As Washington, D.C., refuses to defend Texas, and even sides with Texas’ foreign antagonists over a buoy barrier meant to prevent illegal immigration, it brings to mind when Rome abandoned Britain.
In the violence and decay of late antiquity, with the Dark Ages rushing in alongside the barbarian armies, the far-flung peoples and provinces of Rome turned to the empire for help. Among them were the cities of Britain, for centuries a jewel of the empire, and now menaced by the shadow of conquest, pillage, and rape. An appeal for aid went forth, and in the year A.D. 410, so the historian Zosimus tells us, an answer came back from the Emperor Honorius. The answer was short and simple and laden with doom: You’re on your own.
The so-called Rescript of Honorius is the commonly accepted end of Roman rule in Britain, and it is worth emphasizing what it signifies. Britain did not leave Rome; rather, Rome abandoned Britain. The compact of ruler and ruled was broken by the center’s refusal to defend its province.
What may seem hyperbolic at first glance is dragged into banal reality by observation of the border-buoy fracas presently unfolding — and by the actions of the United States Department of Justice against Texas, and on behalf of a Mexican state that is at this point largely a cartel-driven syndicate. That characterization of the Mexican state is unfortunately accurate, with the president of Mexico himself in more or less open alliance with the Sinaloa Cartel and a frequent apologist
