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Show 1 WEttle Creek i . f 4 ByK.8. On the eve of the decline of the Roman Empire along about the advent ad-vent of the Christian era, ease, luxury, lux-ury, and sensuality were the order of the day. Emperors bought popularity pop-ularity by providing larger and more spectacular free shows for the ever demanding populace. To keep the relatively idle citizens citi-zens from starving and thus becoming- politically disgusted with the setup, free com and other gratuities were distributed at regular reg-ular intervals and at government expense. All this was accomplished by severely taxing ithe peoples in areas outside of Rome, who had been subjugated sub-jugated by the . armed might of Caesar's Legions. The story is told of a huge banquet ban-quet staged in honor of the elite Roman Senators. Near the close of the twenty.-course meal, a servant ser-vant caught the ear of one of the leading solons and whispered, "the Barbarians from the North are at the gates of Rome." The perfumed and pomaded Senator Sen-ator yawned and said, "why bother us about that; haven't we soldiers to do the fighting" ? In recent months, several of our top-flight historians and statesmen states-men have sounded an omnious warning that conditions in the United Un-ited States today resemble closely close-ly those that prevailed in Rome when the proud Empire of the Caesars and the Neros hit the skids A briew review of some of these might prove illuminating. Of course free corn in the raw, is not distributed here in order to keep the people happy and favorable favor-able to the politicians in power. However, subsidies, doles and increases in-creases in Social Security and other benefits are passed around generously for the same purpose, and by deficit spending. Neither does the government provide free circuses & gladitorial combats; but we voluntarily tax ourselves to pay football coaches double the salaries of college professors pro-fessors and rock-and-roll teenage croonitrs receive 100 times the wage of our best public school teachers. Barbarians in the g-uise of hoodlums hood-lums and gangsters are dominating dominat-ing some labor unions and stealing steal-ing funds paid in by the members for health and retirement benefits. bene-fits. When given absolute proof of such skulduggery the workers yawn and say, "why bother us about that ? we never had it so good." When the Vandals of intolerance intoler-ance and race discrimination raise their hideous heads and deny adequate ade-quate education and a decent life to a minority segment of our population, pop-ulation, we shrug our shoulders, close our schools and deny the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Con-stitution. As we sit down to our economic banquets, the Barbarians of "Inflation." "In-flation." take a fifty-five per cent bite out of every dollar we consume. con-sume. Are we doing anything about it ? Nothing, except to weakly weak-ly suggest that "growing inflation infla-tion must be accepted as the American Am-erican way of life." The peoples of the Barbarian Nations, Russia and Red China, are sweating, toiling and enduring privation pri-vation and sacrifice in order to accomplish the g-oals of world domination dom-ination proclaimed by their Communist Com-munist leaders. If recent developments develop-ments mean anything, they seem to be drawing closer to bur gates. If and when they arrive, our survival will require more than the "soldiers to do the fighting-." It might not be amiss now to correct cor-rect a few mistakes and harden our national muscles by work and sacrifice for the cricis that will surely come. So long 'til Thursday. |
