Bill Moyers: | "You start that book on the Irish with a chapter on the fall of Rome. What do you think about these analogies between the fall of the Roman Empire and the fall of America? Do you think there's anything to that?" |
Thomas Cahill: | "I would say in some ways yes and in some ways no. History never repeats itself. That's one thing you can say about it. It never happens again exactly the same way. So, there are tremendous differences. But we can look into the past and learn things. I think, for instance, why did Rome fall? Because of things interior and exterior. The interior part was less and less just taxation. More and more it was the poor and the middle class that bore the burden of taxation. And the wealthy and very wealthy pretended to pay but didn't actually. "And I think we are in a very similar situation with regard to that. Then the other thing was -- the external thing was -- that you had all of these Germanic barbarians who we think of as marauders and all that. They just wanted in. They were on the wrong side of the river. And they knew it. They wanted to have farms and vineyards like the Romans had. They thought it looked great. They wanted to cross the river. You know, what they were? They were immigrants. That's who they were not at all unlike the situation today at the borders of our country and the borders of Europe. "And what happened was despite the unjust taxation -- or despite taxation in any form -- the Romans could not pay to keep them out. No matter what they did they couldn't make that border guard and those walls high enough and strong enough to keep out the barbarians. If people really want to get in they're going to find a way in." |
-- from the the PBS television program Bill Moyers Journal, aired 2007-11-09