Is Rome Burning?

Jack Grant has a long, well-written (as usual) post that links to this big brouhaha over at Professor Bainbridge's joint. (I believe this is my first invocation of the esteemed brouhaha).

Read the whole post. Excerpting would, I believe, not give the true, broad view of what Jack has written. I will, however, quote this at the end:

We are being distracted by things that are not true threats, and neglecting the real perils to our nation.

Islamofascism?

Yes, it is dangerous, but will it ever overthrow our government unless we help it from within through ill-considered laws that are contrary to the liberties envisioned by our founders?

No.

China and other rising powers in Asia (including India, the largest democracy in the world)?

That is where the real confrontation to our current pre-eminent position of power technologically, economically, and militarily (for the three are linked far more profoundly than most realize) in the world lies.

How do cultures die?

When they are more concerned with internecine conflicts over ideologies that are more similar than the fundamental culture is to the external threats opposed to them.

We have to step outside our ideology, outside our partisan talking points, and deliberately choose to look at the world as it is.

I have my arguments, but they are more trifles, actually, than arguments. For instance, I've never bought the argument that Islamofascism could take down our government, even through bad legislation. To me the threat is to the lives of the citizenry and an escalating series of attacks that might lead to disaster unless we alter just about every one of our behaviors that the bin Ladenists find worth killing over.

I also don't see India as a threat so much as a competitor, and a huge one at that. But I also think that recent developments have begun to firm up ties between India and the US. China is another matter, of course. Which I believe is why Bush chose to stage a state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Singh and more or less give the United States' blessing for its nuclear program.

Again, these are small disagreements. It was the last bit there that got me, and is something to which I have turned my attention to recently (just in case anybody is still reading me) and I see as the greatest "threat."

If we allow ourselves to devolve into a base, blindly partisan and ideological mass, we will have handed over the reins of self-governance to whatever power wishes to conquer. And the conquering forces could very well be an ad hoc alliance bringing together the various enemies and challengers of the US. Gibbon writes:

"The warlike states of antiquity, Greece, Macedonia, and Rome, educated a race of soldiers; exercised their bodies, disciplined their courage, multiplied their forces by regular evolutions, and converted the iron which they possessed into strong and serviceable weapons. But this superiority insensibly declined with their laws and manners; and the feeble policy of Constantine and his successors armed and instructed, for the ruin of the empire, the rude valour of the Barbarian mercenaries."

The decline and fall of the United States most likely will not come with a bang, but a long, deep, painful exhalation.

The link that leads off Jack's piece has been getting quite a lot of attention in the blogosphere. Namely, it is Professor Bainbridge's jumping off of the conservative bandwagon. Or not. Maybe it's his jumping from wagon to wagon; I'm not exactly sure which.

Prof. Bainbridge is usually so clear that I always get where he's coming from. But today, it seems a little as if his doubts have gotten the best of him. I find it hard to believe that he now sees the light of the WMD issue. He also invokes Vietnam. And he veers very close to, but does not actually touch, an endorsement of the theory that fighting terrorists only causes more terrorism.

His point, I think is that the war in Iraq has stifled the conservative moment in the US.

Look, Bush is not a conservative. Never was, never will be. He's a bigger and sloppier spender than all Democratic presidents put together. Don't believe me? Go read the highway bill. There is so much pork in that thing that the entire country will soon be covered in lard.

And tell me, what's conservative about selling out to the credit cartel? If the prof is talking about social issues, well, he's going to have to wait for a long time. I still contend that a liberal is nothing more than a conservative with a pregnant teenage daughter.

Bainbridge tries to further explain his argument here, saying, in essence, that he's pissed about Iraq because of the "domestic implications." Does this mean that if the nation was foursquare behind the president that he would be okay with the war?

He says this:

The source of my frustration, as Steven Taylor put it, however, is that the Iraq situation (a) makes it harder for Bush to turn around and start moving the domestic conservative agenda and (b) makes it less likely that the Congressional GOP will start leading on that agenda on its own.

I'm fairly against most of what passes for a "conservative agenda" nowadays, so I guess I'm happy. Oh, and by the way. The liberal agenda? Pretty much sucks, too.

But left and right are now jumping on the good Professor to either praise or bury him. My opinion? Glad you asked. I think Stephen Bainbridge is one of the most gentlemanly, erudite and insightful bloggers we have. But in this case, I think that he argument has become a bit muddled. If his objection to the war--in retrospect--is based solely on the loss of conservative domestic monopoly, he's not going to get much help from either side.

So have we arrived at the beginning of the end of the American hegemony? Possibly, in some ways. We may indeed fall victim to our own genius and success in opening up markets and exporting a culture that others would like to emulate and still others want to destroy. But the US won't disappear like a gigantic Brigadoon. After all, Rome is still there. Isn't it?

Comments

[Vavoom]

Firm up ties with India? Didn't India recently state firmly that they wouldn't send troops to Iraq?

[Daniel]

V-

India's announcement was seen by many in the administration as a pragmatic decision. Remember, India, I believe, has the second largest Muslim population in the world and is working towards some sort of warming with Pakistan. Sendig troops to Iraq would be problemaic for a number of reasons.

[Dave Schuler]

You go to war with the President you have. Professor Bainbridge is horrified to learn that GWB is not a conservative. Well, he never was.

The idea that we would not be at war right now but for Bush is a pleasant fantasy but it's a fantasy nonetheless. The only standard-bearers that the Kos/MoveOn can find are total nutjobs. Even their darling, Wesley Clark, is realist enough to know that simple withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake.

Look, I wasn't in favor of the invasion of Iraq and I've never been a neocon. I still don't believe that we're going to turn Iraq into a Jeffersonian democracy in the near term. I'm amazed that there's as much of a democracy movement in the Middle East as there is. But Cindy Sheehan notwithstanding we're going to have an active military presence in the Middle East for the foreseeable future and anyone who thinks otherwise is in the same position that Hitler was in at the end of World War II, ordering non-existent divisions into battle—out of their minds.