I didn’t have any major thoughts this past week, so all I’m going to do right now is to refer you to an interesting article by Prof. J. Rufus Fears entitled “The Lessons of the Roman Empire for America Today”. Here’s what I get from the good professor: America today is on the edge of converting from a national republic to a world empire, just as the Julius Caesar led the Romans in transitioning from republic to empire in the century before Jesus. Modern America is not yet locked in on that course, we haven’t gone beyond the turnaround point yet — but it’s probably going to happen, like it or not. Big business in America is now very international. Other than the corner laundromat, no real business today can survive on domestic production and consumption alone. So, big business will demand an international empire to protect its international interests. And big business has the $$ to control politics no matter what the common folk might want, as proven by the history of health care reform in America.

That’s going to mean an increasingly strong presidency and an increasingly weak Congress. And indeed, that’s already in the works. The President is well on his or her way to becoming Emperor. Bush has taken it pretty far in his 7 years, but just about every president since Franklin Roosevelt has expanded the power of the presidency. And Congress is clearly going the route of the Roman Senate, becoming mostly an ineffectual figurehead institution. The Supreme Court will be tolerated, more or less; but because its members are handpicked by the President (and rubber-stamped by a subservient Congress), it won’t do anything kooky.

As to our doings in the Middle East: Professor Fears calls the Middle East the graveyard of empires. After reviewing the history of the many ancient empires that got involved in the Middle East, it would appear to be a good idea to try to stay away from there. Say, treat it like we do Africa. But no. Given our over-dependence on oil, our locked-in commitment to Israel, and our no-turning-back involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan, the USA is heading straight for the same vortex that helped to take down the Romans.

But it wasn’t just the Middle East that undid the Roman Empire. Around the same time, the Romans were increasingly fighting amongst themselves for the power to control the Empire. And at the same time, a whole bunch of other tribes from other places got restless and started attacking the borders. Sound familiar? As our Presidency becomes more and more powerful, our political parties fight harder and dirtier to control it. And with big media, the internet, and a wide variety of other techniques of public brainwashing available today, the effects of politics on civic virtue are increasingly cancerous. As to having other tribes loot our boundaries – right now that ain’t happening (duh, but there is that Al Qaeda group . . . ). But just wait 60 or 70 years, once global warming really kicks in and hundreds of millions of refugees are on the move looking for food and habitable land. Mix in the inexorable spread of nuclear weapons, and you can clearly picture a world full of desperate groups doing desperate things against the one group that still has some jewelry left – i.e. the Empire.

The Empire could try to stop global warming, so as to avert this scenario. This past week there were various high-level international conferences to get serious about it all. But Emperor / President Bush told the assembled leaders that the climate situation may not be all that serious and we need to be flexible and let’s not endanger our wealth. (Bush actually said that he was worried about endangering growth in developing nations; that’s a crafty way of saying ‘don’t let them take any of my gold, lest they touch some of your pennies too’). So forget about moving America to smaller cars, to shorter distances between work and home with public transit options, to lesser disparity between rich and poor, to making utilities pump their power plant exhaust into sequestering tanks. That’s all too expensive, too socialistic. So if we don’t get serious about controlling greenhouse gas emissions, India and China won’t either. And if they don’t, basically – we’re cooked. Or with modern microwave ovens, the metaphor today is “we’re nuked”. Either way, this may well become quite literal by the end of this century.

Professor Fears presents a rather strangely optimistic conclusion to his paper, one that only a true historian could offer. He implies that the American Empire will fall, as all empires must. But what’s truly important is the legacy that we will leave behind once we’ve reverted to the Dark Ages (or perhaps we’ll get a relatively soft landing like Britain, or Greece from ancient times – still, we’re in for some kind of fall). Talking about present day America, Professor Fears states: “of all the people who have passed through history, there has been none so generous in spirit, so determined to leave the world a better place, and so imbued with technology and the wealth and opportunity to leave a legacy far more enduring and far better than that of the Romans”.

I’d have to agree with him in regard to a whole lot of things, including starvation relief, disease intervention (including AIDS), spreading education and democracy, and a host of other good things. But from what I heard from our present leader this past week, America plans to withhold its generosity, technology, wealth and opportunities in the one game where the future – including our future as the Big Empire – is entirely up for grabs. I.e., the global warming game.

Hah! So I did have some big thoughts after all! But when the truth comes into focus, sometimes I wish that I didn’t.