New World Barbarians

By Douglas V. Gibbs

The barbarians to the north eventually invaded, and ultimately collapsed, the Roman Empire.  The Western Roman Empire, in historical terms, lasted longer than could be expected, but its fall was inevitable.  As the structure deteriorated from within due to an creeping incremental increase of complacency, and debauchery, the barbarians to the north whittled away at the edges until they were finally able to begin campaigns against the empire deep into its interior, which led to the eventual sack of Rome itself.  The empire had become over-extended and greedy in its reach, while corruption multiplied within.  The leadership, and the citizenry, abandoned the principles of a republic that had originally made Rome a mighty and prosperous civilization.  Rome’s imperialistic overreach, however, was good news for the English speaking empires that would follow the eventual fall of the Eastern Roman Empire a thousand years later, for it was Rome’s invasion of Britannia that encouraged the Saxons to also move militarily into the lands of the island of the Britons, introducing their style of governance that would ultimately lead to the Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution, and the colonization of the New World along the Atlantic Coast leading to a system using those same principles and philosophies.

The Roman Legions abandoned Britannia in 410 A.D.  The Saxon presence, by 370 A.D., included ten forts along the southeast shores of the island territory.  By 500 A.D., with the Romans gone, and the empire all but a skeletal shell of its former greatness, the Angles, Jutes, Frisians and Saxons operated various campaigns against the island, forcing the Britons to largely flee to an area just west of Normandy that would later be known as Lesser Briton.  The remaining Romanized Celts fought against the invading armies, but eventually the onslaught of barbarian invasions became too much.  The Christian Celts fell to the Pagan Saxons and Angles.  A blending of cultures, however, was in full swing.  While Rome had brought Christianity, and later the pope would send Augustine to England that would later lead to the full conversion of the Saxons to Christianity around 600 A.D., the Saxons brought a system of limited government, and philosophies that taught the ownership of rights belonged to the people, and were not to be dictated by the ruling class.  The rule of law, under Saxon Law, also led to the British concept that nobody is above the law; not even the king.

Britain would later suffer attacks from the Vikings and the Normans (Former Vikings who had settled in France), but through it all, the Saxon system of limited government and natural rights would survive.

The influence of the Saxons eventually carried into the New World, and ultimately culminated in the writing of the Declaration of Independence, and United States Constitution.

The barbarians to the north were seen by the Romans as vicious and uneducated.  Their system of limited government was considered anarchistic.  The word “barbarian” comes from the Greek word “barbaros,” a term that evoked an image of babbling or stammering.  The Romans used the term whenever they encountered foreign cultures, and the word “barbarian” in Roman society came to mean “not Roman.”  To the Romans, the barbarians to the north were unrecognizably strange, from their language and their customs, to their style of government that rejected totalitarian rule.

“How could a society function,” was the opinion of those accustomed to an authoritarian system like that of Rome, “without a ruling class dictating to the peasants?”  The people, as far as the Roman elite were concerned, were uneducated, uninformed, and incapable of making any kinds of decisions beneficial to the functioning of a successful central government.  The democratic processes of the republic had been swept away by the Caesars, so that the ruling elite may properly engineer society, and fairly distribute the wealth through a system of subsidies and benefits.  Self-governance, or the concept of holding everyone accountable to the law, including the ruler, seemed to be a preposterous concept doomed to fail.

The pagan barbarians of the north would eventually become Christianized, and then following the reformation period, would become the Protestants (once again reeling against the authoritarian nature of the kingdoms that resided within the lands dominated by a once mighty Roman Empire).  In the lands that fell within the realm of the former Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church wielded a powerful scepter.  The monarchs were believed to be appointed by God, and to stand against a ruler that was divinely appointed would be to stand against God, Himself.  Through this mixture of church and state, the authoritarians of the old Roman Empire maintained a powerful system of rule over the people, while in the north, influenced by the Saxons, the concept of the rule of law, where nobody is above the law, was in force.

Ultimately, due to historical influences that were both religious, and political, a vernacular line was drawn between the old authoritarian Roman Empire and Roman Catholic Church to the south, and the “rule of law” Barbarians with their protestant religions to the north.  In the colonized New World, these same influences persisted, with the authoritarian conquerors from Spain (following the authoritarian tradition of the Old Roman Empire and Roman Catholic Church) colonizing the south, and the English speaking people (following the philosophies of the Saxons and Protestants) to the north.  In the Americas, the dividing line between the Roman Empire and the Barbarians of the Old World is the New World border between the United States, and Mexico.

Like their Saxon predecessors, the New World Barbarians have developed a system based on the rule of law, natural rights, and limited government where nobody is above the law.  And, as we saw happen in historic Britannia, Christian philosophies have also blended into the free system that has developed in the United States, such as the Mosaic concepts of “innocent until proven guilty,” and a structure that divides representation into a bicameral Congress, and calls for local governance for local issues.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary