Oh, THOSE barbarian hordes

Many Christian right-wingers believe the American Empire is in its death throes because we're decadent, fat, porn-mad atheists who've left the One True Way (here, for instance, is "crunchy conversative" columnist Rod Dreher in one of his pious weekly homilies). Meanwhile, many other Christian and not-so-Christian right-wingers believe we're in our final days because the barbarians are at the gates -- whether that horde is illegal Mexicans or Muslim maniacs, it depends on which fright tactics they wish to employ (and here's Monsignor Dreher in another relevant bit of pulpit-pounding).

Amid all this fear-mongering and finger-waving, it's a pleasure to read one historian's new insight into Rome's final days. From Harry Mount's review of Alessandro Barbero's The Day of the Barbarians: The Battle that Led to the Fall of the Roman Empire.

Turns out it pays to be nice to Goths. Or immigrants.

"The second reason for the [early alliance between Rome and the Goths] was that the Goths had initially come to the Romans for mercy. Oppressed by the Huns on the German side of the Danube in 376, they were desperate to be allowed to cross the river to serve in the booming Roman Empire.

Rome was just as keen on using the Goths as abundant low-cost manpower - just what was needed to keep the Empire's half million-strong army going. The first barbarian invasions, then, were really a sort of economic migration. In the Syrian region of the Empire, the word for "soldier" became Goth."