Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Decline of the American empire

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An 18th-century Scottish historian named Alexander Fraser Titler wrote: "The average lifespan of the world's great empires is 200 years. They progress from bondage to spiritual faith to great courage to liberty to abundance to selfishness to complacency to apathy to dependency and back to bondage."

The prescient author of a book I've been reading who quoted these words suggests that the American empire in 2009 is somewhere between apathy and dependency, and I fear that he may be right.

But, you say, America is a democracy—we don't have an empire. No? Well then, why do we maintain more than 700 military bases to guard our interests around the world? Why is our military budget bigger than that of the rest of the world's combined? How has it come about that (as in so many previous empires) a tiny percentage of the population now controls 90 percent of the nation's wealth? Why, with a mere 5 percent of the planet's population, do we have more people in prison at any given time than the rest of the world put together? Why are millions of our citizens without health care or homes or jobs? Why are so many adults functionally illiterate?

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If Alexander Fraser Titler is correct, will anyone care as we totter from dependency into bondage, still probably obsessing about gay marriage or the latest celebrity scandal? Will anyone even notice?

Diana Fassino

Ketchum