As I point out in my book, Lessons from Fallen Civilizations, most great civilizations, on their way to collapse, impoverish and ultimately eliminate their middle classes. I write:

In AD 161, during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, there were about 3,000 officials and bureaucrats in the Roman imperial government. By the abdication of Emperor Diocletian in AD 305, there were 35,000. In the same intervening years, taxes rose from what the small farmer could produce in two days a month to half his monthly output. By mid-fourth century, the empire exacted such an onerous level of taxation that many of its citizens defected, abandoned their lands, and joined the Barbarian invaders.

Today, there are many metrics which point to the destruction of the American middle class family:

• In 2011, entry level college-educated men earned an average $21.69 an hour, an inflation-adjusted drop of 7.6% from 2000.
• With the Bush tax rates about to expire: the top capital gains tax rate is scheduled to rise from 15 to 43.4%. This will immediately hammer the value of all American pension and savings portfolios by 25 to 30%.
• The marriage penalty comes back.
• The payroll tax rate jumps, limiting the ability of business to raise wage rates and hire.
• The death tax is restored, wiping out the inheritors of small farms and businesses.
• A whole long list of Obamacare taxes on small businesses will take effect depressing wages and new hires.

From my book, I write:

According to the IRS data for fiscal year 2011, the top 2% of American earners made $299,307 or more, and already paid a whopping 53% of all federal income taxes. The new American majority instinctively knew that the real tax burden always falls on the middle class in a capitalist society because that is where the vast majority of country’s taxable income is generated. It understood that taxing the rich and the promise of free health care for all was simply part of a familiar con. Most Americans awakened to the fact that individuals making $200,000 a year were hardly rich, nor were there enough of them to feed Obama’s welfare state leviathan.

The middle class was his target. The president’s real plan was to extract the money from the middle class in a myriad of ways—fees, hidden taxes, higher Medicare deductibles, penalties and fines, carbon taxes, special assessments to cover failing hospitals and school districts, crony capitalist value-added taxes, and the biggest hidden tax of all—inflation. Despite a floundering economy constrained by a fear of what the mountains of Obama’s new regulations would mean, US food and fuel prices rapidly climbed while the buying power of the middle class fell. In one year, from August 2010 to August 2011, the value of the American dollar fell 32% against the Swiss Franc. The new American welfare state was destroying the small investor’s capital at an alarming rate and violating.

And in all this, the fact that our young college graduates who cannot find gainful employment while saddled with student loan debt, may be the most fearful indicator of all. If not reversed, it may signal that a vast number of the American middle class will see their children who played by the rules, studied hard, but were unable to even enter the middle class.

But we should celebrate the fact that a fearless double agent, directed by both the CIA and the Saudi intelligence service, penetrated the inner core of the most fearsome cell of al Qaeda in Yemen and was able to be selected to carry out a suicide mission aimed at blowing an American commercial airliner out of the sky. Moreover, he was able to deliver “al Qaeda’s new and improved suicide underwear bomb” to his spy agency handlers, saved untold American lives and lived to tell about it…for now.

The bad news is that someone on the American side leaked information to The New York Times revealing to all those in the myriad al Qaeda affiliates far too much about the double agent and his methods.  Unfortunately, this has become an all-too-familiar pattern of those media elites, politicians and policy mavens of the Left who have evolved beyond the point of retaining their own instinct for survival.

It was their paper of record, The New York Times, that shortly after 9/11 broke the story of how the Bush Administration was monitoring cell phone traffic and monetary transactions of known terrorist collaborators. This newspaper has a decades-long abysmal record of compromising American intelligence agency methods, programs, and assets which in turn resulted in horrific torture, the loss of life of our collaborators and arguably the willful blindness that resulted in 9/11.

Sadly, our current President has participated in this tale of woe.

In his rush to tell the world of his courageous decision to kill bin Laden, he could not wait to make it known to the Islamicist underworld that we had captured a vast store of intelligence. Not only was the special forces command insulted by his craven attempt to take credit for their heroics, they have let it be known that he blew the opportunity to go after the al Qaeda cells identified in bin Laden’s data files. If the President had allowed them some time before he bragged to the world of his great assassination, how many other al Qaeda lieutenants and operatives might have been captured?

It was a classic case of a weak commander in chief attempting to take credit for a brilliant raid while blowing the chance for effective follow-up missions.

While it is still unclear as to who leaked the information that allowed us to know that it was a Saudi double agent who foiled the plot, what is clear is that the damage that this will cause to our future security /intelligence operations cannot be blamed on President Bush or on someone in the Romney inner circle. It seems likely that we will learn more about the Saudi double agent and who outed him.

But one thing is clear, we need a new commander in chief who understands that his electoral prospects must by subordinated to the greater issue of national security, to the safety of the homeland. Candidate Obama told us that he would repair the damage that his predecessor, the unilateralist president, had done to our reputation throughout the world.

During his final six months in office, he might focus his attention on how to prevent those foreign nationals who collaborate with our intelligence services, those who put their lives on the line to prevent Americans from being killed. And certainly he should certainly see to that this man who prevented the new improved underwear bomb from blowing up a plane over one of our cities, be offered a entry into our most advanced witness protection program.

Consider the fact that at his inaugural address in 1960, at the most desperate point in the nuclear standoff of the cold war, Kennedy famously challenged the nation by stating, “So my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Democrats, ask yourselves, could Pelosi, Reed, or Obama possibly issue the above Kennedy admonition? Of course not.

They, like the European socialist politicians, are the protectors and the advocates for the entitlement state. They are the exact opposite of those who would have embraced Kennedy’s patriotic admonition. But because they seem unaware of the immutable laws of human existence and of macro economics, Obama and the Europeans cannot reverse the tsunami of bankruptcy which is about to send their collectivism into the dustbin of history.

So too is the judgment of our current president especially as it pertains to keeping this country safe from catastrophic attack. Only this President, a leader of the modern Left, could condemn waterboarding terrorists and practically in the next sentence, attempt to make it a national holiday for putting a bullet in Bin Laden’s head.

Obama has increased drone attacks over Pakistan ten-fold over that of President Bush. What sort of grip on reality would assert that we should not pour water up a known terrorist’s nose but that it is perfectly acceptable to send in a drone to blow up a suspected terrorist’s enclave, killing also his wives and children? How can this president trumpet his killing of bin Laden when it was the advanced interrogation techniques he has now prohibited and even attempted to criminalize, that produced the intelligence that led to bin Laden’s whereabouts?

The answer is—fatally flawed judgment of the Left. There are many examples of how the professional left takes on positions which cannot be defended by past statistical evidence, and are even humorously absurd. Eric Holder’s attempt to prosecute those localities which attempt to require a photo ID to vote is a case in point. It is a requirement to show photo ID to enter his office building.

How did this happen to the Left? How is it that it has arrived at a point where it must adopt positions which reflect a tenuous grip on reality? I identify the answer in my recently released best-selling book, Lessons from Fallen Civilizations. It emanates from the Kennedy assassination.

(to be continued)

In a California survey this month, it was 10 out of 10. Most of those that were surveyed felt if things continue in the economy and do not turn around, we are facing our own fallen civilization and that is not acceptable to them.

The California survey, conducted on literate book readers from 25 to 65 years old, showed over 52% feel that “bad government” and “no strong leadership” is the problem. The majority are most interested in employment and the economy.

My new book (now a best seller on Amazon) has some of the solutions at the end of the book to turn the tide and reverse the decline.

My hope is that this book will help to enlighten as well as entertain. It compares what is happening now to what happened in the past. Are we close to becoming another fallen civilization?

I am trying to show the factors that lead to every civilization’s demise and compares these 10 immutable laws to what is happening today.

If the Presidential candidates don’t take up these issues, the people definitely will. We are going into an important election that could change the outcome of our own lives. It helps to find out all we can learn from other past situations, and make sure we don’t repeat the same mistakes.

There are certain constants in human history such as:
* All great civilizations fail due to flawed decision making.
* When powerful peoples become weak, there will always be predators gathering for the kill.
* Conversely, predators are easily defeated by successful civilizations”

This can be within our own country as well as outside influences. How do you spot this? The last chapter will give you some answers and may even raise more questions.

History is never dull when you read “Lessons from Fallen Civilizations”.

In the First Punic War, during the late 240s BC, the Carthaginians grew weary of the long war with Rome and made the decision to decommission much of their fleet and to release from their employ many of their mercenary sailors. This proved to be an extraordinarily ill-fated decision. They voluntarily ceded to Rome, their mortal enemy, naval superiority and mastery of the seas.

Although it would be another one hundred years before the fall of Carthage, over this period Rome continued to consolidate its naval superiority and mastery of the Western Mediterranean. This would prove decisive in preventing Hannibal from being reprovisioned and resupplied with new weaponry, especially siege equipment. The Carthaginians’ decision to cede military control of the seas made them, a naval trading power, vulnerable to Rome. It was a fatefully bad decision which set in motion the events which led to a huge military advantage for Rome and to the ultimate destruction of Carthage.

By 2008, Barack Obama’s election year, America had enjoyed air superiority since World War II, and it had been sixty years since a single American soldier had lost his life on the ground due to an attack from the air. During the Bush (GW) presidency, the country had proven that it could build a missile defense system capable of mind-boggling technological precision, capable of “hitting a speeding bullet with a bullet.”

Obama stated numerous times during his campaign that he “would not weaponize space” and that he would not deploy a “costly unproven” missile defense system.

Incomprehensibly, in 2009, President Obama cancelled the F-22 Raptor jet fighter, an act which threatened Americans’ air superiority. As the eminent military historian, Mark Helprin, apocalyptically put it, “Cancelling the F-22, the most capable fighter plane ever produced, is yet another act in the tragedy of a nation that, bankrupting itself, (is) losing its will to prevail.”

Review the other laws here:
Law #1: No nation has ever survived once its citizenry ceased to believe its culture worth saving. (Hanson’s Law)
Law #2: In battle, free men almost always defeat slaves. (Herodotus’ Law)
Law #3: Appeasement of a ruthless outside power always invites aggression. Treaties made with ruthless despots are always fruitless and dangerous.
Law #4: If a people cannot avoid continuous internal warfare, they will have a new order imposed from without.
Law #5: When a free people, through taxation, is deprived of its ability to acquire wealth and property, collapse is presaged.
Law #6: To hold territory, a state must be populated by those loyal to the central authority. When immigration overwhelms assimilation, the fall is predicted.
Law #7: With the loss of fiscal solvency comes a loss of sovereignty.
Law #8: Debasing the currency always destabilizes the governing authority.
Law #9 When a civilization accepts the propaganda of its enemy as truth, it has reached the far side of appeasement and capitulation is nigh.

Read more about these laws in my book.

In 340 BC the Athenian ambassadors to Macedon, who had negotiated the Peace of Philocrates, returned to Athens and addressed the Assembly. They extolled the virtues and peaceful intentions of the warlord to the north, King Philip II. “He has no intentions of conquering Athens and he will be an important ally in deterring Persia from returning to make war on the Greeks,” they said. Only Demosthenes stood to warn the men of Athens that they would one day lose their freedom to Macedon.

Just two years later, in 338 BC at Chironea, twenty thousand Athenians and Thebans were killed by the pikes of the Macedonian phalanxes and by the cavalrymen led by Philip’s son, the future Alexander the Great. With that appalling loss of life, all organized resistance to Philip on the Greek mainland of Attica ceased.

In the so-called “Arab Spring,” revolutions overthrew Muslim dictators, with many of the newly liberated Muslims bristling for another war with Israel. In May 2011, coordinated attacks on Israel’s northern border by Syria and Hezbollah were joined by calls from the new ruling elites in Egypt to bring the whole of the Arab world against Israel. With the chaos reining across the Middle East, the Iranian regime continued to vow to wipe Israel off the map, was emboldened, and gained influence across the region.

While the storm gathered around our only reliable ally in the Middle East, the President of the Free World took the side of the Muslims. They pretended to be outraged by Israel building some new houses in Jerusalem, its ancestral capital of twenty-five hundred years. He failed to observe that no other country in human history, continuously attacked by its surrounding enemies, could survive if it operated its capital city and foreign policy according to the dictates of those same enemies. The fact that our president made the case that Israel, one of America’s most important allies, should do so, represented the far side of appeasement.

Law #1: No nation has ever survived once its citizenry ceased to believe its culture worth saving. (Hanson’s Law)
Law #2: In battle, free men almost always defeat slaves. (Herodotus’ Law)
Law #3: Appeasement of a ruthless outside power always invites aggression. Treaties made with ruthless despots are always fruitless and dangerous.
Law #4: If a people cannot avoid continuous internal warfare, they will have a new order imposed from without.
Law #5: When a free people, through taxation, is deprived of its ability to acquire wealth and property, collapse is presaged.
Law #6: To hold territory, a state must be populated by those loyal to the central authority. When immigration overwhelms assimilation, the fall is predicted.
Law #7: With the loss of fiscal solvency comes a loss of sovereignty.
Law #8: Debasing the currency always destabilizes the governing authority.
Law #10: Declining civilizations will always face superior firepower from ascending civilizations because sovereignty is only temporarily uncontested.

Read more about these laws in my book.

During the late second century and early third centuries AD several Roman Emperors attempted to inflate the Empire’s wealth. They recalled some of the outstanding gold coinage, secretly melted it down, and reissued it with leaden cores. In each case, this tactic was nearly catastrophic. The secret became instantly common knowledge among the Roman citizenry who reacted by refusing to accept the Empire’s coinage in exchange for goods and services. This in turn meant that the Emperor could not pay or provision his own armies. Each time the Roman debasement was attempted, all bogus coinage was again recalled and reissued with the lead removed.

Since the United States completely abandoned the gold standard in 1971, the buying power of the dollar has plunged by 96 percent. In 1971 an ounce of gold sold for $35. By 2011, an ounce of gold sells for $1,500. Instead of melting our coinage and adding lead, the US debased its currency by issuing trillions of new dollars.

During the Bush (GW) years, 2000-2008, the entire US economy grew in real terms from $10 trillion annually to $14 trillion. This increase was roughly the size of the entire economy of China. Yet, due to trillions of fiat spending and the wholesale debasement of the US economy during the post-Bush years, the International Monetary Fund predicted in 2011 that the size of the Chinese economy will eclipse that of the American economy by 2016.

Law #1: No nation has ever survived once its citizenry ceased to believe its culture worth saving. (Hanson’s Law)
Law #2: In battle, free men almost always defeat slaves. (Herodotus’ Law)
Law #3: Appeasement of a ruthless outside power always invites aggression. Treaties made with ruthless despots are always fruitless and dangerous.
Law #4: If a people cannot avoid continuous internal warfare, they will have a new order imposed from without.
Law #5: When a free people, through taxation, is deprived of its ability to acquire wealth and property, collapse is presaged.
Law #6: To hold territory, a state must be populated by those loyal to the central authority. When immigration overwhelms assimilation, the fall is predicted.
Law #7: With the loss of fiscal solvency comes a loss of sovereignty.
Law #9: When a civilization accepts the propaganda of its enemy as truth, it has reached the far side of appeasement and capitulation is nigh.
Law #10: Declining civilizations will always face superior firepower from ascending civilizations because sovereignty is only temporarily uncontested.

Read more about these laws in my book.

After the fall of the Roman Empire of the West in AD 476, the Emperor Justinian came to power in Constantinople, the capital of the still existent Roman Empire of the East. With the help of some able generals, Justinian was able to reclaim portions of North Africa and Italy previously lost to the Germanic invasions. His wars of early sixth century AD devastated the Eastern Roman population with crushing taxation. While Roman armies of the East reclaimed portions of the former Western Empire, they were unable to establish a tax base, and the core Greek-speaking population in Constantinople and Anatolia had no more to give. Justinian’s hold on his reclaimed territories was tenuous and short lived. The Romans would never again be a dominant power, instead, a people in decline.

By 2011, under the new president, Barack Obama, the federal budget ballooned to $3.5 trillion dollars with projected revenues of only $2 trillion. Mid-year 2011, US creditors China and Japan began to signal that they had no more desire to invest in our debt. Moreover, American entitlements—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security were projected to be equal to the entire revenue collected from taxes. This meant that America would need to borrow or create $1.5 trillion in fiat money before it could pay one soldier’s salary or fuel one fighter jet. Spring 2011, the midpoint of Obama’s first term in office, polls indicated that 70% of Americans believed that the country was “headed in the wrong direction,” a euphemism for decline.

That᾵s right: seven in ten Americans believed that the country was in decline!

Law #1: No nation has ever survived once its citizenry ceased to believe its culture worth saving. (Hanson’s Law)
Law #2: In battle, free men almost always defeat slaves. (Herodotus’ Law)
Law #3: Appeasement of a ruthless outside power always invites aggression. Treaties made with ruthless despots are always fruitless and dangerous.
Law #4: If a people cannot avoid continuous internal warfare, they will have a new order imposed from without.
Law #5: When a free people, through taxation, is deprived of its ability to acquire wealth and property, collapse is presaged.
Law #6: To hold territory, a state must be populated by those loyal to the central authority. When immigration overwhelms assimilation, the fall is predicted.
Law #8: Debasing the currency always destabilizes the governing authority.
Law #9: When a civilization accepts the propaganda of its enemy as truth, it has reached the far side of appeasement and capitulation is nigh.
Law #10: Declining civilizations will always face superior firepower from ascending civilizations because sovereignty is only temporarily uncontested.

In the summer of 376 AD, the Roman Emperor, Valens, agreed to allow a very large tribe of Goths to settle in Thrace. He could not have imagined that this decision would set in motion events which led to the Empire’s total defeat at Adrianople and, ultimately, the sack of Rome. It was in Thrace, an Eastern province, where the Goths first settled. After they migrated into Italy and sacked Rome, it was the West that granted this very same band of brigands a homeland in southern Gaul, proving to the barbarian world that rebellion would be rewarded.

In the East, the disastrous policy of settling whole tribes inside imperial borders was abandoned. Moreover, the East never lost its devotion to the realm. The citizens of Constantinople proudly proclaimed themselves Romans until the last day of their empire in 1453. During the second, third, and fourth decades of the fifth century the West continued to admit vast numbers of Germans into the Western Empire under the terms of formal treaties, while they fecklessly allowed Roman localities to be plundered and, ultimately, subjugated by these same new arrivals. Consequently, in large swaths of the West, Romanization and a commensurate loyalty to the central government continued to disintegrate. The result was that often whole Western regiments failed to report for battle while others even defected to the German side.

Today, all across Europe, in Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, there are huge numbers of “no go” zones (over 180 in France alone). These zones are inhabited by unassimilated Muslims where the police will not enter; where sharia courts, not Euro common law, are increasingly the legal authority; and where home-grown terrorists are cultivated and attacks are planned. In 2008, British Intelligence services were following two thousand potential terrorists, two hundred radical Islamic networks, and thirty active terrorist plots.

Law #1: No nation has ever survived once its citizenry ceased to believe its culture worth saving. (Hanson’s Law)
Law #2: In battle, free men almost always defeat slaves. (Herodotus’ Law)
Law #3: Appeasement of a ruthless outside power always invites aggression. Treaties made with ruthless despots are always fruitless and dangerous.
Law #4: If a people cannot avoid continuous internal warfare, they will have a new order imposed from without.
Law #5: When a free people, through taxation, is deprived of its ability to acquire wealth and property, collapse is presaged.
Law #7: With the loss of fiscal solvency comes a loss of sovereignty.
Law #8: Debasing the currency always destabilizes the governing authority.
Law #9: When a civilization accepts the propaganda of its enemy as truth, it has reached the far side of appeasement and capitulation is nigh.
Law #10: Declining civilizations will always face superior firepower from ascending civilizations because sovereignty is only temporarily uncontested.