Hi Marc, Interesting discussion. Just want to add to the mix of causes of the fall of the Roman Empire something I recently learned, about the role of Islam in its destructive march across Europe from the seventh century to 1924. This comes from the studies of Bill Warner, and I'll post a video reference below when I figure out where it starts.
To include this in the mix means considering that the Roman Empire didn't fall as rapidly as is sometimes supposed, or as early, but there isn't anything all that hard and fast about when it fell anyway. The usual date I've seen is 476 when the last emperor was replaced by a German conqueror, but as Warner points out, the barbarians weren't out to destroy the Empire as much as they wanted to become its leaders and reap its benefits. So Warner moves the fall up to the seventh century march of the Islamic Caliphate as the main cause.
Whether or not that should be considered the major cause as he considers it to be, I found his demonstration of the 548 conquests by Islam to be explanatory of a lot of destruction that for some reason we don't get in our histories. At its height Islam had conquered MORE territory than the Roman Empire ever covered. And we don't hear about this? Warner claims it ended "classical Christian civilization" and was the cause of the Dark Ages. We do know that the Middle East was predominantly Christian before Islam -- BIG change. I'll let historians sort all that out but the series of conquests he demonstrates needs to be added to the mix of the overall shaping of Europe in any case.
The relevance to the topic is of course that Islam today hasn't stopped its drive to conquer the world, though it's conquering as much by hejira* -- (by stealth you could say, but only because of the stupidity of its victims) --as by jihad. The denial of the history of the Caliphate in Europe is a dangerous thing. But the Left today seems bent on suicide. Too bad they want to take us all down with them. / Here's Warner showing 548 conquests of Europe by Islam. Start about 11:00. / /
You mean because it includes the Eastern Empire? True enough. But the west took quite a beating too, and I bet you didn't know any of this. And besides, Warner focuses on "classical Christian civilization" as the victim, and that certainly included the Eastern Empire.