Commentary:

A quick post on "bread and circuses"

Joe Gandelman, of The Moderate Voice, has rightly been expressing concern over the violence shown at recent sports events, notably a brawl at an NBA game. Joe suggests penalties "so SEVERE that players...and fans...think twice. Otherwise the violent trend will escalate and you'll need to check your insurance before attending sports events."

As someone who is interested in history as a hobby, this brings to mind the circuses that were staged by the Roman government to distract the mobs of Rome from what was going on in the larger world around them. No, I am not suggesting that the current administration is encouraging any kind of "bread and circuses" tactic to distract the people from external issues, I just find several curious parallels between what has occurred in both the United States and the world at large in the past few years (since the fall of the Soviet Union) and the early years of the Roman Empire after Julius Caesar had eliminated the closest major threat to the Romans on the European continent. Every analogy breaks down if over-used, and the one comparing the United States to the Roman Empire is so tired that it not only is worn at the edges but the pages are yellow and the very words themselves are nearly worn away. It is still worth reviewing history, however, because it is important to learn from mistakes of the past for otherwise, how can we ever move beyond those mistakes?

Another analogy that comes to mind that is far more troubling to me is the fate of the British Empire in the years after World War I, notably the expenditure of resources in World War II that ended up being a primary cause of the decline of that nation. In the decades from 1900 to 1940 the United Kingdom enjoyed a preeminence that is comparable to that of the United States today, but the strains of fighting against Germany twice in those decades ended up sapping the resources of the seemingly limitless empire upon which the sun never set to the point where an upstart power that was equally divided between rural and industrial strengths could displace them. Will the combined drains of the Cold War and the new War on Terror result in a similar fate for the United States, with China or some other rising power displacing our current preeminence?

It is something to both think about and to try to prevent.