This is a standard right wing pabulum that Americans have heard for years.
For most of the history of the Roman Empire, it was run by an authoritarian man on a white horse. The caesar was backed up by an aristocratic oligarchy. The people that did the work of the empire were slaves.
The Romans actually treated their slaves better than the plantation owners in antebellum South. The Romans educated their slaves and after a period of service, a slave could become a free man.
Alexis de Tocqueville Comments on Negro Slavery in the United States, 1835
The ancients kept the bodies of their slaves in bondage, but placed no restraint upon the mind and no check upon education; and they acted consistently with their established principle, since a natural termination of slavery then existed, and one day or other the slave might be set free and become the equal of his master.
But the Americans of the South, who do not admit that the Negroes can ever be commingled with themselves, have forbidden them, under severe penalties, to be taught to read or write; and as they will not raise them to their own level, they sink them as nearly as possible to that of the brutes.
Political fortunes rose and fell on military conquest. According to Wikipedia, after 395, the emperors in the Western Roman Empire were usually figureheads, while the actual rulers were military strongmen. The year 476 is generally accepted as the formal end of the Western Roman Empire.
The Romans had to train the barbarians in their military tactics to keep their armies up to full strength. Eventually the barbarian armies became familiar with Roman tactics and knew how to defeat the Romans.
The Roman military leader, Orestes,refused the request of Germanic mercenaries in his service for lands in Italy. The dissatisfied mercenaries, led by Odoacer, revolted, and deposed the last western emperor, Romulus Augustus. This event has traditionally been considered the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
The Empire finally fell after first being overrun by various non-Roman peoples and then having its heart in Italy seized by Germanic troops in a revolt.
Disagreement persists (on the exact date of the fall) since the decline of the Empire had been a long and gradual process rather than a single event.
The Roman empire lasted 500 years. It was kept together by military power that eventually failed. That may be the one lesson the US needs to learn.
Beck's comments are another example of more historical right wing revisionist propaganda.
sources: http://www.nathanielturner.com/educationhistorynegro8.htm, http://mediamatters.org/research/201012030025 and Wikipedia
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