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US President 2016 - the Great Horse Race

SimpleDon said:
I wrote this and never posted it. Feel free to ignore it.

angelo said:
The Roman Empire was destroyed from within and without. Barbarians at the gates! Exactly what's happening today.
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The Romans always had barbarians at their gates throughout their history. Not in the least because the Latin barbarus most commonly referred to non-Romans.

The genius of the Romans was that they converted the people that they conquered into Romans who manned the border defenses under Roman officers, that they recycled, through taxation, the riches that they gained to pay for the defense of the borders, that the money from the border troops made the border regions prosperous and stable, that they had a large, moderately honest civil administration closely aligned with the military, that the military when not fighting built and maintained civil works, roads, bridges, waterworks, etc., that they had enough so that all of the citizens of Rome had enough, and others.

The empire failed because these things slowly unraveled, starting with the rich escaping paying their taxes. The quality of the military declined, the lack of money turned the military to looting the border areas instead of pouring money into them. The military was given land for payment instead of money, turning them into farmers instead of builders and maintainers of the infrastructure. The rich lost their dedication to the military, resulting in a less loyal officer corp of non-Romans. The distribution of income and wealth became more unequal, increasing poverty and unrest. The civil administration became underpaid and more corrupt. The bankers became more powerful, resulting in an explosion of private debt when the tradition of periodic debt jubilees, when all of the debts in Rome were forgiven, was abandoned.
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Apart from the civil servants , who with their perks and high salaries today, you in many ways can compare the fall of the Roman Empire to today's Western Culture!
 
angelo said:
Apart from the civil servants , who with their perks and high salaries today, you in many ways can compare the fall of the Roman Empire to today's Western Culture!
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Why don't you explain why you think that that is a good comparison?
 
lpetrich said:
angelo said:
Apart from the civil servants , who with their perks and high salaries today, you in many ways can compare the fall of the Roman Empire to today's Western Culture!
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Why don't you explain why you think that that is a good comparison?
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He can't explain it, but he will blame it on Muslim refugees.
 
With friends like Terry Mcauliffe who needs enemies?

But last night, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe set a new standard for terrible spokespersonship. At a convention where a rogue faction of Bernie Sanders delegates refuses to believe in the authenticity of Hillary Clinton's concessions to the left, where delegates for both candidates tend to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the chant "No TPP" is peppered through all proceedings, McAuliffe decided to reassure voters Tuesday night that Clinton secretly supports the trade agreement and will sign it with minor tweaks as soon as she gets this election thing over with. Per Politico:

“I worry that if we don’t do TPP, at some point China’s going to break the rules -- but Hillary understands this,” he said in an interview after his speech on the main stage at the Democratic National Convention. “Once the election’s over, and we sit down on trade, people understand a couple things we want to fix on it but going forward we got to build a global economy.”

Pressed on whether Clinton would turn around and support the trade deal she opposed during the heat of the primary fight against Bernie Sanders, McAuliffe said: “Yes. Listen, she was in support of it. There were specific things in it she wants fixed.”
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Clinton's campaign people were quick to say that Mcauliffe was mistaken.
 
lpetrich said:
angelo said:
Apart from the civil servants , who with their perks and high salaries today, you in many ways can compare the fall of the Roman Empire to today's Western Culture!
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Why don't you explain why you think that that is a good comparison?
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"In the later Roman Empire frontiers became softer and immigration control more lax at the same time as citizenship and ethnic distinctions within the Empire were becoming blurred. The universal grant of citizenship by the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 AD was only a formal recognition by the state of a long process that had diminished the concept of citizenship and eroded the distinction between cives and peregrini in the provinces. By the fourth century status and wealth counted for more socially and legally than citizenship….

To sum up, far from the homogenization of what the Constitutio Antoniniana called the patria communis, that is, the population of the Roman community, internal, social divisions became stronger. Ironically, however, the refinements of status distinctions and social divisions served as a more effective vehicle than any legal measure to allow immigrants to integrate at all levels. What mattered was not whether you were a citizen but whether you could attain equal social or economic status. In this respect, the Roman Empire of the fourth century was the reverse image of the nation-state in the nineteenth century. The juridical personality of the citizen was almost eliminated as frontier controls relaxed and as immigrants were accommodated in ever greater numbers….

Immigrants provided substitutes for rural recruits, thus leaving agricultural workers on the land to increase state revenue, since they increased the capitation tax and added extra income through the system of adaeratio, which bought them exemption from the military levy. There clearly were concerns in the imperial chancellery for the tax regime and for the rents from imperial estates, which was reflected in contemporary legislation….

These fiscal and economic benefits to rural production coincide with the concern expressed by the Gallic panegyricists about agri deserti and high taxes, and hence their praise for ‘so many farmers in the Roman countryside’, both as immigrants and as returning prisoners… The essential point, however, is that … immigrants were officially perceived as good for the economy by bringing down the price of food and by servicing local markets through increased production."
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https://books.google.com/books?id=gIjgjLOqX6AC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Rome+and+its+Frontiers:+The+Dynamics+of+Empire&source=bl&ots=YJFpfD6pVn&sig=vRPXU8lqcTKDJ9QHct-8-olownM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bSskUKOrJcz34QSP1IHIBQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
 
I asked you before, and received no meaningful response from the collection of bumper stickers that passes for your brain: In what way was the Roman Empire politically correct, as we understand it?
 
The Roman Empire fell because they appeased Islam?

I learned something today.
 
angelo said:
lpetrich said:
angelo said:
lpetrich said:
Why don't you explain why you think that that is a good comparison?
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Two words. Political correctness!
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Define "political correctness".
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Appeasing minority groups, unfettered immigration, and the biggie of the lot: appeasing the barbaric death cult of Islam which is not compatible with the Judeo-xtian Western Culture. That's it in a nutshell.
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For each of these items,
  • Appeasing minority groups
  • Unfettered immigration
I wish to ask
  • What do you think counted as that in the Roman Empire?
  • Why do you think that it helped cause the fall of the Roman Empire? The Western Roman Empire, at least.

Also, the Western Roman Empire fell before Mohammed was born, making your claim laughable.
 
To be fair, he was asked to define 'political correctedness' and he gave what he thinks is a good definition.

He was also asked to explain how the Roman Empire was 'politically correct,' and has not answered. I, personally, do not see an analogy. I cannot think of a minority that the Romans appeased. The Romans themselves were the minority in their vast and diverse empire. There wasn't much immigration from outside the Roman Empire. Most non-Romans came to be in the Empire by being conquered.

A better analogy between the present and fall of the Roman Empire would be between what are now called 'Conservative' positions: For example, the hiring of mercenaries and the degeneration of regular military forces. The privatization of core government functions such as prisons, contract law, utilities etc today could be analagous to the process of tax farming, where the state essentially sold the rights to collect taxes to private individuals, and the growth of non taxable estates with their private law enforcement.
 
Political Correctness is the thought process of professional politicians who do not want to offend, and hence lose the vote of, a large identifiable group.
To note that Americans of African heritage have a lower average IQ than Americans of European descent is not Politically Correct. To remark that the BLM movement is overtly racist is not Politically Correct. To take note that a religious group spawns large numbers of active terrorists today is not Politically Correct since it offends the religious.
Anything that makes someone uncomfortable with a truth is not Politically Correct.
 
Sarpedon said:
To be fair, he was asked to define 'political correctedness' and he gave what he thinks is a good definition.

He was also asked to explain how the Roman Empire was 'politically correct,' and has not answered. I, personally, do not see an analogy. I cannot think of a minority that the Romans appeased. The Romans themselves were the minority in their vast and diverse empire. There wasn't much immigration from outside the Roman Empire. Most non-Romans came to be in the Empire by being conquered.

A better analogy between the present and fall of the Roman Empire would be between what are now called 'Conservative' positions: For example, the hiring of mercenaries and the degeneration of regular military forces. The privatization of core government functions such as prisons, contract law, utilities etc today could be analagous to the process of tax farming, where the state essentially sold the rights to collect taxes to private individuals, and the growth of non taxable estates with their private law enforcement.
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The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire is a large topic worthy of a book. Oh, wait, that's been done. At the end it was a progressivist democracy. Everyone was "entitled" (as voted by law) to free bread. The government debased the currency by putting in an increasing amount of base metal in gold coin it issued to buy said bread. There is a parallel. In that time it would have been Politically INcorrect to say that the majority who voted for the bread were wrong. You would not be elected to the senate.
 
KeepTalking said:
lpetrich said:
Why don't you explain why you think that that is a good comparison?
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He can't explain it, but he will blame it on Muslim refugees.
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angelo said:
lpetrich said:
angelo said:
lpetrich said:
Why don't you explain why you think that that is a good comparison?
Click to expand...

Two words. Political correctness!
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Define "political correctness".
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Appeasing minority groups, unfettered immigration, and the biggie of the lot: appeasing the barbaric death cult of Islam which is not compatible with the Judeo-xtian Western Culture. That's it in a nutshell.
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Nailed it.
 
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