July 22, 2007

In his learned, deftly written, and dazzlingly researched new book, Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America, historian Cullen Murphy draws ingenious comparisons between the Roman Empire and our two-century-old American experiment. (Murphy, an editor at Vanity Fair, was the managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and, truth be told, a mentor of mine at Amherst College.)

Murphy casts a wide net, teaching us parallel truths about how Rome sowed the seeds of its own decay and how the United States is on a similarly nationalistic, myopic, arrogant, and imperialist path. While the book is a lucid critique of the Bush administration, it is at the same time decidedly hopeful and inspiring, offering a prescription for how we might take control of certain aspects of our fate as a nation -- through understanding, encouraging, and continuing to foster and export the best parts of the American character.

One passage on our militarized society as an echo of the Late Roman Empire, circa 100 to 450 A.D., really hit home for me vis-a-vis September 11th (page 198):

"As perceived threats to the country grow more insistent and varied, all of society increasingly bends toward a particular vision of homeland defense. We watch as local police forces, the educational system, even pop culture, bit by bit acquire a vaguely martial cast. Spending on domestic programs is diverted to national security. Economic life orients itself increasingly around the requirements of the military and the intelligence apparatus, and of our far-flung protectorates. Individual rights and freedoms take a back seat to the government's need to know. Borders are hardened. Privacy becomes just a footnote in the history books (though not the ones used in Texas). The executive branch is paramount, the other two branches having evolved into useless but still-detectable appendages, like a whale's vestigal limbs."