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Grant writes about the The Fall of the Roman Empire, in his book by that title. He focuses on “the decay wrought by clinging to the alluring fantasy that past success guarantees future success, without any nasty sacrifices by the ruling elites.”
"Enmeshed in classical history, all [the Roman] can do is lapse into vague sermonizing, telling other Romans, as many a moralist had told them throughout the centuries, that they must undergo an ethical regeneration and return to the simplicities and self-sacrifices of their ancestors.
There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. His whole attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.
This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.
This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions,
there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all."
“Roman elites in Gaul were still writing letters to one another complaining of the breakdown of everyday life right up until the system collapsed.”
They cannot do what they want in the nation or to the nations of the world. They are limited by written Constitutional restrictions.
“Absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.”
-- John Jay, The Federalist No. 4
He was Director of the Counterterrorism Center.
In his resignation letter to the President, he explains why he cannot be a party to an illegal war.
"Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran. This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again.
"As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in...
"The erosion of fatherhood and their role as spiritual leaders disrupts the transmission of faith. Western [Christian] civilization is sustained not by markets or constitutions, but by moral and spiritual inheritance handed down within families.
"The path forward is clear: we must stop neutralizing male vocation and once again preach sacrifice, duty, and spiritual headship without embarrassment. That requires rejecting the narrative that fathers are incidental to this journey and that their natural authority is a threat rather than a gift. If we internalize that story, we should not be surprised when faith, family, and inheritance continue to fracture."
-- Daisy Inglese
