The Sack of Washington
May 31st, 2007Maybe the author covers this somewhere in the book, but the most important difference, in my opinion, is that Rome didn’t go down with a ready and deployed arsenal of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. Same primate consciousness as in Rome, but now with nuclear weapons.
Yes, the Soviet Union collapsed and yes, some number of nuclear weapons aren’t accounted for and yes, we’re still here. I often wonder about that one. Was it luck, or divine intervention? Maybe a bit of both.
Via: Vanity Fair:
Comparisons of America and Rome are everywhere these days, whether deploring an over-extended military, social decadence, or illegal immigration. A more disturbing—and largely ignored—similarity lies in the wholesale privatization of the U.S. government, which has blurred the line between public good and personal gain. In an excerpt from his new book, Cullen Murphy charts a dynamic that is more dangerous than corruption, unprecedented in scale, and visible everywhere from Hurricane Katrina to the Iraq war, to the justice system.
President and emperor, America and Rome: the matchup is by now so familiar, so natural, that you just can’t help yourself—it comes to mind unbidden, in the reflexive way that the behavior of chimps reminds you of the behavior of people. Everyone gets it whenever a comparison of Rome and America is drawn—for instance, the offhand allusion to welfare and televised sports as “bread and circuses,” or to illegal immigrants as “barbarian hordes.” If reference is made to an “imperial presidency,” or to the deployment abroad of “American legions,” no one raises an eyebrow and wonders what you could possibly be talking about. Invoke the phrase “decline and fall” and thoughts turn simultaneously to the Roman past and the American present.
To be sure, a lot of Rome-and-America comparisons are glib, and if you’re looking for reasons to brush parallels aside, it’s easy enough to find them. The two entities, Rome and America, are dissimilar in countless ways. But some parallels really do hold up, though maybe not the ones that have been most in the public eye. Think less about decadence, less about military might—and think more about the parochial way these two societies view the outside world, and more about the slow decay of homegrown institutions. Think less about threats from unwelcome barbarians, and more about the powerful dynamics of a multi-ethnic society. Think less about the ability of a superpower to influence everything on earth, and more about how everything on earth affects a superpower.
One core similarity is almost always overlooked—it has to do with “privatization,” which sometimes means “corruption,” though it’s actually a far broader phenomenon. Rome had trouble maintaining a distinction between public and private responsibilities—and between public and private resources. The line between these is never fixed, anywhere. But when it becomes too hazy, or fades altogether, central government becomes impossible to steer. It took a long time to happen, but the fraying connection between imperial will and concrete action is a big part of What Went Wrong in ancient Rome. America has in recent years embarked on a privatization binge like no other in its history, putting into private hands all manner of activities that once were thought to be public tasks—overseeing the nation’s highways, patrolling its neighborhoods, inspecting its food, protecting its borders. This may make sense in the short term—and sometimes, like Rome, we may have no choice in the matter. But how will the consequences play out over decades, or centuries? In all likelihood, very badly.
So if we are like Rome, we should study the history of Rome to see where the power lies.
http://www.cephasministry.com/catholic_vaticans_billions_1.html
“The successors of the Blessed Peter eventually claimed as their property all islands and lands as yet undiscovered.
Relying on this, they demanded nothing more nor less than “sovereignty” over the newly discovered lands of the Americas. In modern parlance, they claimed that the Americas, with all they contained, were their absolute property. “
GK, the “Roman System” is in place everywhere. Thats why you have control freaks in big government, big church, big school, big legal etc… ordering, grading, identifying, classifying, registering, licensing ad-nauseum. Hell!. You’d think you’d have to ask permission to take a dump in your own toilet (and thats not exagerating either).
@ George Kenny – Putting it bluntly, what you describe is the megalomaniacal office (i.e. the Papacy) that claims both political and ecclesiastical authority over the entire planet.
The history of civilization since the agriculture revolution seems like one Roman type empire after another to me. Different nations with varying vehicles for control but always the same basic results. History has nothing to say to fools…
“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.” – George Bernard Shaw
Bush = Ceausescu
History always repeats itself!!