A View From My Window – Pt. 2

| August 25, 2019

Who can’t wait to dig in? (crystalinks.com/Fine Art America)

Another viewpoint of what is going on, through some valid observations by Chris Sullivan, who is also a gun owner and writes about guns here: https://differentbugle.blogspot.com/

From his article: :   https://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2012/05/24/rome-didnt-fall-in-a-day/

One such person was a man named Salvian, sometimes called Salvian the Presbyter. He wrote a treatise that is called in English The Governance Of God or De gubernatione Dei in Latin*. Its original title was On The Present Judgement and it is well worth reading to see how things played out then and probably always will. His purpose was to show that the then current problems were caused by moral collapse, excessive taxation and a greedy and conniving landed class, not an abandonment of the old pagan religion. Julian the Apostate who had made the opposite argument 70 or so years before, had tried to re-institute paganism and even tried to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, presumably because it wasn’t Christian and he liked practices such as animal sacrifice, but his efforts ended when he was killed in a war with the Persians after a short reign.

These are more quotes from linked article by Chris Sullivan:

One of the many things Salvian mentions that is starting to be more common in the U.S., but was unheard of just a few years ago is people fleeing the Empire and renouncing their citizenship.

“Thus, far and wide, they migrate either to the Goths or to the Bagaudae, or to other barbarians everywhere in power; yet they do not repent of having migrated. They prefer to live as freemen under an outward form of captivity, than as captives under the appearance of liberty. Therefore, the name of Roman citizens, at one time not only greatly valued, but dearly bought, is now repudiated and fled from, and it is almost considered not only base, but even deserving of abhorrence.”(pg.136)

Just as Washington refuses to rein in its excesses (in 2012), the same was true of Rome around A.D. 450.

“Then, indeed, the authors of base pleasures feasted at will in most places, but all things were filled and stuffed to overflowing. Nobody thought of the State’s expenses, nobody thought of the State’s losses, because the cost was not felt. The State itself sought how it might squander what it was already scarcely able to acquire. The heaping up of wealth which had already exceeded its limit was overflowing even into trifling matters. But what can be said of the present-day situation? That old abundances have gone from us. The resources of former times have gone. We are already poverty-stricken, yet we do not cease to be spendthrift.” (167, 168)

Note that this article was written in 2012, during guess who’s? administration. Remember the idiotic lunch programs that had kids going hungry? And now the ecohippies want to get rid of meat of all kinds and follow only a plant-based diet – but they fail to remember that Homo sapiens – that’s us – is an omnivorous species. Everyone I  know of is telling them to go suck an egg.

Encourage people to look up those excesses and idiotic programs that failed and what we are seeing now as a by-blow result from it.  The worst kind of governance is the one that wants to control everything you do, including the food on your plate.

Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Politics

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thebesig

Prescheduled a Thanksgiving post yesterday, for Thanksgiving Day, with that photo and caption. :mrgreen: Now I have to change the picture. :mrgreen: Turns out that I downloaded two different turkey dinner photos.

5th/77th FA

And here I was thinking you had snuck into the Thanksgiving feast that we prepared. Then I noticed it was stuffing and not real (buttermilk) cornbread dressing. Never mind.

Interesting take on this article. Just shows that sometimes the more things change, the more they remain the same. I’ve never asked the State (gubmint) for anything, yet have paid into them for decades. With the talk that Bush II (?) had some years back on a 401 type program v SS, I wonder now how much my contributions to SS would be worth. As I commented in pt 1, history is replete with gubmits destroying from within as the people continued to slurp at the trough. As you so ably put in this post. My 401K has done fairly nicely over the past 20 yrs, took some big hits during the previous admin, but has done quite well since Nov ’16. I have put more into the SS than the 401K and will not live long enough to see that come back. At least with the 401K money when I do clock out for good, whatever is left in that account will go to my chil’rens. SS? not at all.

We as a nation owe somewhere North of 20 TRILLION USD because of gubmint give away programs. SS, which was to be a separate retirement supplemental program, got turned into the congress critters piggy bank.

Grrrr!

11B-Mailclerk

Chile privatized retirements. The participants do very well indeed, better than our Social Security recipients.

Put into a private investment fund, conservatively managed, the same amount you put into Social Security. After 30 years, see which gives you a better payout.

Note: the SS investment is actually double. For every buck you are putting in, there is a hidden payroll buck not paid to you but instead to the Government. The SS bite is 15%, not 7.5%. And that double payment makes it look quite crappy, eh? Especially when you consider of Social Security:

– Your heirs get zero. Because, it isn’t yours.

– Congress can cut it or end it at any time, and you have -no- legal claim to it. This is already settled law. And

– Its return on investment over a career is just above “mattress stuffing”. It can be negative.

It is a Ponzi scheme, that was based on 90% of participants dying before they could claim a year of payouts. It is a scam. It has been totally looted. And since they rolled ” disability” into it, it is even more of a disaster than its authors sought to hide.

And, it only gets worse the longer we fail to admit it and take action to change it.

And their ain’t enough tea in China to honor all its promises.

OldSoldier54

Yep

Anonymous

BOHICA!

Ret_25X

There are three schools of thought in the USA right now:
1. You work, I eat

2. You work, no one eats

3. You don’t work, TS, tell it to your safe space group while you starve.

Needless to say, view point 3 is rare these days and viewpoint 1 is all the rage.

Why, though? Because in a world divorced from those agencies through which we are taught values, values themselves become Onerous–transgressive–assault, even.

In the thousand mile march to destroy family, religion (except, of course for the religion of peace (TM)), and wisdom our elites actually killed the goose that laid golden eggs.

No program of the left (or right) based upon material things will suffice to fix what is broken.

Gun control? Without behavior control it simply does not matter (right, London?).

Welfare? Without shame, it will grow until everyone is on it.

All of our problems boil down to values–or more precisely, the lack of values.

OWB

Back in the unenlightened 50’s and 60’s, some of us were steeped in the study of history without even realizing it. “History” managed to find it’s way pretty much into every other course of study, at least in the public schools and private universities I attended. (And there seemed no difficulty in conversing with those whose education was far different from mine leading me to conclude that something similar occurred fairly universally.)

The one condition that seemed to exist in every great civilization in decline was a turn from primary emphasis (individually and collectively) on productivity to hedonism. Not that that alone was a cause in and of itself, but a sympton, at least as the decline began. That sign of a civilization (or society) in decline appears without regard to geography, religion, or much else.

Our own founders expressed their concern for the phenomena and offered opinons on how to avoid falling into the traps which doomed others throughout history.

Oh, well. It’s been a good run.

Slow Joe

“Listen, and understand. That Democrat party is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”