The vengeance of the Vandals
In ancient history and the sack of Rome, lessons for today:
Writing from the vantage point of the eighteenth century, Gibbon did not go into extensive detail of the Vandal assault, except to note that the Romans willingly opened their gates to the invaders in a bid for mercy, which was followed by the wholesale despoiling of their city and the enslavement of Roman families where “the unfeeling barbarians, in the division of the booty, separated the wives from their husbands, and the children from their parents.”
A contemporaneous observer, a fifth-century African bishop named Victor of Vita, provides a more extensive account in his History of the Vandal Persecution. Victor experienced first hand the horrors carried out on his Nicene Christians by the zealous Arian invaders, radicals who sought to “rebaptize” the conquered peoples in their own faith. The cry of apostasy formed their pretext for torture and murder, while the call of iconoclasm gave the Vandals license to destroy sacred buildings and institutions. The purpose of such spectacle was, then as now, to wage a psychological campaign against a people that would (in the world of al-Baghdadi) “embitter their lives and make them occupied with themselves instead of us.”
Please read the whole thing [hat tip: Scott Johnson at Powerline.]
The barbarians are always at civilization’s gates because every generation produces a percentage of those who would take from others.
“The world is divided into two races – the decent and the indecent.” Victor Frankl
The only difference between barbarians is the degree of their criminality.
Deja vu all over again.
I write op-eds for a local newspaper, and in getting ready to write this week’s column I considered using this as a starting point. Then I thought no, people who would agree with me hardly ned to hear the history, and people who never agree with me would accuse me of trying to “stir up hatred against Muslims.” It really is a fine line one has to walk when the PC crowd can cause you to pull your punches even as those punches teach a valuable lesson. Of course that’s the purpose of their taking offense, isn’t it?
Of course that’s the purpose of their taking offense, isn’t it?
One doesn’t win a war by huddling up in a turtle defense being afraid of hurting the enemy. The Leftist alliance trains their operatives to understand that, even if they are conditioned to obey rather than think like human beings.
One of the last emperors of a united Roman empire, decided some weird things concerning the Huns and their leader. The Emperor’s sister then sent a letter to Attila, promising marriage if he would invade and end her brother’s rule.
Attila, with an empire on the line, then did exactly that.