AOC Wants You To Be Rich. Just Not The Way That You Think
AOC Wants You To Be Rich. Just Not The Way That You Think
Notes From the Field By Simon Black October 4, 2023
When Julius Caesar first crossed the English channel and invaded Great Britain in 55 BC, he thought it was primitive, barbaric, and uncivilized… especially when compared to the splendor of Rome.
But Caesar knew it had potential. He wrote to his colleagues back in Rome that Britannia had vast minerals, timber, and livestock, and that it could provide excellent resources for the Empire.
The Senate concurred. And though it took nearly 100 years, Rome eventually conquered Britannia and made it an imperial province.
Over the next several centuries, the Roman government invested heavily in Britannia and built an incredible civilization there, including roads, engineering works, and major building projects.
Britain became a kind of paradise; in addition to the exceptional Roman works, the weather was also just about perfect. The soil was fertile. And it was sparsely populated.
All of this caught the eye of barbarian tribes on the European continent, who constantly attempted to migrate into Britannia. But Roman legions defended against these incursions for centuries.
By the early 400s, however, the western Roman Empire was essentially finished. Inflation was out of control. The legions were revolting. Civil wars and invasions were commonplace. And the Roman government simply no longer had the resources to provide security for faraway provinces.
So, in 410 AD, the Roman emperor Honorius essentially abandoned Britannia and stopped providing border security.
(Honorius was widely considered incompetent; in fact the ancient historian Procopius describes him as a complete buffoon who may have had a few screws loose.)
With Roman security gone, Germanic barbarian tribes almost immediately began mass crossings over Britannia’s southern border. And, over time, they made the land their own-- by slaughtering many of the local Britons who remained.
The Germanic tribes-- especially the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes-- brought their ‘Anglo-Frisian’ language with them. This language developed rapidly into what linguists call ‘Old English’, and Rome’s abandonment of Britannia is the key reason why modern English is rooted in German.
Personally I’ve always been fascinated by how languages develop-- and English is especially interesting.
When the Vikings invaded Britain and established their own settlements in the mid-800s, their ‘Old Norse’ language mixed with Old English. The influence of Old Norse is still obvious today; dozens of many common words including knife, rotten, sky, and wrong are of Norse origin.
After William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, the language once again transformed-- this time with heavy French influence.
This is one of the reasons why there are so many synonyms in our modern language; the word ‘ask’ is Germanic in origin. But the word ‘inquire’, which means almost the same thing, is French in origin.
There are so many other examples: motherhood/maternity. Holy/Sacred. Work/Labor.
It’s also fascinating how, as language evolves, words take on different meanings. For example, in the 1300s, the word ‘nice’ used to mean ‘ignorant’ or ‘foolish’. Yet today it has a totally different meaning-- pleasant and kind.
Often times these changes are cultural. There was a time, for example, when it was common to describe a happy, joyous person as ‘gay’. Now it almost exclusively refers to someone’s sexuality.
And sometimes, of course, governments and institutions deliberately adjust the language, often to suit a political agenda. Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and North Korea’s Kim Il Sung all manipulated the definitions and even eradicated words from their languages.
Sadly we see similar Orwellian tactics with the English language today. The word liberal, for example, originally referred to someone who favored individual liberty. Then it was hijacked by people who never saw a tax or regulation they didn’t like.
And the definitions for ‘man’ and ‘woman’ were crystal clear for all of human history until just a few years ago.
The latest, however, is the new definition of the word “rich”.
‘Rich’ is Germanic in origin, similar to the German word reich; 1,000+ years ago it referred to a ruler or powerful person. It started being associated with money in the 1300s.
But even still, the word rich for centuries has been typically associated with tremendous, almost unimaginable wealth.
When I was a kid and watched Scrooge McDuck swimming in an indoor pool filled when gold coins, I thought, “man, that guy is rich”.
Leave it to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to change that definition.
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