Fall of Reincarnated Roman Empire

David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office gave a speech recently and drew parallels between the United States today and the fall of the Roman Empire. He warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.

The Roman Empire fell because it was bankrupted by its leaders; well, look at the red ink now! Budget deficits, trade deficits, a huge national debt that has tripled since Gog Bush took power.

These similarities between the initial rise of Rome and the U.S. are fairly obvious, but this is probably due to the fact that many of the founding fathers of America greatly admired the Roman Empire. Many ideas of our current government came from the Romans, including the idea of a Senate. Even American government buildings were modeled after Roman architecture.

The word 'Republic' itself comes from the Latin (the language of the Romans) words 'res publica' which mean 'public matters' or 'matters of state'.

The ancient Romans invented more games than any other culture. Birthdays were really big deals. They were celebrated as festivals, with gifts from friends and family and neighbors.

America, under its present unenlightened leadership, is like the ancient Roman empire - growing weak from luxury and sloth and inflation on the inside.

A great similarity between Rome and modern America is the idea of wars. The ancient Romans would not fight any war that they did not believe was just, because they would otherwise anger the gods and could not be granted victory. However, throughout their history, Romans found many different reasons for claiming a war was “just,” when the actual reason for the dispute was something more along the lines of expanding their territory, or simply glory for military leaders. The Iraq war in America today can also be viewed as a war claimed to be “just,” though many people believe it is being fought for various other reasons. Our leaders of course claim only the most honorable reasons for war, while many of our citizens are at odds as to whether or not these are the actual reasons for the war.

The Romans controlled one of the largest military forces the world has ever seen, and as their empire grew, they had this military spread out and take over other lands. Throughout our history, America has taken over lands it desired. We came to this land and all but wiped out the Native Americans that we found here. We also expand our empire in this way, for example, taking control of Hawaii and its government, and adding it to our country as a state. Today, our military is the strongest in the world, and we maintain military bases in other countries all over the world. This is very similar to Rome's military before their empire began to crumble.

Coins were also used during the Roman Empire, and on the coins were images engraved of Roman emperors, very similar to American coins, whom also turned money into idol worshiping.

Today, August 16, 2007, the Nation is getting a new coin – the Thomas Jefferson $1 Coin, and on the reverse side will have the Statue of Liberty design.