Bang! (folllowed by dramatically blowing on smoking index finger [the one I typed the previous missive with]
) I love it when a plan comes together. Hired guns are well worth the (relatively minor) inconveniences they occasionally cause. Even you, Sigaba.
You were a bit nice though. I would have questioned his assumption that the driving factor of the Roman economy and social structure was slavery (underpinned certainly, responsible for the agricultural excesses that allowed the population densities, etc, etc; however, the actual engine was most probably military expansion and rapacious appetite to consume the conquests - Rome quit expanding, it started dying) and I would certainly have challenged his assertion that democracy rose from European feudalism (try socialism [Marxism] as a more natural outcome). Of course as many of you may have deduced, I am an unapologetic adherent to the ideals of American Exceptionalism. Personally I wish the schools looked more closely at the concept. I think an excellent argument can be made that America (the ideals) is/was a "Happy Accident". One I'm sad to say is being discarded mostly for a lack of vision. It isn't the internet, electricity, banking system, airplanes, radios or anything else that American industry (work ethic, enterprise) has provided that inspired downtrodden peoples to immigrate or stage revolutions of their own. There's a reason the US Constitution was copied by so many countries seeking to emulate our successes. (There are also reasons so few of them have succeeded a fraction as well - and NONE of Justice whatshername's alternative examples she suggests to the Egyptians have a hope in hell of achieving a fraction of the success we are busy throwing away.)
Gotta stop these rants, I'm running out of liver pills.
