By the late 3rd century AD, the Roman Empire was a shadow of its former self. Beleaguered by mass migration and invasions across its frontiers, vast resources had been poured into fighting off the invaders, while at the same time, endless civil wars had created an ongoing crisis of leadership. Rampant inflation had destroyed the currency. The solution came in the form of a vastly more complex state under the emperor Diocletian (AD 284–305). A ballooning bureaucracy presided over a welter of new laws that, among others, tried to fix prices, lock workers into their occupations and prevent movement, while levying crippling taxes.
With an already huge proportion of the city of Rome’s population dependent on state benefits – something that harked back over 400 years to when the wealthy had stolen land from free peasants, recently returned from war service, who then fled to the city in search of work and security – self-reliance and resilience had long been sapped.
This, in essence, is the thesis of Doug Casey, a veteran speculator and investor, whose theory that “wokeism will be the downfall of America” is covered in the Mail:
He told Dailymail.com that there are now seven clear signs that he believes show that Western civilization is facing an end.
He said: “I’m unhappy about Western civilisation winding down, because it’s by far the best civilisation in world history.
“In fact, it’s the only civilisation in world history that even matters, quite frankly.”
Casey believes that there are important lessons to be found in the fall of the Roman Empire, which occurred after the Romans expanded not only by sea but also by land, leaving the Empire facing excessive taxation and inflation.
Casey identifies the destruction of free thought as a key sign of the impending doom, as well as the dedication of those who believe in the state to coercion:
One of the warning signs is that Casey believes that free thought is central to Western civilisation, but is currently being washed away.
Casey said: “Free thought, which is actually unique to the West, that’s being washed away by cancel culture and political correctness and thought crimes.
“Free thought is being washed away, followed by free speech.”
Casey said that other warning signs include the decline of free markets: the fall of Rome saw growth in the state.
He said: “People who believe in the state believe in coercion, and they believe the government has a right to direct these things. That’s on the upsurge as well.”
Numbers bear out Casey’s ideas: over the past 100 years, the cost of government has gone from just 5 to 10% of GDP to 40% and even 60% in countries like France and Italy, according to Cambridge research.
Casey said that there are many parallels to the fall of Rome, where power became more and more centralised, and former soldiers became the recipients of welfare.
The Punic Wars of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC were victories for Rome, won at enormous cost, but the consequences for ordinary farmers started the rot:
He said: “After wars, particularly the Punic Wars, the Yeoman farmers that went off to defend the interests of the Republic came home; their farms were in disrepair and bankrupt, so they’d have to move to the cities where they became recipients of welfare. There are a lot of parallels to that in the modern West.”
Casey identifies the destruction of rationality because it’s “too white”, and there are plenty of other consequences of that train of thought:
“A lot of these people in the world today hate progress because it leads naturally to inequality, because not everybody is as strong or as smart or as honest as other people, so they don’t like that – the idea of primacy that’s really been washed away. That’s the danger of this era of safe spaces.”
The erosion of the idea of property rights – in an era where everything from cars to smartphones are rented rather than owned – is another key sign, Casey warns.
He said: “You’ve heard this from the Davos people. You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy, and you’ll get a guaranteed annual income with three hots and a cot. So property rights are being washed away.”
Another sign is that cash is being abandoned.
Casey said: “Cash allows you to build wealth on your own, privately. And what seems to be on the runway are central bank digital currencies, CBDCs.
“If those are instituted, there will be zero privacy of what you own, what you buy, what you sell, everything will be known in a very powerful computer, especially with AI.
Power became more centralised and more Romans moved out of the Empire, leaving the Roman empire vulnerable to collapse.
Casey said: “It’s the second law of thermodynamics, everything winds down and becomes corrupt.”
Add on to that the collapse of the rule of law in the face of micro-regulations, and it’s hard to see what other direction Western civilisation is headed in. There is no end to doom-mongering these days, some of it absurdly negative, but Casey really does seem to have a point. The parallels are obvious. The sheer teetering complexity of Western civilisation has led to governments ceaselessly failing to deliver on ever more extravagant promises while presiding over enervated, demoralised and increasingly resourceless populations trapped by debt and incarcerated by laws that both crush and silence them. Free speech and free thought are becoming luxuries of the past.
Meanwhile, crime grows ever more out of control, the rich shore themselves up in enclaves and the state spends its time thinking of more taxes and more rules.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Not unrelated; some truth in that!
Here’s seven signs that show Western civilization could soon end
Excellent- nutjob conspiracy theories about the decline and fall of our civilisation are now in the Daily Mail.
A similar thing that happened to the Yeoman farmers happened to WW1 Landowners who died in battle:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmwsb9j4tWU&t=2s
How long in weeks was the life expectancy of a lieutenant on the Western Front?
From what I heard shorter than the regular soldier. How is that relevant to the Royals hovering up their land?
But, did they?
https://x.com/CilComLFC/status/1878137821443072396
And here is a perfect example of wokeism being put out by the Welsh government.
I think most here would consider this enticement. Doubtless for the ROPers this is aimed at it is surely just a permission notice for when the RNLI drops them off. So it really, really, really is NOT their fault.
Absolutely sickening.
And more fool us for not hanging the sons of birches
They’re taking the mickey.
Talking of wokeism, Arsenal are playing in all white today to show red a red card – or some shit like that. I don’t know what moron designed the shirts – Stevie Wonder perhaps – given that the shirt numbers are also white with the thinnest of black outlines. and the reason is to virtue signal about knife crime in London. Obviously missed the knighthood given to a man who has seen a huge growth in knife crime on his watch.
I think Casey is basically right. The parallels are undeniable.
It cn be bloody hard to see the way back from the destruction we have allowed to be wrought upon our magnificent civilization.
The rape gangs scandal may well come to be seen as a watershed moment – in one way or the other.
As a science student at the time, viewing Dr Jacob Bronowski’s landmark 1973 BBC series “The Ascent of Man” was a formative scientific experience.
The series began with primitive man’s first migration from Africa’s Rift Valley, and in a 13-episode tour de force went on to explain how science and technology had been so fundamental to Western civilisation.
In the final episode, Dr Bronowski concluded by stating that the ascendancy of Western civilisation could not be taken for granted. Prophetic words begin at around 36 minutes in:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0g1kpd9/the-ascent-of-man-13-the-long-childhood
The good Doctor’s last testimony to the future, he died the following year.
I’m amazed it has not been more widely denounced as racist. Probably helps that some of his family were apparently killed in Auschwitz.
I’m inclined to think you can’t judge the past by the mores of the present, verities tend to outlast the temporal and -isms can be in the eye of the beholder.
I’d always assumed the death of his family at Auschwitz to be as told in an earlier episode of the series.
I am certainly not judging him, just suggesting that it’s likely sooner or later that his probable neglect of the “achievements” of various races and focus on the achievements of White people will make him a Bad Person in the eyes of the madleft as one of our fellow posters calls them.
I have no idea whether the Auschwitz story is true or not, just saying it might have bought him some brownie points (I did find one commentator who posited that JB might be a racist but dismissed it because his family were victims of the holocaust – illogical bollocks but there you go).
Bollox is as bollox says and does.
Wokeism is dead as dead as the green agenda. It might not look that way yet but all it takes is a certain tightening of material well-being and all of this fancy thought disappears very rapidly. You quickly understand that the people that you need to value are the people who offer the best chance of survival.
I think the worm is turning but the war is not yet won.
We are at Alemein, not D Day.
“Before Alamein we never had a victory, after Alamein we never had a defeat.”
There was Operation Market Garden though.
It has gone. Spengler talked about this stage, home economicus. The bankers say inflate or die. That means lots of war because it is the greatest inflationary pressure. The West is now severely overstretched militarily. Sadly a school of thought has grown up in the last 25 years among the Anglo-Americans that a nuclear war is essentially winnable. They really believe it and they talk about it openly now. If this permanent bureaucracy isn’t somehow dislodged very quickly then only blind and mindless destruction can follow.
There was a British study in 1985 if I recall. which looked at the effect of a single nuclear weapon hitting the UK. It concluded that even if all the hospital beds were empty the health system would still be completely overwhelmed by such an event. And that was at a time when the NHS was healthier than it is now. I strongly disagree with this doctrine of escalation to nuclear as if it is just another step.
I do believe there were parts of East England that had radiation contamination from the Chernobyl accident.
There is a good documentary, I forget the name about a huge undergoround site in Finland where they try to bury all the nuclear waste products. You can put it in the ground or under the sea but you can’t undo the dark magic. Can any civilisation survive when it has developed tools that can blow itself to pieces. The idea the nukes will be left on the shelf forever. I would say no destruction is assured. Maybe then we rise up again, as Plato said of the post-Atlantean period, like children with no recollection of what went before.
We’re all doomed.
To underline what is happening, the corrupt legal system we have (refer to Paul Barret’s YouTube posts about Tommy Robinson for example) there are other examples, is another step towards the failure of our civilisation unless we can have legal proceedings accurately monitored and corrected when they go wrong.