When a free people, through taxation, is deprived of its ability to acquire wealth and property, collapse is presaged.
Crushing taxation imposed upon the middle and lower class Romans contributed to the loss of the Roman provinces of Gaul, Iberia, and North Africa to the German invaders of the fifth century. In the second and first century BC, the Roman Empire had a great expansion when its armies ultimately gained control of lands from Southern Scotland to the Euphrates River. Each spring, at the beginning of the campaigning season, Roman farmers and merchants patriotically sent their sons to serve in the legions. Most of the soldiers’ fathers were men of modest means and loyal citizens, who could pay their taxes with the produce of as few as two days a month.
By the fourth century AD the beleaguered ordinary citizen was ruined by his tax burden, forced to give up most of his produce to the state. Loyalty to the government, composed of wealthy bureaucrats who resided in distant Rome, disappeared. Roman provincials sided with the local German warlord as a method to escape the Roman tax collector.
Today, one in seven Americans is unable to adequately feed his family and is forced to collect food stamps. Due to burdensome regulations and taxation, more and more American private enterprises, from shoe manufacturers to technology call centers, continue to move their operations out of the United States. This has made it more and more difficult for US citizens to find gainful employment within the borders of the world’s lone superpower. As it was in the last days of the Western Roman Empire, wealthy bureaucrats are provided risk-free cushy employment and lavish retirements by out-of-work citizens who are losing their homes to foreclosure. If this situation is allowed to persist, patriotism and a willingness to defend the country will surely be replaced by a wide-spread refusal to defend the central government.
Law #1: No nation has ever survived once its citizenry ceased to believe its culture worth saving. (Hanson’s Law)
Law #2: In battle, free men almost always defeat slaves. (Herodotus’ Law)
Law #3: Appeasement of a ruthless outside power always invites aggression. Treaties made with ruthless despots are always fruitless and dangerous.
Law #4: If a people cannot avoid continuous internal warfare, they will have a new order imposed from without.
Law #6: To hold territory, a state must be populated by those loyal to the central authority. When immigration overwhelms assimilation, the fall is predicted.
Law #7: With the loss of fiscal solvency comes a loss of sovereignty.
Law #8: Debasing the currency always destabilizes the governing authority.
Law #9: When a civilization accepts the propaganda of its enemy as truth, it has reached the far side of appeasement and capitulation is nigh.
Law #10: Declining civilizations will always face superior firepower from ascending civilizations because sovereignty is only temporarily uncontested.
