The ancient Roman Republic, for centuries before Caesar, struggled
with its great rival and enemy, Carthage. It was more than commerce and
military rivalry. Carthage roasted its little children alive in human
sacrifices to their God of Wealth. Though the Romans were not exactly
sweethearts themselves, this horrified them.
The great orator Cato the Elder put it all together in a
famous slogan: DELENDA EST CARTHAGO (Carthage must be
utterly destroyed). It happened. Instead of living with a completely
anti-human model, they razed it after the next war. The Carthaginians
lived on as slaves, but their deadly family habits were a worse enemy.
They are now genetically only six percent of the ancestry of the people
of North Africa.
Rome became an empire, and its day came. It dominated the world
and yet could not motivate its young men to fight for it. Foreign hireling
soldiers were such a threat that Roman leaders, unable to force them out,
unwisely decided to make them feel unwelcome - by slaughtering their wives
and children who lived in Italy! Not surprisingly, Rome's armies turned on
her, and Alaric brought down the empire in 410.
The fall of Rome was the rise of many countries in Europe,
including the birthplaces of human rights and freedom. Few people were
actually killed, but life became more of a struggle, or an adventure, after
the legions pulled out and headed home.
Fast forward to modern times, and we find destruction of the
Nazi and Japanese empires in 1945, and of the Soviet Union
in 1991. In each case, wiping out a structure allowed a chance for
people, even in Germany and Japan and Russia, to breathe and recover.
People in those places at least can reach forward to hope
for their children, although not all do so.
In the USA, the story of destruction takes a different turn.
Here the powers and institutions are stronger than ever, and it is the
children and little people who are being destroyed. Economic hopes are
strangled, marriages are killed by lies, young people facing a wall shoot
to kill and suicide, and babies die under the knife when their mothers
despair.
The rights of the powerful are like armor plate, while the
rights of the powerless are like eggshell. One crushes the other.