Dismantling the Empire

The United States has a lot in common with the Roman Empire.

Our country is not only a "world player," but an international hegemon, the last standing Superpower - similar to Rome's status after defeating Carthage. Our language is the lingua franca of the world. Our culture is exported around the globe. Our money is the international standard. Immigrants flock to our shores. For better or worse, we are the world's policeman, with military garrisons in every corner of the world.

Like Rome, we have a multi-ethnic, diverse culture that is convinced of its own superiority - not based on race, but rather based on our nationality. We even have a word for it: "Americanism." We routinely speak of America as the greatest nation in the history of the world - even if we've never been to another country or have read very little by way of world history. We tend to see people from other countries as "barbarians" - or at very least, as being our inferiors.

As with Rome, we are also a religiously diverse people. There is, for the most part, a tolerance of all religions, provided that one is not "exclusive" about it. There is a great and increasing social pressure to be syncretistic, to see all religions as equal. It is not uncommon to see school children praying around a flagpole, and for the flag to be displayed near the altar in churches.

We are also a very militaristic people. As the Roman eagle went well beyond the provincial borders of the empire, so too does the American eagle fly beyond our union of states. Our hegemony, our imperium, depends on military might - which is expensive. Large sectors of the economy, many of which are well-connected politically, depend on vast government expenditures on what President General Eisenhower termed the Military-Industrial Complex.

In many ways, the constitutional restrictions that defined the Old Republic have fallen by the wayside. The executive branch, which under the republican model, shares power with the judicial and the legislative, is becoming increasingly powerful, with the President of the United States almost occupying a deified status not unlike the Caesars - often identified even by civilians by his military title: "The Commander in Chief." As in the days of Rome, there are advocates of restoring the republic, even eloquent statesmen within the government itself, but their voices are often trumped by the well-connected, those who benefit from government contracts and largesse.

And now, like the Roman Empire, we are finding our economy at the breaking point - as the citizens at home demand government funded bread, circuses, and health care, and our military establishment seeks to increase our interests abroad. Both federal and state levels of government are under a crushing burden of debt. Just a generation ago, we were the richest country in the world, the world's largest creditor. Today we are the world's largest debtor. The money in our pockets, unbacked by gold or any commodity, is only worth what Chinese and other international investors are willing to pay for American treasury notes in what is, in effect, a futures market for our debt. We have become only a step from being slaves for sale to foreigners.

This identical thing happened in Rome as the empire was on the wane. In an attempt to prop up the failing economy of the tottering apparatus spread too thin by spending too much (largely on politically-motivated military expenditures), the government adopted the policy of a vast stimulus package that included the government's devaluing of the currency and paradoxically seeking to spend its way out of debt.

This did not solve the problem, but only hastened the demise.

As the Roman Empire crumbled, its once-invincible defenses of its own borders began to crumble, as the Senate and People of Rome began to live in fear of invasions of the barbarians they once held in check hundreds of miles away by what seemed at the time to be unlimited military might. We're seeing some of this kind of thing today.

At this point, we still have some control. Our economy has not yet totally collapsed. We still have the personnel and the hardware to protect our own borders, even if being the military police of the world is threatening to deplete all of our resources. We must re-prioritize and redeploy our resources in ways that will protect our borders but not bring us to economic ruin. We can't simply continue to live in the Pollyanna world that says we can eat our cake and have it too.

Here is an outstanding article that provides not merely historical background and analysis, but also a practical plan of transition for us to prevent a total collapse of our economy, way of life, and perhaps even our political independence by facing reality, by fiscal realism and conservatism, and by doing what is best for the country and not what is best for lobbyists, congressmen, and those who benefit from the Military-Industrial Complex.

The amount of money we spend maintaining our hegemony is astronomical. We simply do not have the resources to continue this spree of the Democrat Party's welfare state and the Republican Party's warfare state. Frankly, it should be obvious that we don't have the money to fund either party's vision of the Superstate. We're broke. The pax americana is over.

If we don't start acting responsibly, and very soon, we will one day turn on FOX and CNN and see that the country really has been overthrown by invaders whom we used to occupy as part of our own empire. They will be angry, and they will seek revenge. We will be helpless to do anything about it. We will look out the window and see another flag flying on the pole. But unlike the invaders of Rome (as St. Augustine details in Book One of his own "blog" responding as a Christian pastor to the fall of Rome in The City of God), our new masters will not likely be tempered by Christian ethics.

Maybe we should take charge of things now instead of living in the fantasyland of partisan soundbites and "can do" slogans from both sides of the aisle.

The Romans were also a people who thoroughly believed "Yes, we can!" But one day, they couldn't.