Opus 2022-074: More Than the Border

One of the big topics of discussion among historians is why Rome fell.  If you know much about the date of AD 476, you know it is an arbitrary date picked because the new emperor was non-Italian.  It doesn’t mean Rome went away on one day or in one year.  

Arnold Toynbee was at one point recognized as the greatest historian of his day.  I am reading an abridgment of one of his major works.  I find him a bit dated, uniformed on some issues and a bit of a Proregressive.  In spite of that there are insights he gives that are food for thought.  One of them had to do with the fall of civilizations.  He was addressing the fall of Rome but there is a principle I found interesting,

“Why did the Barbarians ultimately break through?  Because, when a frontier between a more highly and a less highly civilized society ceases to advance, the balance does not settle down to a stable equilibrium but inclines, with the passage of time, in the more backward society’s favour.” p. 10

Think about this in regard to our southern border.  If he is correct the thing we have to fear is not people trying to get into the country but the question of whether our culture is dead.  If so then we are simply looking at another time of change and chaos.

Do we need to enforce border security?  Yes.  Is that the major issue we face?  Not even close.  We are in a death struggle with an enemy determined to destroy America as it was founded and they are not willing to wait and see if illegal aliens can do the job for them.  If we want to have hope for the future there are things we need to do.  The simple, obvious ones involve putting on trial all the miscreants that locked up citizens for trespass on January 6, have a murder trial for the policeman that shot an unarmed woman for no reason, start trials for Comey, Hillary and the seemingly unending list of traitors who have worked to undermine our election process, oh yes, and don’t let illegals vote.

What we also need is spiritual revival.  That is the hard part because it can’t be legislated it must be lived.  The churches need to step up to the plate and start swinging for the fences.  Otherwise it is the handbasket for all of us.

Toynbee, Arnold J.  A Study of History, abridgment by D.C. Somervell.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 1946.

homo unius libri