Re: Greenspan, a common criminal

royls_at_telus.net
Date: 07/05/04 

Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2004 17:28:55 GMT

On Mon, 05 Jul 2004 12:09:31 -0400, Les Cargill
<lcargill@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>The impied reading of Gibbon that Rome fell because
>of some racial dispurity among the cohorts is plainly false.

Right. Rome fell because without the land taxes that the nobles were
exempt from, it couldn't _pay_ the cohorts. The barbarians overran
empty fortifications they could never have passed had they been
garrisoned. The legions were all working in the private armies of the
large landowning nobles, who could afford to pay them because they
weren't paying any taxes to the Empire that had been shoveling land
rent into their pockets for centuries.

-- Roy L