The Historical precedent of our Globalizing Western Empire

[Theodarzna]

Why does it seem that just as our own civilization is weakening, the ambitions of our elite grow evermore illustrious. Neoconservatism has basically been the ideological distillation of this theme. Democracy in the Middle East, industrial revolution in Africa, feeding 10 billion people and more - all mere questions of technicality and will, with the people who are supposed to accomplish this task abstracted into an ephemeral "Western" collective with an historic mission and no self-interest of their own. Our elite classes hold lofty visions of a neo-liberal or social democratic world society of cosmopolitan atomized consumers living in sleek chrome plated cities with statues of either Elon Musk or Justin Trudeau in the heart of them. To quote a non-Elite musician Katy Perry we will have "No borders, no boundaries, just co-exist!" How can this disconnect exist? How can the ruling classes engaged in such strangely suicidal behavior as described in say Douglas Murray's new book The Strange Death of Europe?

This sort of thinking is not without precedent in the, even in the Western world and its history. While allusions to Rome are almost cliche; I came across an interesting written work from the early 400s CE, Prudentius' Reply to the Address of Symmachus:

But I see the instances of ancient valour which move you. You say the world was conquered on land and sea, you recount every success and victory, and recall a thousand triumphal processions one after another, with their loads of spoil passing through the midst of Rome.

Shall I tell you, Roman, what cause it was that so exalted your labours, what it was that nursed your glory to such a height of fame that it has put rein and bridle on the world? God, wishing to bring into partnership peoples of different speech and realms of discordant manners, determined that all the civilised world should be harnessed to one ruling power and bear gentle bonds in harmony under the yoke, so that love of their religion should hold men's hearts in union; for no bond is made that is worthy of Christ unless unity of spirit leagues together the nations it associates.

Only concord knows God ; it alone worships the beneficent Father aright in peace. The untroubled harmony of human union wins his favour for the world ; by division it drives Him away, with cruel warfare it makes Him wroth ; it satisfies Him with the offering of peace and holds Him fast with quietness and brotherly love. [...]

To curb this frenzy God taught the nations everywhere to bow their heads under the same laws and become Romans

Symmachus was a conservative Roman senator who wanted to bring back state support for pagan temples, the equivalent of a paleoconservative really. He felt that Romans were losing sight of the old virtues and culture that had once made them great as Christianity was rapidly consuming the Empire. He was facing the politics of Christianity which was the progressive forces at the time. Progressive Prudentius let this shitlord know what had 'really' made Rome great. The Roman Empire is being cast, like America or 'The West', as having a Historic Mission to unify the pagan tribes of the world in one multicultural, but monoreligious society for the glory and at the behest of the Christian God. Pull away the religious veneer and you're exactly where we are today. It is the same ideology as the great 'thinkers' of the EU and American think tanks. It is the talk of the Davos World Economic Forum and every Justin Trudeau speech or Emmanuel Macron's ideology.

Prudentius was aware that his open borders policies towards violent barbarians might concern some readers, but told them not to worry, it would all work out because God.... or Our Values were just so good that we would win via magic:

Let those who din into my ears once more the story of past disasters and ancient sorrows observe that in your time I suffer such things no longer. No barbarian foe shatters my bars with his spear, nor with strange arms and dress and hair goes roving through my captured city, carrying off my young men to bondage across the Alps.

Not long since a Getic king came from his native Danube and essayed to wipe out Italy, having sworn to rase these strongholds to the ground, destroy our gold-roofed buildings with fire, and dress our toga-clad nobles in skins. [...] It was after worship at Christ's altar and when the mark of the cross was imprinted on the brow, that the trumpets sounded. First before the dragon-standards went a spear-shaft raising the crest of Christ above them. There the race that for thirty years had plagued Pannonia was at last wiped out and paid the penalty.

Convinced of his civilization's military superiority, which itself was a function of God's blessing in exchange for Rome's multicultural ambitions, Prudentius could not imagine a future where "the right side of history" would not ultimately prevail over the encroachments of ill-willed invaders. The doubters, racists and reactionaries the lot of them, were just "dinning" into his ear with their unfounded pagan concerns.

Living in 400 AD, it may have been hard for someone like Prudentius to imagine why the Roman Empire come to dominate the world as he knew it. The Roman world was by his time decadent, depraved and corrupt politically speaking. Clearly, it wasn't the people made this possible, so it must have been divine providence, divine favor, or some alleged values that make that civilization great. It must have been, because what else could have propelled such a sordid society to such heights?

Much like the Roman generals of the republican era knew that Rome was great, but had limits, so did our ruling elites of yesteryear. That's because you cannot stretch out your most precious resource, your citizens, indefinitely. The idea of casually opening the borders for an insane experiment in population replacement only comes to people who deem their societies invincible by virtue of their values and who do not recognize that values only exist to the extent that real people, embody them.

The illusion that you can build a society on an abstract and obligation-free set of political values as opposed to small-scale and demanding civic virtues like trust, valor and industry ultimately corrupted the Roman polity and led them straight to suicide. If we followed them down this particular primrose path, we'd be even worse. Unlike that era, we possess weapons and technology of unimaginable destruction.

EDIT: Sorry @Connal for the Elon Musk jab, I do like Tesla Cars I promise. <3

[primalmatter]

You have dared to learn from history...

Know that it will not be a comfort but rather a source of madness as you attempt in vain to warn others of their folly.

[ParanoiD84]

Uncontrolled hostile immigration is never a good thing. Should have continued making people follow roman rule and culture.

[Theodarzna]

You have dared to learn from history...

Know that it will not be a comfort but rather a source of madness as you attempt in vain to warn others of their folly.

I am just a starseed surfing the Kali Yuga. Historians eventually just resemble mad prophets anyway.

[Deleted]

I suppose there could be an upper bound to the size of any polity. And I suspect that bound to be determined not by values but technology.
But Rome lived on prosperously after that. Elsewhere. Your nickname is a bit of a throwback to that Rome.

[primalmatter]

I am just a starseed surfing the Kali Yuga. Historians eventually just resemble mad prophets anyway.

Reminds me of the darkest dungeon boss fight to be honest...
https://youtu.be/TAoMk6loJzw
https://youtu.be/V0IJmJUwsHw
https://youtu.be/coWQDpCMpW0

Dont want to spam vids but the three together make up about a minute. Sums up my thoughts on globalism pretty well...

[Theodarzna]

Uncontrolled hostile immigration is never a good thing. Should have continued making people follow roman rule and culture.

The comparison to modern mass migration to the historic Germanic invasions and the Roman elite's casual expectation that these foreign newcomers would automatically become "just like us" in a few years' time is the one I drew.

They didn't mind the barbarians entering Roman territory because they could not bring themselves to perceive "those people" as a threat; and they didn't put any effort into upholding treaties or promises because they felt like they didn't need to be in the barbarians' good graces either.

This presents an alarming similarity to our elite's approach vis-à-vis the Muslim world in particular. Our elite sees no particular problem with mass Muslim immigration; look, Diversity is Our Strength!, and besides, #notallmuslims. At the same time, this elite constantly intervenes militarily in Muslim home areas and violently topples governments that were touted as great allies just a few years earlier spreading chaos and destruction in Muslim territories causing vast problems.

It either does not occur to them that this is a bad policy combination or they're so convinced of The West's superiority and mission that they perceive any blow-back as acceptable casualties. It is inconceivable that this vast gigantic global Imperium could ever falter, and in a sense its a kind of racism, the assumption is that THOSE people could never be a threat.

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I suppose there could be an upper bound to the size of any polity. And I suspect that bound to be determined not by values but technology.
But Rome lived on prosperously after that. Elsewhere. Your nickname is a bit of a throwback to that Rome.

Part of the reason is simply because it had a stronger economy to support defence and civil projects, plus it also had a much smaller and easier border most of it was the Danube river to patrol and defend from invaders. Their only real enemy were the Persians, and even then they managed to mostly remain in a stable rivalry (with a few brutal wars) until the Prophet Muhammad's teachings built a very powerful state in Arabia that rapidly expanded out of Arabia.

Most of the cities in the Eastern Empire also existed prior to the advent of the Roman Empire (and outlived it too). Most of the Western Empire outside of say Bibracte, the Iberian coastal cities ect were non-existent before the Romans arrived. Somewhat mirroring the American West in this respect where we have many cities built purely because we wanted to Settle the West and a vast herculean effort in manpower, money and natural resources spent trying to populate it. The other reason is because it actually got rid of the western half of the empire. The Western empire cost more to defend and was poorer. By abandoning it they assured their survival for awhile longer.

It should also be noted that after about the 7th century, the complex administrative and economic structures collapsed and were replaced with a more stable and localised system of governance. The basic idea was "pay some taxes and we'll leave you alone". It was so successful that each of the empires to succeed them also pretty much adopted the same policy right up until the Ottomans when modernity pretty much ended that.

But for the size of a polity, I think the upper boundary is determined by a mixture of human conceptual space, and the exclusivity of an identity. Identities practically have to be exclusive or have an outer membrane that define the interior from the exterior. I.E. They are all ultimately gated communities built on exclusivity. Even the worlds big monotheistic and allegedly universalist religions are like this. Christianity had the Pagans, Islam has the Kafir. The West has the Third World, or the Jihadi's or whatever people live outside the Community. If an identity loses particular meaning, people will go for other identities. American has very little particular meaning beyond citizenship, so most Americans are hyphenated or prefer to think of themselves as the ethnicity of their respective homelands, even the ones whom have lived here for many generations.

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Reminds me of the darkest dungeon boss fight to be honest...
https://youtu.be/TAoMk6loJzw
https://youtu.be/V0IJmJUwsHw
https://youtu.be/coWQDpCMpW0

Dont want to spam vids but the three together make up about a minute. Sums up my thoughts on globalism pretty well...

Globalism is one of those bizarre ideologies that only an extremely insulated and in my opinion delusional elite caste could buy into.

Christopher Lasch’s The Revolt of the Elites and Benjamin Barber’s Jihad vs. McWorld are great books on this topic, though Barbers is basically pro-Globalism in the end or believes Globalism will win. Both books are really just outgrowths of prior magazine articles by the same authors. Both books discuss the betrayal of democracy, or the coming death of democracy, due to future conflicts. Both describe a cultural environment infected by the idea of the triumph of Western liberalism, which is most comically expressed in Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and The Last Man.

Lasch’s book expresses anger at the global elite’s betrayal of their own citizens. The “Davos Man” has an allegiance to global initiatives, rather than local interests. Dissidents mock him or her for their affiliation with an elite transnational culture, rather than their home culture. The Davos Man will often, if not always, push for greater centralization and control, appealing to global authorities and supposed universal values. The elite of today belong to their own collective culture and society separate from the people they actually happen to rule. They are a nation unto themselves.

In general Globalism is just the ideology of insulating these elites as a class, buying their own peace and prosperity at the expense of whomever it is they govern. This is my assessment anyway. Of course I'd say globalism is just another word for Neo-Liberalism.

Also thanks for the music links.

[Theodarzna]

In case anyone was curious, this is what poor scholarship looks like. It is conclusion driven fact selection rather than fact driven conclusion formation.

Thank you for your thoughtful and well made contribution. All of your points have been noted on a notepad and will be considered in future posts. Thank you, and remember, Be the change you want to see in the world. :3

[Theodarzna]

Of course, this is the post you respond to, never the ones where I actually bother to argue the point.

Feel free to do so one day. Remember: Be the Change you Want to be in the world.

Namaste.

[Azadina]

If you really believe hostile migration was the only reason why Rome got in troubles, (that seems to be the conclusion you're currently drawing) then you really need to read the history books in more depth, instead of skipping all parts that don't confirm an agenda you already had.

[Taso]

I am just a starseed surfing the Kali Yuga. Historians eventually just resemble mad prophets anyway.

So true.
<---- studying as a major in history bachelors edition though.
I would love to know the reality of the past as opposed to historic revisionism that seemed to have occurred especially now with high numbers between left and right.

[Deleted]

I suppose there could be an upper bound to the size of any polity. And I suspect that bound to be determined not by values but technology.
But Rome lived on prosperously after that. Elsewhere. Your nickname is a bit of a throwback to that Rome.

different polity, that was a greek, not latin empire.

[Theodarzna]

As if anyone should need it explained to them why analogies based on random quotes mostly deprived of their greater historical context that only superficially resemble our own situation, which is itself arguably not even represented correctly here, make for a poor argument.

Well, I cited the piece and made an extrapolation about it. You do not like it I see. Is it bad? Or is it just politically not convenient for you? I mean I hate to say it but it sounds like you are letting your political allegiances get in the way here. Or your personal dislike of me. Which is all fine I guess.

The context is that Rome's success was based on its people. Without the military and administrative prowess of individual, flesh-and-blood Romans spread all across the empire, there would have been no empire, simple as that. It was not Roman values, or the supposed inherent greatness of Roman civilization or Rome's dubious moral superiority that did it, it was Romans doing well what had to be done day after day, year after year, century after century, until eventually they did not anymore and things fell apart.

Alright alright I get it, you may say, why dwell on this point so much? Well, it may not surprise you anymore to learn that Rome had its own proponents of 'Our Glorious Values' theory that Americans and Eurocrats also say continuously. A vocal representative of this school of thought was the poet Prudentius who I cited, who published his works in the late 4th and early 5th century, just a few short years before Rome was sacked by barbarian invaders. Before his career as a poet and ascetic, he was a member of Emperor Theodosius' court, so we can assume that his words carried some weight with at least some portion of the ruling elite.

Care to explain why my context is wrong? I am eager to speak to a gifted Historian such as yourself. Namaste.

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If you really believe hostile migration was the only reason why Rome got in troubles, (that seems to be the conclusion you're currently drawing) then you really need to read the history books in more depth, instead of skipping all parts that don't confirm an agenda you already had.

It wasn't the only one, but it would be a contributing factor. After all one could look at the fate of the Native Americans whom themselves encountered hostile migrations or perhaps to be more present tense, the Palestinians.

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So true.
<---- studying as a major in history bachelors edition though.
I would love to know the reality of the past as opposed to historic revisionism that seemed to have occurred especially now with high numbers between left and right.

It is a good subject to study, though I understand the problems you speak of.

[s_bushido]

Why does it seem that just as our own civilization is weakening

That feeling when you can't even make it past the first sentence without your eyes rolling out of your head.

[Theodarzna]

different polity, that was a greek, not latin empire.

It was also a Polity that mostly ruled territory they didn't have to build. Byzantium had the infrastructure of thousands of years of empires and kingdoms to rule over in Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant.

The Western Empire largely expanded into rural and non-urbanized areas. Nearly every major capital city in Western Europe was at one point a Roman fort or town. Or at least some of the biggest and oldest. Namely say Paris or London.

[Mittens]

You should read Dani Rodrick's trillemma. The basic premise is that a country can only choose two of the following three.

1) Economic integration
2)Democracy
3)National sovereignity.

And something more in line with your topic, I'm not convinced Mexicans are the equivalent of barbarians at the time of Romans, that's just me tho.

[Theodarzna]

That feeling when you can't even make it past the first sentence without your eyes rolling out of your head.

Elsewhere I read off of books like say The Strange Death of Europe, which is a good book that I recommend.

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You should read Dani Rodrick's trillemma. The basic premise is that a country can only choose two of the following three.

1) Economic integration
2)Democracy
3)National sovereignity.

And something more in line with your topic, I'm not convinced Mexicans are the equivalent of barbarians at the time of Romans, that's just me tho.

I would not argue as such in America's case. Hispanic immigrants, while coming with economic consequences and fitting into that narrative very nicely, are effectively both as Western as any other people AND not really hostile like say Europe's migrant population.

I think National sovereignty would be nice but I think today's states are too large and the elites of those states effectively constitute a national identity unto themselves now anyway.

[Azadina]

It wasn't the only one, but it would be a contributing factor. After all one could look at the fate of the Native Americans whom themselves encountered hostile migrations or perhaps to be more present tense, the Palestinians.

If I were to ask you why it started to become a contributing factor, aka, what sort of decicions lead to it, and then secondly, when it became a big problem, what lead to that outcome. Would you happen to know know the answer (lengthy one with multiple reasons, since it wasn't one or two things) to those questions?

I do know, and as such I think your conclusions you've made on that one contributor of many, and comparing it to present day, absurd.

[Taso]

I do find it interesting that after 241 years as a live thriving nation [USA]which held many crises of epic and small proportion we have yet to fall into tyranny. Now I know people on this forum will say Donald trump is one but he really isn't. I would say trump acts no different then Lincoln did during the United States civil war. He enacted laws that were designed to preserve the republic Some that I dare say were illegal and unethical. The Same can be applied with FDR and regean sure they had different approaches to handling crises of each era but each of them did what was required to keep us going. Weather people personally like it or not is not the issue. The reality is what do we need to keep us(americans) equal to the global community without hurting our views and efforts to be the top as well as keeping us forward and innovative.

[HumbleDuck]

This word salad is a prime example of biased selection of facts to derive the desired conclusion.