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Topic:
Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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Ki_Undi_Mundi
Registered:
Jul '06
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Date Posted:
8/6/07 9:57pm
Subject:
Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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Rome, a very prosperous Empire. It started as a small city that according to myth was ruled by two brothers, one of which eventually climbed over the walls and left. They conquered land from England, to Gaul, To Turkey. They had many great leaders, and many great philosopher's, mathematicians, and scientists. They inherited Greek culture, came up with some of their own, and formed a Republic like no other Empire had dramed of doing.
America, started from a few pilgrims that came over on a ship, and had become an industrialized prosperous nation. They had made a Republic like Rome. They had many great leaders and many great inventors, who made many things we have today possible.
Yet, Rome, fell, as too America will.
Can anyone see the similarities between Rome and America?
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KnightWriter
Title:
Administrator Emeritus
Registered:
Nov '01
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Date Posted:
8/6/07 10:18pm
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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None.
Long live America! 
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Mr44
Registered:
May '02
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Date Posted:
8/6/07 10:20pm
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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Both certainly share the love of patrician tunics. Why, everywhere I go, it's tunic this and tunic that....
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
8/6/07 10:41pm
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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Ki_Undi_Mundi posted:
Rome, a very prosperous Empire. It started as a small city that according to myth was ruled by two brothers, one of which eventually climbed over the walls and left. They conquered land from England, to Gaul, To Turkey. They had many great leaders, and many great philosopher's, mathematicians, and scientists. They inherited Greek culture, came up with some of their own, and formed a Republic like no other Empire had dramed of doing.
America, started from a few pilgrims that came over on a ship, and had become an industrialized prosperous nation. They had made a Republic like Rome. They had many great leaders and many great inventors, who made many things we have today possible.
Yet, Rome, fell, as too America will.
Can anyone see the similarities between Rome and America?
Ok, so just to check.... the similarity is that they grew and became prosperous and had great inventors? That represents pretty much every country that becomes powerful. England, Ottomans, USSR, Germany, France, all of them. It doesn't seem ot have much of a point.
Though there is the difference that its been a moderate while since the U.S. expanded its territory, about 50 years or so. And really, we've got another 250 years to go if the analogy on the fall holds true.
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Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon
Registered:
Dec '00
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 12:38am
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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Lowbacca_1977 posted:
Though there is the difference that its been a moderate while since the U.S. expanded its territory, about 50 years or so. And really, we've got another 250 years to go if the analogy on the fall holds true.
A professor of mine once said, "All empires fall," but neglected to mention the fact that some empires last longer than others. Certainly ancient Rome lasted longer than the Third Reich. America has only been empire-sized for about sixty years, and it's only held the auspicious Alexander-the-Great-esque 'most powerful empire in the known world' title for fifteen to twenty.
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 1:36am
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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Going with the American Heritage Dictionary definition of empire:
1. a. A political unit having an extensive territory or comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a single supreme authority.
b. The territory included in such a unit.
I don't think the U.S. really qualifies as an empire. World power, yes. Imperalist, yes. But not an empire as such as while it has wide ranging influence, it doesn't have territorial control.
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GrandAdmiralJello
Title:
Emperor
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Registered:
Nov '00
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 2:28am
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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Lowbacca_1977 posted:
Going with the American Heritage Dictionary definition of empire:
1. a. A political unit having an extensive territory or comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a single supreme authority.
b. The territory included in such a unit.
I don't think the U.S. really qualifies as an empire. World power, yes. Imperalist, yes. But not an empire as such as while it has wide ranging influence, it doesn't have territorial control.
You're not keeping up with recent scholarship on the subject, then. Mostly by neo-Marxists, but a few right-wingers are adopting the term too. They're mostly British, as Americans have this irrational anathema to empire rooted in the fact that the US broke away from one. Well, so did the British--they broke away from the Romans and the French. The Romans themselves broke away from Etruscan rule. And so on and so forth.
Being a former colony does not preclude empire.
The United States is an empire, and here's the easiest way of making that clear:
The United States has over 750 bases in foreign nations. The United States has the ability to force project anywhere on the planet. The United States military budget is nearly higher than all of the rest of the entire planet combined, and yet it's a mere 3.5% of the GDP--the lowest percentage it's been in a while whilst still being the highest in terms of dollars. The United States has high level officials in many international organizations like the World Bank and the IMF that just happen to be mostly American anyway. The United States has the vast majority of multinational corporations with assets the world over. The United States spreads its culture and ideas all over the world. The United States has toppled five tyrants in five nations in less than a decade. The United States exerts diplomatic and economic pressure on practically every country on the planet.
If the United States is not an empire with imperialist habits, I don't know what is.
The problem is that the US is an empire in denial. So it'll play the role of imperialist bully without taking up the role of global policeman in the fashion that the British did. After all, I doubt any wealthy Americans would care to leave the comfort of their own homes to administer some mosquito-infested third world nation.
There are things to be said about the possiblity of a "liberal empire" that works for the interests of everyone involved. But because of the Americans' unwillingness to see themselves as an empire, the US behaves in a far more exploitative fashion than it ordinarily word.
That's sort of a tragedy.
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Roma Æterna|SPQR  Imperium Sine Fine "Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque" -Ennius, Annales "Tu regere imperio populos, Romanæ, memento;hæ tibi erunt artes; pascisque imponere morem, parcere subjectis et debellare superbos" -Virgil, Aeneid
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Ender_Sai
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Feb '01
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 2:50am
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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I think the strong, knee jerk conservatism of responses here indicates not that people have a problem witht he concept, but the language.
America is absolutely an Empire.
If you take the literal concept of an empire as Lowie kindly provided above, then you're stuck with the idea that the most complete way a nation-state can seek to expand it's influence died with the Suez Crisis when the French and British realised they had lost their influence.
Ha, no.
An Empire is, at it's core, about expanding yoru influence over others and what America has done is both perfected, and messed up, the fundamental aspects of an empire.
What it managed to do was to get other people to do stuff for America without having to conquer and coerce them, so you got the benefits without, say, the unpleasant aspects of conquest, repression and the outcome of that where the oppressed start rising up.
The problem though is that culturally the concept of an Empire doesn't sit well with you guys. The War of Independence resonates, still, today in the US mindset and as a result the US emprie has been a curious entity. And when you do get close to it, like say, Vietnam or Iraq, it's almost a timidity in your engagement. It's like America doesn't want to get hands on incase they end up becoming the Britain of that culture's lore and you can relate to how it feels.
What America did was redefine imperialism in the modern sense. You don't need to conquer and pillage if the economic, strategic and political benefits can still be yours without it.
And I ask you to consider this: The British had troops in all their conquered territory at the height of their Empire. The US is the only country to have troops stationed, by consent, in other countries. Can you not see a lineage here?
E_S
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GrandAdmiralJello
Title:
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Registered:
Nov '00
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 2:58am
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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An Empire is, at it's core, about expanding yoru influence over others and what America has done is both perfected, and messed up, the fundamental aspects of an empire.
This also makes for a nice turn of phrase, as empire has always been about a core and a periphery. Ideally, the peripheries are arranged around the core like spokes on a wheel--and the interests of the core élite and the periphery élite are what form the bonds of empire. The difference is that the US is not a formal empire--it does not administer its peripheries and it is not suzerain over them. In a formal empire, the peripheries only contact each other through the medium of the core.
But the US is absolutely an informal empire--a modern empire. And, really, probably what the British Empire would have ended up turning into eventually had it not dismantled itself. After all, the British Isles and the Dominion governments had already been elevated to equal standing by the early 20th century and free trade and self rule was becoming part of the deal.
What it managed to do was to get other people to do stuff for America without having to conquer and coerce them, so you got the benefits without, say, the unpleasant aspects of conquest, repression and the outcome of that where the oppressed start rising up.
Indeed, but even when we do, we function in the same fashion. When the British conquered the Middle East in 1917, they said that they 'came not as conquerors but as liberators.'
Sound familiar?
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Roma Æterna|SPQR Imperium Sine Fine "Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque" -Ennius, Annales "Tu regere imperio populos, Romanæ, memento;hæ tibi erunt artes; pascisque imponere morem, parcere subjectis et debellare superbos" -Virgil, Aeneid
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KissMeImARebel
Registered:
Nov '03
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 5:07am
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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The rubber stamping of the 110th and 109th Congresses bears some resemblance to the Senate under the Emperors....
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DarthBoba
Registered:
Jun '00
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 5:20am
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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Hmph. Where's my cool-looking helmet and shiny bronze armor? 
I'd say there's resemblances, but we're a fairly different Empire than the Romans were. Don't see any of our generals overthrowing our own government, for starters.
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Vaderize03
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Oct '99
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 9:47am
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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I think the overall point here is that America has become a cultural and economic empire, which grew out of the tremendous increase in military and industrial power the US gained during world war II, replacing Europe's role in some aspects.
Peace,
V-03
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Divia
Registered:
Jun '05
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 10:19am
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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The Fall of the American Empire...
would make a smashingly good title to a book. 
But anyway, as one person pointed out, of course America will fall just as others have fallen before it. Its a foolish notion to think we shall always be number one. Now, the amount of time...how long will we rank up there...that is another question entirely.
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 12:38pm
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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The issue is that empire is, I think, the wrong word. To say, well, the U.S. is an empire, but by economic or cultural means rather than simply conquering territory is to say "well it's an empire, even though it meets the definition."
I also said, however, that I think calling the U.S. an imperalistic nation is quite accurate as then we're not talking simply adding to the size of the country, but other means of exerting control.
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GenAntilles
Registered:
Jul '07
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 12:50pm
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
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America is not going to fall.  In all of America's history we've only been World's Only Superpower for about 20 years. We can go back to number 32 in influence and be fine. America's surrvived a lot worse than that. America didn't even gain respect in Europe until it won the Spanish American War. I have no problem if America ceaces to be number 1 in the world. After all America was greatest when it was't number 1.
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GrandAdmiralJello
Title:
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Registered:
Nov '00
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Date Posted:
8/7/07 1:12pm
Subject:
RE: Rome and America: Can you see the similarities
- Date Edited:
8/7/07 1:13pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
GrandAdmiralJello
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I don't think people quite understand what a cataclysmic chain of events the fall of the Roman Empire really was. It's really something without parallel in all of history--certainly, the British Empire did not "fall"--it just went away. There is no reason to presume that the United States will somehow fall, either. Anyone suggesting so is utterly delusional.
Losing global primacy and hegemony is not the same thing as falling. Regardless of whether that happens through our own making or the rising of other world powers, that does not constitute a fall.
The total and complete collapse of civilization and the complete annihilation of a pan-European culture is without precedent in all history. In the West, Christianity outlawed and persecuted pagan culture while secular culture transformed. Without the help of the Roman state, the lower classes became tied to the land they lived on and became peasants. Without the Roman state to encourage munificence and civic duty on the part of the aristocracy, the wealthy began donating all of their wealth to the Church instead of the people. In the East, of course, the Empire lasted for a further thousand years until a combination of Crusaders and Turks aggressively stamped out every last trace of it. At Trebizond in Trapezus, the surviving Comnenoi and Palæologoi imperial family members were finally captured by the Turks in 1461--signalling an end to a 2,214 year empire.
I highly doubt anyone is going to go through the trouble of wiping out every last trace of American political and social culture. We certainly aren't going to screw up so badly so as to do it to ourselves.
I'd say there's resemblances, but we're a fairly different Empire than the Romans were. Don't see any of our generals overthrowing our own government, for starters.
That might be because our government actually pays the troops, rather than the generals--who, incidentally, were part of the Roman Senate.
ImARebel: Well, at least the Cæsars paid respects to the Senate and did value its experience. It'd be nice if the president did the same.
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Roma Æterna|SPQR Imperium Sine Fine "Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque" -Ennius, Annales "Tu regere imperio populos, Romanæ, memento;hæ tibi erunt artes; pascisque imponere morem, parcere subjectis et debellare superbos" -Virgil, Aeneid
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