Vedi, vemi vici? I told this to my girlfriend last night,
She bought it.
Pax Americana has a rather nice ring to it...
If the American people wanted one, then we would be the undisputed ruler of most of Pacific-Asia, the better neighborhoods of Europe and the oil fields of most of the Middle East.
I don't recall a single instance where the Romans left a conquered country or treasure in the hands of the defeated, or left the defeated better off than when they arrived.
Such bunk works well with sandal clad political professors at the campus coffee house, but it does not and never has worked with the American people.
Perhaps most telling is what American's have NOT done with their power.
The major problem facing Rome was the rise of powerful new forces all over its borderlands and the inability of the overtaxed country to keep it's army in proper shape.
The geographic isolation of the US (except I guess for terrorism) vs. Rome living next door to war-like neighbors makes the US ALOT different.
"Yes, but aside from the courts, the roads, the sewer system, sanitation, schools, law enforcement, and public health.....
What 'ave the Romans ever done for US!??!"
"No country has been as dominant culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the history of the world since the Roman empire."Correction! No country has ever been as dominant as the United States!
"Its defence budget will soon be bigger than the military spending of the next nine countries put together."Yes. And soon thereafter will be bigger than the military spending of all the countries of the world put together.
"There is almost no place outside America's reach.Correction! There is no place outside America's reach!
"The Romans used the propaganda technique of their time - gladiatorial games in the Colosseum - to show the world how hard they were. Today 24-hour news coverage of US military operations - including video footage of smart bombs scoring direct hits - or Hollywood shoot-'em-ups at the multiplex serve the same function. Both tell the world: this empire is too tough to beat.Yes. They tell the world that the U.S. is too tough to beat.
However, there is a big and very important difference between Rome and the U.S.:
Romans were cruel and brutal.
Americans are kind, generous, and tolerant.
Romans used the horrors of the "games" to intimidate potential enemies.
Such horrors would be unthinkable to Americans.
Rome was always a brutal slave state.
Americans cleansed themselves of the horrors of slavery before their republic was a century old. America was part of the vanguard. Slavery still exists in many parts of the world--and notably (though certainly not exclusively) in the Islamic theocracies!
"The US is proving what the Romans already knew: that once an empire is a world leader in one sphere, it soon dominates in every other."True! And thank God for it.
Americans have spread Western Civilization throughout the world and continue to do so, and this is the createst accumulation of human wisdom the world has ever known. It is the greatest treasure trove of benefits to all people that has ever existed. It is America's gift to the world, and it is priceless.
"Rome understood that...a world power needs to practise both hard...and soft imperialism."Yes. Americans understand this very well. If a great power is to last, yes. And also if America is to fulfill its mission: the teaching of liberty and justice for all people to all people.
"The rebels were not always fundamentally anti-Roman; they merely wanted to share in the privileges and affluence of Roman life."Exactly. bin Laden and the rest of Amerca's enemies would like to take over America's power to implement their own agendas.
These agendas are vastly inferior to America's agenda and to Western Civilization.
Bin Laden for example wants to establish a worldwide Islamic theocracy, by violent means as necessary, with the Koran as the only constitution and the shariah as international law. His most basic motive though is not theological but cultural. He wants Arabian culture--not American culture--to dominate the world. Islam is merely an integral part of Arabian culture.
Ironically, Americans have no particular quarrel with the beliefs of Islam so long as they are not imposed on anyone else, and many aspects of Arabian culture are quite attractive.
However the quest for dominating power and the cultural imperialism of ben Laden and his ilk conflict with American power and therefore cannot be tolerated.
"There are some large differences between the two empires, of course"THERE CERTAINLY ARE! AND THEY ARE VERY IMPORTANT!
Rome was a brutal power and one of mankind's most dubious achievements.
The United States is one of mankind's greatest achievements.
It is dedicated to universal human rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; to universal liberty, justice, and equality for ALL people. This is the driving force of the United States.
The U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are sacred documents. They have powerful meaning for all people for all time.
The basic meaning of the U.S.A. could not be more different than the basic meaning of the Roman Empire.
The difference is so vast and profound as to render all similarities superficial and ultimately inconsequential to any comparison.
"One last factor scares Americans from making a parallel between themselves and Rome: that empire declined and fell."Yes. This is very frightening.
Rome fell because of decay within itself.
"Liberalism" is the same decadence within the United States. It will destroy America,and with it Western Civilization, if not counteracted. It is the enabler of America's enemies and is itself the enemy of liberty, justice, liberalism, and Western Civilization.
I hate to see bad history like this. The original inhabitants of North Africa are Caucasians, or whites (although I believe they would have spoken a Semitic language, and not an Indo-European one). Look at photos of Berbers the next time you get a chance. The Romans also held much of North Africa, including Egypt and Tunisia (or what used to be Carthage!) as provinces in their empire. Thus, it may be more likely that Septimius Severus was descended from Romans who came from Italy to North Africa, just as Cleopatra was a descendant of the Ptolemaic Greeks who set themselves up in Egypt after Alexander's death. There were also a number of prominent Romans in later centuries who were born in Iberia: should we then call them Hispanics? :)
At any rate, crossing the Sahara to West Africa where all the Negroid, or black persons were, would take large caravans of camels--I don't believe that the volume of trade was large enough in those years of the Roman Empire to bring enough black people to North Africa to have a significant effect on that region's demography. Later West African kingdoms would benefit greatly from the trans-Saharan trade in gold and salt: Mansa Musa (in what is now Mali) would be famous in the 14th century in both the Islamic world (he brought enough gold to Mecca to affect prices for a generation!) and in Christendom, where early cartographers placed him on maps as the ruler of a rich kingdom. (These pre-European West African kingdoms often declined because of trade drying up, their own despotic rule, or attacks from their Arab neighbors!)
Jared Diamond has included a section in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel entitled "How Africa Became Black." I don't like Diamond's geographical/enviromental determinism (preferring the more important role of culture as espoused by David Landes or Victor Davis Hanson), but it's still interesting reading: the same article can be found online at http://www.discover.com/archive (just do a search by title or author).
What a stretch! The 'Myth' of our founding fathers is well documented fact not epic poetry.
I am SO tired of people making this claim.
First of all, Saddam got most of his military equipment from the Soviet bloc, and his financial aid from the Arab world. He was a Ba'ath SOCIALIST who never ceased to make both anti-Israel and anti-American statements, even before the Gulf War. Saddam never traveled to the US (In fact, he's only the left Iraq once during his rule, for a brief trip to France). People seem to think we hold people in two extremes:people we "hate" and people we "like". These people are always telling us to stay out of other countries' business, which is mostly what we did in regard to Saddam pre-Gulf War. (Yes, I know the CIA gave him satellite photos, but that hardly makes him a US "protege". It'd be much more accurate to call him a Soviet or Arab protege.)
Secondly, for a good debunking of the "CIA trained bin Laden" theory, read Peter Bergen's "Holy War Inc." Even if the CIA offered bin Laden aid, he surely would've rejected it if he knew it was coming from the US.
Other than that, though, the article makes some good points.