TheBlaze’s national security adviser Buck Sexton appeared on TheBlaze TV Wednesday to discuss the similarities between the fall of the Roman Empire and subsequent rise of the Ottoman Empire, with the situation facing the West today.
He began by reminding that the Roman Empire in the 6th century was actually Christian, and was divided between the Western and Eastern Roman Empire.
“One of the questions, of course, is why was it breaking up and also, how was it eroding from within?” Sexton asked. “Because we know that from the [Arabian Peninsula], Muhammed and then the first caliphs…were able to take this entire Christian area in a very short period of time. Why was that? It was because it had eroded from the inside.”
“The Romans had an overextended military, they had debased their currency to pay off their debts, they had a bureaucracy that essentially was living as a parasite on the entirety of the Roman people…They also had a loss of control over their borders,” Sexton said.
“That sounds completely foreign,” host Glenn Beck responded sarcastically.
Sexton said a combination of the aforementioned factors, in addition to a lack of political and ideological unity, are “what caused this whole thing to be, essentially, set up for the complete collapse of this in a very short amount of time.”
A number of cities that were originally Christian, like Istanbul or Alexandria, were simply “picked off one by one by the first caliphate,” Sexton said.
“My theory,” Beck responded, “is that we are looking at a time now much like this — where the entire West is basically the Roman Empire, and when it collapses, it will be just gobbled up and eaten by a new caliphate.”
He urged Americans to stop focusing on their political and ideological differences.
“Are you for the freedom of man? Yes or no?” Beck demanded. “It’s time to get into the boats together.”
