VOLUME 40 NUMBER 11 • PH. 813-737-NEWS (6397) • E -MAIL : FARMR ANCHNEWS@AOL.COM • W W W.FARMAND R A N C H N E W S .C O M
Agriculture’s Most Trusted Source For News, Views and Advertising Since 1974 Those Who Cannot Remember the Past are Condemned to Repeat it
the davis report By Roy Davis- Associate Editor
I have always felt that the best and most accurate way to look into the future is to look back into events of the past. Over and over again we can see how the pattern of events have repeated themselves. In the historical era of Egyptian dominance, they were the most advanced group of people of their time. Without any of the modern implements that we use today, those folks constructed buildings that still stand today, almost 5000 years later. Right here in Tampa, I remember when taxpayers paid for the construction of housing projects, constructed to give poor people a decent place to live. Most of them were built in the 1950’s. Less than 60 years later our Government is tossing those families out of these dilapidated structures so they can be torn down to build new structures. We are told the “old” housing structures are too run down for real people to live in. I wonder how they became that run down? Could it be that these poor people did not appreciate these housing units because they had no investment in them? Government did not appreciate these housing units enough to spend enough taxpayer money to maintain them adequately. Could it be that our society has become so affluent that we feel we have so much surplus income that we can afford such extravagant waste? I remember when Leta and I visited
Heidelberg, Germany around 1985. We stayed in the Zum Ritter hotel in “old” Heidelberg. It was one of the highest rated hotels in the area. The hotel was intricately arranged in parts of three old buildings. I mean really old. Those buildings were actually more than 450 years old at the time. They do not tear old buildings down over there. They maintain them and continue to use them. The Egyptians developed such an effluent society that they began to expend vast amounts of assets in the building of tombs and other monuments for their leaders. Had these assets been utilized in an orderly manner for the purpose of maintaining and feeding a stable society, the Egyptians might still be the dominant society of today. The Roman Empire lasted for more than 400 years as the dominant society of the day. They thrived by capturing other societies around their known world, and exploiting their assets. The Romans became so rich that they could expect the captured societies to build their buildings, provide their entertainment (often at the cost of the lives of the entertainers). As the Romans became “too full of themselves” their world went downhill, and their dominance failed. The Dark Age was a period when it seems that no country really dominated the world. It was in these times that we now are learning that societies on the continents of the new world reached such high levels of existence. In what is now our America, the native peoples built elaborate condominium units in cliffs, and developed elaborate climbing systems to reach these impossible dwellings. They learned to farm the land and grow their own food. They learned to store these crops to sustain their families during the off seasons. They learned to live together as a society, and administer to their leaders so they could have or-
HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY FAIR’S 20TH ANNIVERSARY QUEENS The 2013 Harvest Queens, above, selected at the 20th Anniversary of the Hillsborough County Fair are Haley Riley and Cloe Tew, Jr. Harvest Queen. Harvest Queen Riley will receive a $1000 scholarship for participating and winning her crown upon enrollment in any Florida college or university.
derly government. Recent findings tell us that their final failure came slowly as these various societal groups fought among each other to try to take the assets and the lands of the others. It seems there are never any true winners of wars in the long run. Little disasters of weather, drought, and famine were turned into large disasters, as there never are ultimate winners in these wars. In the long run everyone seems to lose. There never has been a dominant society that has risen to the top and stayed there. The Greeks, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the British, the Mayans and Incas, the early Native Americans all were the dominant society of the world at one time or another.
Natural disasters, coupled with greed and wars, exacerbated by the complacency of opulence, all creep into the dominant society and bring it down. Do you recognize the trend? Do you see this happening in our America today? It has been only 500 years since the first European set foot on the soil of what is now America. That happened in 1607 along the Jamestown River in what is now Virginia. Only 230 years or so ago, those few courageous Americans wrested control of this country from Great Britain. It could be said that this event was the beginning of the decline of the great British Empire, upon continued on page 5