the devastating personal costs associated with the law, “You can correct me if these figures are wrong, but it appears to me that the CBO has estimated that the average premium for a single in the non-group market would be roughly $5,800 in 2016. (Yet)…a young, healthy individual targeted by the mandate on average consumes about $854 in health services each year. So the mandate is forcing those people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies…”
So Americans must learn the dirty little secret which is that the bill will transfer billions of dollars from individuals and the private sector to the government, causing the impoverishment of millions. But more importantly, it will also conclusively bankrupt the government and quite possibly do so in the near term. In order to understand how that is the obvious prognostication, one needs only to look at the recent history of American healthcare entitlements, Medicare (healthcare for the old) and Medicaid (healthcare for the poor). When Medicare was passed in 1965, the federal government estimated it would cost $12 billion by 1990. It actually cost $110 billion by 1990. The government was off by a factor of ten! Today Medicare costs $569 billion and Medicaid $258 billion, nearly 30% of all revenues collected by the government.
Given the fact that the Obama administration has already created a annual structural deficit of $1 trillion dollars for as far as the eye can see and given the government’s horrific track record in managing our current healthcare entitlements, his Obamacare plan, if fully implemented, will be the anvil that will break our economic back,. It will make us unable to militarily defend our allies and our interests. This is a prospect that should make every American very afraid.
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