By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, June 27, 2013
By A.D. 200, the Roman Republic was a distant memory. Few
citizens of the global Roman Empire even knew of their illustrious ancestors
like Scipio or Cicero. Millions no longer spoke Latin. Italian emperors were a
rarity. There were no national elections.
Yet Rome endured as a global power for three more
centuries. What held it together?
A stubborn common popular culture and the prosperity of
Mediterranean-wide standardization kept things going. The Egyptian, the
Numidian, the Iberian and the Greek assumed that everything from Roman clay
lamps and glass to good roads and plentiful grain were available to millions
throughout the Mediterranean.
As long as the sea was free of pirates, thieves cleared
from the roads, and merchants allowed to profit, few cared whether the lawless
Caracalla or the unhinged Elagabalus was emperor in distant Rome.
Something likewise both depressing and encouraging is
happening to the United States. Few Americans seem to worry that our present
leaders have lied to or misled the Congress and the American people without
consequences.
Most young people cannot distinguish the First Amendment
from the Fourth Amendment -- and do not worry that they cannot. Washington,
Jefferson and Lincoln are mere names of grammar schools but otherwise
unidentifiable to most.
Separatism is believed to bring dividends. Here in
California, universities conduct separate graduation ceremonies predicated on
race -- sometimes difficult given the increasingly mixed ancestry of Americans.
As in Rome, there is a vast disconnect between elites and
the people. Almost half of America receives some sort of public assistance, and
another half pays no federal income tax. About one-seventh of Americans are on
food stamps.
Yet housing prices in elite enclaves -- Manhattan,
Cambridge, Santa Monica, Palo Alto -- are soaring. The wealthy like to cocoon
themselves in Roman-like villas, safe from the real-life ramifications of their
own utopian ideology.
The government and the media do their best to spread the
ideals of radical egalitarianism while avoiding offense to anyone. There is no
official war on terror or against radical Islamism. Instead, in "overseas
contingency operations" we fight "man-caused disasters" while at
home dealing with "workplace violence."
In news stories that involve crimes with divisive racial
themes, the media frequently paper over information about the perpetrators. But
that noble restraint only seems to incite readers. In reckless fashion they
often post the most inflammatory online comments about such liberal censorship.
Officially, America celebrates diversity; privately, America is fragmenting
into racial, political and ideological camps.
So why is the United States not experiencing something
like the rioting in Turkey or Brazil, or the murder of thousands in Mexico? How
are we able to avoid the bloody chaos in Syria, the harsh dictatorships of
Russia and China, the implosion of Egypt or the economic hopelessness now
endemic in Southern Europe?
About half of America and many of its institutions
operate as they always have. Cal-Tech and MIT are still serious. Neither
interjects race, class and gender studies into its engineering or physics
curricula. Most in the IRS, unlike some of their bosses, are not corrupt. For
the well driller, the power plant operator and the wheat farmer, the lies in
Washington are still mostly an abstraction.
Get up at 5:30 a.m. and you'll see that most of the
nation's urban freeways are jammed with hard-working commuters. Every day they
go to work, support their families, pay their taxes and avoid arrest -- so that
millions of others do not have to do the same. The U.S. military still more
closely resembles our heroes from World War II than the culture of the
Kardashians.
Like diverse imperial Roman citizens, we are united in
some fashion by shared popular tastes and mass consumerism. The cell phones and
cars of the poor offer more computing power and better transportation than the
aristocracy enjoyed just 20 years ago.
Youth of all races and backgrounds in lockstep fiddle
with their cell phones as they walk about. Jeans are an unspoken American
uniform -- both for the Wall Street grandees and the homeless on the sidewalks.
Left, right, liberal, conservative, professor and ditch digger have
similar-looking Facebook accounts.
If Rome quieted the people with public spectacles and
cheap grain from the provinces, so too Americans of all classes keep glued to
favorite video games and reality-TV shows. Fast food is both cheap and tasty.
All that for now is preferable to rioting and revolt.
Like Rome, America apparently can coast for a long time
on the fumes of its wonderful political heritage and economic dynamism -- even
if both are little understood or appreciated by most who still benefit from
them.
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