Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven
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| Sunny Days in Heaven Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven |
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Saturday, March 16, 2002 All roads lead to ... The parallels between America and ancient Rome are quite remarkable. Militarily, we are the greatest power in the world and our capabilities increase rather than diminish. Socially, what once was a reasonably pious nation with a strong religious tradition has become an exceptionally pagan and decadent one. Economically, what once was a nation of farmers and small businessmen becomes increasingly a nation of corporations and bureaucracies. Politically, the nation seems to becoming more and more polarized and headed for civil wars of one kind or another. We seem increasingly divided between producers and parasites, the moral and immoral, and competing, conflicting population groups. Sports, popular entertainment, and pornography seem to dominate as our national interests and pleasures and are afforded unnatural amounts of attention and fervor. These are all things we have in common with ancient Rome as it became the world power during the time of the first Caesars when it tried to maintain a pretense of a republic. Rome first came to dominance in the Mediterranean when it was finally able to defeat Carthage in the last of the Punic Wars. America stepped onto the main stage of dominance with the two wars against Germany and its allies and became the central power of the West. England is to us what Athens and Greece was to Rome both militarily and culturally. Rome came to dominate the entire world with the fall of the Parthian empire. (By whole world, I mean that there was not a country in the world that could have defeated Rome or withstood its legions if Rome had so desired to travel to India and China.) With the collapse of the Soviet empire, America is now unchallenged in its hegemony. China remains a threat but really isn't in the game. If the U.S. is able to build a relative well functioning missile shield, even nuclear armaments become less meaningful for other nations to acquire. We tend to think of the grandeur that was Rome for their engineering skills and their military might, but Rome more than anything else was an economic and mercantile powerhouse. The Roman pedlars did more to spread culture than the armies and engineers ever did; and the merchants spread out everywhere throughout the empire and its fringes. We think of the Romans as bloodthirsty because of gruesome entertainments such as gladiator games, but human death was not usually the primary purpose of the games. As gladiators became more and more popular and well paid, they died less and less since they were worth too much The contests between the popular combatants was usually to the first wound. The gladiators became immensely popular. Even nobility sought to emulate them and enter the spectacles. The Emperor Commodus entered the games and his enemies contrived a way to assassinate him through that interest of his. There is not a big difference between our football and Roman games, between our Nascar and their chariot racing, between our movies and their theater and mime shows, and between our pornography and their brothels. Also, our movies are considerably as or more gory than the arena spectacles. One area of difference is that they had slaves. We have illegal immigrants but nowhere in the same number. The large majority of people in Rome and the empire were slaves. Another difference is that Roman government was extortionate. They basically robbed other nations at the point of their swords. America has run a trade deficit about as long as I've lived, and has done more to build up other nations and give humanitarian aid than any nation ever has. For all its power, America has been the least exploitive in the history of mankind. Rome fell through over-taxation (and the inability to collect them after awhile) and the lack of manpower for its armies as more and more foreigners became its core and the Romans were less and less interested in a martial mentality. As their silver mines in Spain played out, they lost the power to pay for all the goods they imported and the armies they needed, and power shifted East. The population of Rome decreased, food and goods were made mostly in the East, the power to withstand invaders diminished, and the people were soft, decadent, and vulnerable. America faces some similar challenges. Our armed forces are increasingly a kind of mercenary class in that most people now will never be required to sacrifice anything of their lives for the nation and the good of all. Can we survive economically as we produce less and fewer tangible goods? Human needs are now quite easily satisfied in that it takes very few people to grow our food, make our clothes, build our cars and appliances, produce our housing, and maintain the infrastructure. Areas where we continue to dominate the world are in the science and technology fields, but there is no guarantee that we will always dominate such fields. Particularly if welfare state policies drive capital out of the country as it's doing in Europe and Canada, for example. We benefit from the brain and investment drain of others now, but over-regulation, unmitigated legal challenges and suits, and redistribution of wealth schemes can quickly put an end to American drive and innovation. Some might say that Rome lasted a good long time and so will we, but history is accelerated now. Between the first Punic war and the dissolution of the Parthian empire, hundreds of years passed. Between the first World War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, less than a hundred years went by. The moral decay of Rome and the empire also took quite a while whereas between 1960 and the now, this nation has made pornography one of its largest industries and products of consumption. In 30 years, professional ball players have gone from being very well paid to absurdly paid. The same with heads of corporations and entertainment figures such as movie stars, singers, and TV newsmen. The #1 conversation starter has gone from - read any good books lately? To - seen any good movies lately? Popular music has descended to mere noise, percussion, and vulgarity; while an R rated movie means wall to wall swearing. It will interesting for our children to see if they can manage to survive the onslaught of self- destructive forces each great nation seems to inflict on itself. Human nature being what it is, I am not optimistic, but I am not entirely pessimistic either. We remain a democracy and I think there is some reason to have faith in people that they will generally correct many errors as they go along. It may be a somewhat slow process, but truth eventually dawns on majorities I believe. Addendum The situation in Israel (first designated Palestine by the ancient Romans) is not dissimilar to what the Romans faced. After ancient Israel defeated the Greeks, Antiochus vs. The Maccabees, Israel began falling apart like a modern Arab state into internecine struggles for power much like Afghanistan or Somalia and its warlord problems. Prior to that, they had asked the Spartans for help in their struggle against Antiochus and made a treaty of alliance with the Romans. But the Middle East proved unstable and eventually the Romans moved in to govern it permanently. But the Jews were restive, as always, and invented the Zealots and Sicarii to agitate for freedom from Roman dominion. They were terrorists and assassins. Eventually they rebelled at large and brought nearly total destruction on them, Jerusalem, and the Temple about 70 A.D.. The process was repeated about another 70 years later during the Bar Kochba revolt. That finally put an end to Jewish occupation of the land as the primary population group and turned Palestine into a backwater for the next 1800 years or so. Today, we have the Arabs who are restive, fanatical haters and terrorists. We have another governing population (the Jews) that suffers from attack (as Greeks suffered in that place as economically dominant and more successful interlopers), and we have a world power of America that seems to be getting forced to destroy and stabilize governments and peoples in the region. Like Rome, we have been drawn into conflicts we have no real interest in simply because we now have the responsibility of keeping the peace, the Pax Americana, for our own sake. posted by Mark Butterworth | 2:00 PM | |
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