Are We Rome? Ben Powell Compares the U.S. with the Roman Empire
September 15, 2013
73,491
1,168
478
2.24%
Search the Record
IndexedEvery word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
ReasonTV Episodes Around September 15, 2013
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
5:13Now PlayingAre We Rome? Ben Powell Compares the U.S. with the Roman Empire
YouTube Description
as posted by the channel"If we continue down the misguided path that the government is taking us, then the future does not look good," says Free Market Institute's Ben Powell.
Reason's Nick Gillespie caught up with Powell to discuss the theme of this year's Freedom Fest, "Are We Rome?" and whether America is following in Rome's footsteps towards decline.
"Our economic freedom has been plummeting the last ten years," Powell says, "and this isn't a product of Obama. It's Bush [and] Obama consistently. More than half of our decline in economic freedoms happened under Bush. It's just the rate of decline is happening more under Obama."
Held each July in Las Vegas, Freedom Fest is attended by around 2,000 limited-government enthusiasts and libertarians. Reason TV spoke with over two dozen speakers and attendees and will be releasing interviews over the coming weeks. Go here for an ever-growing playlist of this year's interviews.
About 5 minutes.
Produced by Tracy Oppenheimer. Camera by Paul Detrick and Oppenheimer.
Go to for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel to get automatic notifications when new videos go live.
Links & Promotions
Guests & Subjects Covered
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.