As we remember those who died to defend freedom, we are close to losing it.
This is an unusual Memorial Day. Today we remember, with a debt of gratitude we can never repay, those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep us free from external enemies. As we do so, internal enemies are working steadily to erode and ultimately destroy the very freedoms for which so many gave their lives, and to render their sacrifices meaningless.
Today is May 29. It is not only Memorial Day; it is also the 570th anniversary of an event that is largely forgotten today, but was one of the most momentous occasions in all of human history: the conquest of Constantinople and final destruction of the Roman Empire.
If students today take enough time away from transgender studies and Critical Race Theory to learn about such matters at all, they learn that the Islamic conquest of Constantinople on May 29, 1453 marked the end of the Byzantine Empire, which at the time was essentially a degraded city-state marked by infighting and corruption. They’re unlikely to learn that “Byzantine Empire” was a term that was never used until long after the demise of the entity in question, which throughout its long life was known as the Roman Empire, a political entity that lasted an astonishing 2,206 years, and which gave the Western world its spiritual, political, intellectual, philosophical, and artistic patrimony.
In many ways, as I show in my forthcoming book Empire of God: How the Byzantines Saved Civilization, we are still living in the Roman Empire; its cultural influence has never dissipated. The lessons we can learn from it are so many and various as to defy easy synopsis. But one of the most telling of those lessons for our situation today is that for most of its long lifetime, the Roman Empire was generally thought to be invincible on the battlefield, so far superior to other military forces that the Romans at times even prevailed against stronger forces on the power of their reputation alone. Not only Romans, but many non-Romans at times assumed this.
Roman politicians likewise thought that the empire could never be defeated, and behaved accordingly, unhesitatingly engaging in savage infighting without regard for how this fighting would weaken the empire before its external enemies. The empire was forever. It would never end. So they could take endless risks. One of the most notable of these regarded mass migration. The Western empire that was centered on Rome itself fell in 476 after a mass migration that many Romans encouraged, as the migrants were willing to serve in the military when their own countrymen often were not. Those migrants, however, often did not share the values of the Romans, and as they grew in number, became increasingly assertive and demanding. Ultimately, they gained complete control.
The Roman empire centered in Constantinople lived on for nearly a thousand years after this. It ultimately succumbed to the Islamic jihadis who had been trying to destroy it for nearly eight hundred of those thousand years, and who still harbor the same aspirations of conquest today.
On this Memorial Day, we are likewise still threatened by those Islamic jihadis, although most Americans have forgotten about their existence and think that they are a spent force. We are also threatened by a mass migration that weakens our national character and unity. And just as was so often the case in the Roman empire, the most immediate threat comes from within, from those who are so intent on securing their power, and so short-sighted, that they are destroying the very basis of that power.
As we remember the fallen today, we must realize that the existential threat we face today cannot and will not be defeated by military force. The soldiers now are ordinary citizens. The warriors who win the next victory for human dignity and freedom will be people who had the courage to stand against the officially mandated madness and say, “No more.” We have been brought to a point where it is no longer enough to be grateful to God that some people gave their lives to defend and protect our civilization. It is now incumbent upon us to arise and be willing to do the same, not with bullets and bombs, but with the force of reason and the unyielding refusal to surrender and submit.
We live in an age when absurdity and madness are not only in the ascendancy, but are insistently forced upon us by an increasingly authoritarian ruling traitor class. In this age, staying sane is a revolutionary act. On this Memorial Day, dare to be part of that revolution.
Tony Naim says
It all begins with the understanding of the great “Islamic paradox”. The dichotomy of Islam being a peaceful religion and a vicious political dogma, intertwined together like the 2 strands of DNA.
Understanding that Sharia law contains 3 tenets fundamentally incompatible with the international principles of human rights, namely:
1- polygamy: the tool of demographic Jihad
2- the Dogma of Abrogation: the idea that justifies the use of violence to impose Islam on others
3- the code of Dhimmitude=the final solution:
The subjugation of non Muslims .
The final hope of humanity is in the American people, standing up and defeating those 3 tenets, specifically.
Walter Sieruk says
This Memorial Day could , certainly,be called “A time of crisis”.That is because the devolt Muslims who are also the stealth jihadists are constantly scheming and active in their sly insidious subversive
Islamic goal to replace United States Constitution as the law of the land for America and replace it with Sharia for the advancement of Islam.
Likewise, the the other devolt Muslims who are the violent jihadist, as those of al Qaeda , ISIS and so forth,haven’t given up on their delusional but dangerous jihad of violence killing and destruction against America and the American people, It;s not a matter of “if” they they strike again but “when” it;s only a matter of time .
So the jihadist s”by hook or by crook” are still striving for a great advancement of Islam in the US.
Therefore , its best to understand what exactly Islam really is
One good and valid definition of Islam is that it may actually be described as a “religious political / Sharia system of complete tyrannical mind control that totally influences the thoughts ,ideas and behavior over and upon millions of people around the world.”
Which this ,above , interpretation of Islam, the wisdom of the statement of Thomas Jefferson does very much apply to this subject .
For Mr. Jefferson had declared “I have sworn upon the altar of God , eternal hostility towards every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Peacelover says
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࿗Infidel࿘ says
Memorial Day greetings to everyone here!
To the topic at hand, somehow, I never understood how the Byzantine empire was considered a successor of the Roman empire. The latter followed a polytheist religion similar to the Greeks, Egyptians, Norse & even Hinduism. The former Christianized pretty early and a lot of their work was fine-tuning the theology. Culturally very different. It would be like considering the Communist regime in China a successor to the Middle Kingdom
I do plan to get this book: I’m particularly interested in what went on in Syria b/w 600-620AD, which was when Abu Bakr’s troops were supposed to have conquered Damascus. In the context of RS’ hypothesis that almost nothing about Muhammad’s history is authentic, it throws open the question of where did the Arab invasions start? My theory is Damascus, which is why I’m very interested in what the Byzantine records say about it
Wellington says
I’ll offer a reason to answer your perplexity, Infidel. Here it is: It was Constantine the Great (306-337 AD) as Emperor who was more responsible for the Christianizing of the Roman Empire, both in the West and East, than any other single personage. Thereafter, and until the death of Theodosius the Great (379-395 AD), the Empire was sometimes the bifurcated system Diocletian (284-305 AD) established and sometimes not.
The Eastern half of the Empire, by all accounts I have ever read, lasted a thousand years longer than the Western half did (and, for now, never mind the Western half’s revival under Charlemagne and Otto I and which would later be called the Holy Roman Empire and was, implicitly, a recognition that the Eastern half of the ancient Roman Empire had continued on in Constantinople). And, even though Greek, not Latin, was the Byzantine Empire’s language, it thought of itself to the very end in 1453 AD as the successor of ancient Rome, replete with the Roman legal system, codified by Justinian (527-565 AD) in the Corpus Juris Civilis.
So, politely here, I reject your comparison of Byzantium being the equivalent of the Communist regime in China as the successor to the Middle Kingdom. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Byzantine Empire always thought of itself as the sterling continuation of ancient Rome, though in Christianized form. Did Mao’s China see itself as a magnificent continuation respecting what came before? I think not. It was a complete (and stupid) break by Mao and his cohorts.
Even Western Europe in the Middle Ages, though disagreeing with Byzantium on sundry matters, most especially respecting some fine points of Christian theology (e.g., the filioque clause), nonetheless saw the Byzantine Empire as the successor of ancient Rome, even to the point of welcoming Byzantine scholars to the West in the last century and a half of Byzantium because those in the West knew that the Byzantine Empire was the ancient Roman Empire in its eastern half and this the West NEVER disputed, even to the point, as I have already mentioned, attempting the revival of the Western half of the Roman Empire with the Carolingian, Saxon, Salian, Hohenstaufen and eventually the Hapsburg dynasties “leading the way.”
Finally, I know of no major historian who has ever asserted that the Byzantine Empire was not a successor to the ancient Roman Empire, including George Ostrogorsky, still considered to this day the single greatest historian of Byzantium, and who wrote, among so much else about the Byzantine Empire, the still-lauded “History of the Byzantine State.” Read his work from cover to cover and see if you will still conclude that Byzantium was not a continuation of ancient Rome. Give it a shot.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Both the Holy Roman Empire – which was the Western Half, and the Byzantine Empire, which was the Eastern half, were Christianized. Religious transformations are not trivial: they do – and in this case did – change the culture of the empires profoundly
Also, the Holy Roman Empire lasted until 1806, after which its real successor was the Austrian Empire (sorta in the way that Russia succeeded the Soviet Union, even though there were breakaway countries). Whereas Constantinople fell in 1453, some 3 centuries earlier. Austria did carry that mantle until its defeat by Bismarck that saw Prussia unite w/ all other German states
Walter Sieruk says
First and foremost, many brave , courageous heroic US soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan fighting the vicious and deadly Taliban ,who had given safe haven to the Osama Bin Laden and his jihadists who used that land as a base for that schemed jihad mass murder affront of September 11, 2001. Those American soldiers should be remembered and honored, esspecally on Memorial Day.
Second that treacherous Joe Biden made them all die in vain because of his horrible ordered rashly withdrawal from Afghanistan in the wrong way in the wrong time.
That despicable Biden fiendish villain of the very worst sort
James Lincoln says
Walter Sieruk says,
“…that treacherous Joe Biden made them all die in vain because of his horrible ordered rashly withdrawal from Afghanistan in the wrong way in the wrong time.”
Yes.
That botched withdrawal made me absolutely sick.
Wellington says
I agree, James, and yet Biden himself called the withdrawal, and I quote, “an extraordinary success.” Biden has no shame.