Rome fell because of what?

I'm sure you've heard the latest news that the Roman Empire fell because of global warming.

It's not a parody. It's a new paper in Science magazine that theorizes climate change was the principal reason for the fall of Rome.

I guess this is the antidote to falling temperatures around the globe and increasing public skepticism about the apocalypse scientists on the take from government keep predicting.

And since the government schools no longer teach history, I guess it falls upon me to remind everyone of what actually doomed Rome in the fifth century. It turns out many of the actual causes, as chronicled by the contemporary historian Salvian, should be familiar to us – and alarming.

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High taxes: "Collectors became greedy functionaries in a bureaucracy so huge and corrupt." The tax man, he said, was seen by the Roman public as "more terrible than the enemy."
Trade deficit: "The Western Roman economy, already undermined by falling production of the great Roman estates and an unfavorable balance of trade that siphoned off gold to the East, had now run out of money."
Dependence on foreign goods: "As conquerors of North Africa, the Vandals cut off the Empire's grain supply at will. This created critical food shortages, which in turn curtailed Roman counterattacks."
National debt: The empire's government bureaucracy grew while production suffered. But politicians kept on spending. One Roman commented: "Those who live at the expense of public funds are more numerous than those who provide them."
Fighting foreign wars: While the military was cut back, the empire continued to conduct wars on multiple fronts.
Weak borders: With the military overextended on foreign fronts, what we would call "illegal aliens" invaded on many fronts: Germanic tribes, Franks, Saxons, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, Lombards, Anglos, Jutes, African Berbers, Picts, nomadic Arab raiders, Persians and Huns.
No salt: The Christian church discouraged followers from engaging in politics and holding public office.
Moral rot: "The Gots lie, but are chaste. The Franks lie, but are generous. The Saxons are sabage in cruelty ... but are admirable in chastity. … What hope can there be for the Romans when the barbarians are more pure than they?"
Homosexuality and sexual immorality: The bath houses and gymnasia would not look unfamiliar in some major U.S. cities. "O Roman people be ashamed; be ashamed of your lives. Almost no cities are free of evil dens, are altogether free of impurities, except the cities in which the barbarians have begun to live. … The vices of our bad lives have alone conquered us."

I could go on, but you get the picture.

History is being revised once again – to shield government and a depraved culture from moral responsibility for America's problems and holding up government and international institutions as the solution for make-believe crises.

Is history repeating itself?

It has been known to happen.

But then again, those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. Or, as George Santayana famously put it: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

It's one thing not to remember the past, it's worse yet to rewrite it with some of the most preposterous, self-serving fictionalizations.

That's what the climate-change doomsayers are doing once again.