In the year 410, Alaric and his Goths sacked
Rome. For 800 years, Rome had not suffered siege and
sack. Within 30 years, the Western Roman Empire effectively
vanished, becoming a bundle of new Germanic kingdoms. The change
plunged the West into a darkened age. But it also reinvigorated
Europe to have a brilliant future.
What
is happening in our world echoes those distant events.
Historian
Michael Kulikowski offers a new take on the Western Empire's
fall. He proposes that the Western Roman Empire accidently committed suicide.
Like
the Eastern Roman Empire, the Western Empire was basically stable and should
have lasted. But it didn't. The pettiness and vitriol of
powerful fools destroyed a great empire from the inside. We face
that same risk.
The
Roman Empire always had a fundamental problem: succession. How
does the empire peacefully transfer power from one competent emperor to the
next? The Romans never solved this problem. Some emperors
reigned for decades, others for weeks. Some emperors died in bed,
but most were murdered.
The
Empire was too massively coherent for any given emperor to do much
damage. However, in the time of Alaric, supreme idiocy triggered the
West's downfall.
Our
founding fathers found a clever solution to the Romans' problem of
succession. This was our Electoral College. When it
failed, in 1860, disputed succession gave us secession and the Civil
War. The Romans were all too familiar with civil war.
In
212, the Roman Empire fundamentally changed: Emperor Caracalla proclaimed
that all free people in the empire were now Roman
citizens. Unfortunately, universal citizenship had its downside.
Until
Caracalla, Rome was a loose association of different peoples in different
places with different cultures and different laws. In effect, the
Empire was a kind of armed trade association. The early United
States was similar until the Civil War, and the later 17th Amendment,
imposed constricting centralized authority on America.
During
the early Empire, members of the Roman Senate oversaw a light sprinkling of
Roman rules in each of the provinces. Local laws and institutions
remained intact. Under this system, most people had friendly
relations with other members of the empire regardless of their various
cultures.
With
Caracalla's edict, this fundamentally changed. Now there was to be
comprehensive uniformity of law – Roman Law – everywhere, and at all
levels. Enforcing this led to a vast expansion of the governing
bureaucracy, culminating in Diocletian's administrative system. The
Roman Deep State had arrived. Now a vast influx of ambitious men
joined the ruling class, all greedy for power.
Religious
and political factions developed, each of which attempted to impose a different
doctrine. Friendships evaporated. And everyone despised
"barbarians."
But
the "barbarians" weren't always barbarian. Indeed, most of
the Goths were Christian. Over centuries of contacts with the
empire, the Goths had become Romanized.
Then the
climate changed. There began a centuries-long Little Ice
Age. The newly winter-frozen Rhine and Danube were no longer
barriers. Worse, drought drove the fearsome Huns
west. Fleeing before them were the Goths seeking refuge inside the
Roman Empire.
Rome
had been swallowing foreigners for centuries – melting them into the Empire,
much like the American melting pot. The emperor admitted the Goths
and promised to provision them until they could be properly settled and begin
farming.
Rome
then initiated its suicide: the arrogant and greedy Deep State appallingly
treated the Goth refugees. The Goths rebelled and annihilated the
Roman Army at Adrianople. Emperor Valens vanished.
Theodosius
the Great restabilized the empire. Near death, Theodosius installed
his son-in-law, the half-Vandal general Stilicho, as regent of the West and
protector of his underage son, Augustus Honorius.
We
first see Alaric in command of many federated Goths under
Stilicho. At the civil war battle of the River Frigidus, Alaric's
troops were up front, resulting in their great losses. Resentful at
this placement, Alaric rebelled against Stilicho, and the Goths joined
him.
For
several years, Alaric maneuvered his army around the Balkans and northern
Italy, all the while skirmishing and negotiating with Stilicho. But
negotiating with the feckless Roman Deep State was hopeless. Since
the establishment treated him like a barbarian, Alaric would be a
barbarian! And Rome was sacked.
The
Western Empire had committed suicide. Without effective defenses,
the empire now succumbed to multiple invasions and faded away.
Today,
our current political environment resembles the situation in the time of
Alaric.
Consider succession. The
attacks on President Trump are the most dangerous assault against our founders'
solution to the problem of succession. Our Deep State refuses to
recognize that Donald Trump really is the
president. It is doing everything in its power to eject him from
office or cripple him.
Without orderly succession,
our republic will disintegrate as it almost did in the Civil War.
Today
we have the parasitic swamp. The Deep State part of the swamp
is the government bureaucratic system and the regulatory
agencies. These institutions have become corrupt ruling kingdoms
unto themselves. They are no longer governed by we the
people.
Federated
in the swamp are its elitist forces: the academy, many judges, most of the
media, web giants, and so on. These federates propagate the Swamp's
progressive ideology – Orwellian ideas that subvert the very essence of our
Constitution.
With
the recent ascendency of progressives, most Americans are now treated as un-American
– in many cases with expressions of real hatred and
scorn. Conservatives are now "deplorables,"
"barbarians," "morons." Even a recent
progressive president called the traditionalist majority "the
enemy." In effect, an alien ideology has conquered most of
America's institutions. Most Americans are now strangers in their
own land.
Very
well: If lovers of liberty are to be called "barbarians," they
will be "barbarians" – political
barbarians. They will fight those who oppress
them. Sweeping aside conventional politicians, conservatives found a
fearless, dynamic leader – an outsider, like themselves. They now
have their own Alaric – Alaric inside the political gates. They have
President Donald J. Trump.
