The Moral Authority Crisis of the American Presidency

It has been a roughly couple of days in America. In Kentucky, a suspected white supremacist attempted to attack a predominately black church; failing to get in, he murdered two innocent African-Americans at a nearby grocery store. A far-right extremist attempted to use pipe bombs to assassinate prominent Democrats and critics of Donald Trump; only through luck and the dedication of our law enforcement agencies was the plan thwarted and the suspect apprehended. Worst of all, in the most bloody incident of anti-Semitic violence in the history of the United States, a bigoted right-wing extremist murdered eleven Jewish worshipers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

It is fair to ask: what on earth is happening to America?

In such times as these, it is common to look to the person inhabiting the White House for leadership and words of reassurance. After all, the President of the United States is the head-of-state and is supposed to be the unifying individual looked upon as our leader, transcending, as much as possible in such times, the politics of the day.

American history affords plenty of examples. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt calmed a terrified and suffering nation in the darkest days of the Great Depression, promising them that help was on the war. When the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed in 1986, President Ronald Reagan spoke beautiful and moving words of comfort to a shocked people. When the Oklahoma City bombing took place, President Bill Clinton did the same. In perhaps the most moving example of all, President George W. Bush calmed and comforted the nation in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and did the same a few years later when the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed. President Barack Obama sadly had to do it several times during his administration, in the wake of the shootings at Charleston, Orlando, and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Though there were actions and beliefs of each of these presidents to which I object, they were all genuine patriots who loved their country and tried to use their position for the common good, reinforcing the moral authority that comes with the presidency.

In our own trying times, however, Donald Trump will not speak any meaningful words of comfort to the American people. First of all, he doesn't really want to. From his very first day in office, he has made it clear that he does not care about the nation at large, but only about himself. If people are killed in hateful violence, he cares only to the extent that it affects him. One can see this clearly in his blasé attitude towards the recent violence, just as we have seen in his lack of concern for the victims of the series of hurricanes that have struck our country.

Moreover, Trump psychologically lacks the ability to even attempt the comfort the nation. Being a man with absolutely no empathy, he genuinely doesn't understand why anyone should care about the sufferings of others. Indeed, he does not even fathom that there is such a thing as "the American people" at all. In the last few days, he has mouthed various platitudes about unity and decried violence, but no one has taken them seriously because he so clearly doesn't mean a word of what he says. To me, he sounds like the third grader who apologizes for saying something rude to a classmate only because his teacher demands that he do so.

Rather than try to comfort and reassure the nation, Donald Trump has spent a lot more time and energy over the past few days trying to convince everyone that this sudden outbreak of violence is not his fault. He even had the gall to say that the pipe bomb attacks happened because of media criticism against him. As always, Trump is looking out for himself and his interests above everything else. Since the first moment he announced he was seeking the presidency, Trump has done his best to divide the American people and turn them against one another for his own political gain. Nothing he has done or said has had the effect, and certainly not the intention, of bringing people together for the common good.

Trump is right to be worried about being blamed for what's happened. To say that the recent violence is at least largely his fault is as obvious as saying that the sky is blue. What do you expect from a man whose rallies revolve around a chant about throwing his political opponents into prison, who offers to pay the legal bills of any supporter who violently attacks a protester, and who proudly says he supports a congressional candidate because the man pleaded guilty to physically assaulting a reporter? If Trump is not himself guilty of committing violence, he certainly has encouraged it.

Nor has Trump denounced, as any person of dignity and decency holding the presidency should, the conspiracy theories about the pipe bombs being a "false flag" operation designed to help the Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections which have been spread by Trump supporters across the right-wing media. Again, he is making a calculation that such stories may be politically advantageous to him, so he will do nothing to stop them. In one tweet, Trump even seemed to lend credence to the false flag theories and complained that the "bomb stuff" was distracting voters who would otherwise support Republicans.

When I reflect on the man who currently lives in the White House, nothing bothers me more than to think that he holds the office once held by men such as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and other giants of the past. They were genuine patriots who loved their country, whatever their human flaws. They had the gravitas and strength of character that became genuine moral authority, which was enhanced when they entered into the high office of the presidency.

So long as Donald Trump occupies the White House, there is an enormous and empty chasm where much of the moral authority of the United States of America is supposed to reside. Whoever is the next President of the United States will face the enormous challenge of having to rebuild that moral authority.

It won't be easy.

What I Love About America: 2018

Happy Independence Day, folks!

It is July 4. Two hundred and forty-two years ago today, a group of brave and determined men voted to approve a document, written by a young and brilliant Virginian, which declared the thirteen British colonies hugging the eastern coast of North America to be an independent nation. That day in Philadelphia is rightfully seen as our country's birthday.

Now, we spend a lot of time talking about what's wrong with our country and it is true that we have our fair share of problems. Yet on Independence Day, I think it's healthy to stop thinking about those things that trouble us about our country and consider instead what we love about it. So, here goes.

I love the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. I love the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, and the hundreds of beautiful letters that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams wrote to one another in retirement. I love the journals of Lewis and Clark. I love the Declaration of Sentiments that came out of the Seneca Falls Convention. I love Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address. I love the Thirteenth and Nineteenth Amendments. I love FDR's "Four Freedoms" speech, MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech, and the speech JFK gave at Rice University in which he declared that America chose to go to the Moon.

I love Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Harper Lee, Louisa May Alcott and Edgar Allan Poe. I love Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne. I love the poetry of Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and Maya Angelou. I love The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

I love the Statue of Liberty (thanks, France!), the Liberty Bell, and Mount Rushmore. I love bald eagles and American bison. I love Mount Vernon and Monticello. I love the monuments and memorials around the National Mall in Washington D.C. I love the USS Constitution - "Old Ironsides" - launched in 1797 and still officially a commissioned warship in the United States Navy. I love the Space Needle in Seattle, the Empire State Building in New York City, and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. I love the Art Deco architecture of Miami. I love the Golden Gate Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the thousands of small bridges one passes over while driving the back roads of our vast nation.

I love the cultural institutions of New York City: the Met Opera, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Hayden Planetarium, and the musicals of Broadway. I love the museums of the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.: the National Air and Space Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of Natural History, and the National Museum of American History. I love the Boston Aquarium, the San Diego Zoo, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, and Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. I love the Library of Congress and presidential libraries.

I love the National Parks: Yellowstone, the Everglades, Yosemite, Acadia, Bryce Canyon, and all the rest. I love the national battlefields: Saratoga, Yorktown, Antietam, Gettysburg, and all the rest. I love Carlsbad Caverns and Mammoth Cave. I love the carefully preserved homes of historical figures and sites of historical events. I love the haunting stillness one can feel amid the ancient cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park and Bandelier National Monument. I love the way the wind howls through "The Window" at Big Bend National Park.

I love NASA. I love the rovers that have wandered the surface of Mars, the Juno probe in orbit around Jupiter, and the plucky little New Horizons spacecraft that flew past Pluto back in 2015. I love the two Voyager probes, still functioning decades after being launched and embarking on their lonely journey into the vastness of the Milky Way Galaxy. I love the beautiful photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and the scientific information sent back by Galileo from Jupiter, Cassini from Saturn, and dozens of other amazing missions throughout the Solar System. I love the fact that the United States was the first nation to land human beings on the surface of another world (why aren't we sending anybody these days?).

I love Texas barbecue more than words can express. I love the breakfast tacos of Austin. I love locally brewed beer and locally distilled spirits. I love the overpriced hot dogs and pretzels at baseball stadiums. I love corny dogs at the Texas State Fair. I love the cabernet sauvignons of Napa and Sonoma County and the pinot noirs of Oregon and Washington. I love New York pizza and Massachusetts haddock. I love cheddar cheese from Vermont and colby cheese from Wisconsin. I love the Steak Dunigan made at the Pink Adobe restaurant in Sante Fe. I love Boston cream pie and I love s'mores around the campfire. I love those Cuban sandwiches you can order in Florida restaurants. I love Kentucky bourbon. I love the grits, catfish, fried okra, and pecan pie of the South. I love coffee, bacon, eggs, and hash browns served at dingy highway diners by sarcastic old waitresses who reek of cigarettes. I love making dinner from ingredients purchased at farmers' markets. I love the food you can buy in family-owned restaurants in cities and town all across this bountiful country.

I love New Orleans jazz, Memphis blues and the indie rock of the Pacific Northwest. I love the bluegrass of the Appalachian Mountains, the Creole music of southern Louisiana, and the amazing music that comes out of my own beloved Austin. I love country stars singing patriotic music. I love the singing of James Taylor and Bing Crosby, the guitars of B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughn, the trumpet of Miles Davis and the piano of Dave Brubeck. I love the beautiful voices of Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Billie Holiday. I love the classical compositions of Aaron Copeland and John Philip Sousa. I love the haunting music that can be produced by the Native American flute.

I love silly American traditions. I love that the Le Pavillion Hotel in New Orleans serves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with ice-cold milk in the lobby every evening at ten o'clock. I love the singing of Sweet Caroline by Red Sox fans at Fenway Park in the middle of the eighth inning every game. I love the daily duck parade between the elevator and the lobby fountain at the Peabody in Memphis. I love the different drinks and different theme songs for each of the Triple Crown horse races. I love the emergence of Punxsutawney Phil from Gobbler's Knob on Groundhog Day. I loved the Poe Toaster, wonder what happened to him, and still hope he comes back.

I love the mystique of the Golden Age of Hollywood: Clark Gable, Katherine Hepburn, Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, John Wayne. I love old Frank Capra movies, especially Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I love the movies Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made together. I love Frank Sinatra. I love the script-writing of Aaron Sorkin, the documentaries of Ken Burns, the acting of Tom Hanks, and the films of Steven Spielberg. I love watching the Academy Awards. I love the Charlie Brown specials shown every Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

I love liberals, conservatives, and libertarians - all equally American. I love freedom of expression, and I don't much mind that it means that people can express opinions with which I disagree and which I might even find repugnant. I love that I can stand on any street corner and denounce the governor of my state or even the president of my country and not fear arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, or execution. I love freedom of religion and the separation of church and state, which allow me to worship God as I choose, and I don't much mind that it means people can practice religions different from my own or choose not to practice any religion at all. I love that even a person accused of the most heinous crime imaginable will still get a lawyer and appear before a judge in the same manner as anybody else. I love that the police cannot enter my home or search my car unless they have a warrant. I love that I can go into a voting booth and cast my ballot for whomever I wish.

I love the police, firefighters, and emergency medical workers who keep us safe every day and night. I love the teachers who work in an incredibly stressful job with little pay because they love children and care about the future of our republic. I love the volunteers who make possible the work of nonprofits like Meals on Wheels, Homes for our Troops, and Habitat for Humanity. I love the plumbers, electricians, highway construction workers, and mechanics without whom the country would fall apart overnight. I love that anyone in America can take a risk and start their own business.

I love the men and women who have served or are serving in the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, and Marines. I love the grizzled old veterans of the Second World War, who fought a glorious crusade to destroy the sinister forces of fascism. I love the veterans of Korea and Vietnam, whose heroism and sacrifice has still never been fully appreciated. I love the Navajo Code Talkers. I love SEAL Team Six, who rid the world of the evil of Osama bin Laden on an epic night in the spring of 2011. I love the 1st Battalion, 5th United States Field Artillery, formed by Alexander Hamilton in 1776 and today the oldest continuously serving unit in the United States armed forces, with battle honors stretching from the Revolutionary War to the modern campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. I love the men and women of every battalion, every ship, and every squadron who put their lives on the line every day to protect everything else I've written about in this piece.

I could go on and on and on, but I think the point I'm trying to make is pretty clear.

I love America.

Toys 'R' Us and the Gracchi Brothers

As a child, I felt that Toys 'R' Us was only a few steps away from heaven. The massive toy store, with every conceivable kind of toy or game a kid could think of, was a delightful part of life. More than thirty years later, I can still remember the route the car would take on those happy occasions when I had been especially good and my mother would take me there to pick out a new toy. I would be giddy with anticipation, imaging what new Transformer or Lego set I would carry home in all its glory. Such memories are held by millions of Americans.

Last month, Toys 'R' Us announced that it was going out of business after more than six decades, closing down all of its seven hundred and thirty-five stores. This is sad news for sentimental people such as myself, with so many happy memories of Toys 'R' Us, but it is far worse news for the tens of thousands of people who will lose their jobs.

Economists will carefully be analyzing the causes of the demise of Toys 'R' Us. Many have been quick to blame competition from Amazon, Walmart and Target. Other, more esoteric factors, such as the declining birthrate in the United States and other countries were Toys 'R' Us operates, are also likely to be noted. None of the experts are likely going to bring much comfort to the former company workers who are now going to be trying to find other ways to make ends meet.

Toys 'R' Us might have been a national chain, but the reasons for its demise are similar to those afflicting independent, locally-owned businesses across the country, which I wrote about last fall. A small number of powerful corporations are consolidating greater and greater proportions of market share into their hands. Clearly, Toys 'R' Us is not the only major retail chain to go out of business in the last few years. Some, like Blockbuster Video, were victims of the failure to adapt to the challenges posed by new technologies. The national bookstore chain Borders is gone and Barnes and Noble (which recently had to lay off nearly 2,000 workers) may soon follow, simply unable to compete with online retailers. Once mighty department stores like Montgomery Ward have gone the way of the dodo, while others like Sears are on life-support. All over the country, once thriving shopping malls now are quiet and empty, like old ghost towns in the American West. Amazon and Walmart seem likely to be the only men left standing when the dust settles.

Thus far, the ongoing consolidation does not seem to be producing a drag on overall employment. Indeed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate of the United States currently stands at 4.1%, nearly a twenty-year low. On the other hand, we have now had a steady decrease in the unemployment rate since October of 2009. If experience is any guide, the trend will soon reverse, because no one has yet devised a way to break out of the boom-and-bust cycle that has long characterized national economies across the world. And if such a massive percentage of our nations labor force is employed by such a small number of powerful mega-corporations, with no real loyalty to their employees, we might even see more ruthless job-cutting than normal when the time inevitably comes.

There is another factor at work, whose impact is only just beginning to be felt but will have repercussions so enormous that it is difficult to fully fathom them: the trio combination of automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

Of course, people have been crying foul over automation's impact on the work force for nearly two centuries. The Luddites were smashing textile machinery in England in a futile effort to protect their jobs as far back as 1811. Such people have long been dismissed as cranks and economists have pointed out, correctly, that the development of new technologies has always created more jobs than it has taken away. White collar service jobs have expanded in America even as blue collar manufacturing jobs have proportionally diminished, thanks to basic economic expansion and the creation of new types of professions, such as computer programmers.

However, the welding of automation to advanced artificial intelligence is going to be a game-changer. It is no longer a matter of using technology to make individual workers more productive, but using technology to replace human labor altogether. According to a widely circulated report last fall by the McKinsey Global Institute, between 40 million and 70 million jobs could be lost in the United States due to the automation/robotics/artificial intelligence combination. Some of the jobs to be lost are obvious and expected, such as fast food workers and cashiers, due simply to basic automation. The advent of artificial intelligence, however, means that many professions previously seen as immune from automation will be endangered, such as mortgage lenders, paralegals, and a whole multitude of other such jobs.

The authors of the report counsel us not to worry too much, however, for economic growth and the increase in the number of jobs involved in healthcare for the elderly will go a long way to make up for the jobs lost to the automation/robotics/artificial intelligence combination. Perhaps. But this certainly feels different.

As usual, there is a telling story from ancient history that might help shed some light on this strange and new development. It is the dramatic and ultimately tragic tale of two brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchis, two of the most important figures in Roman history, whose actions helped spark the downward spiral that would eventually bring down the Republic and replace it with the autocratic Empire.

The Gracchi brothers lived during the 2nd Century BC and were members of the distinguished Sempronia family. After the early death of their father, they were raised by their mother Cornelia, who went down in history as one of the greatest examples of what a Roman mother should be. They received an outstanding education by Greek tutors. Tiberius, the older brother by about a decade, was a distinguished officer during the Third Punic War and was said to have been the first Roman over the walls of Carthage. As was customary for a respected member of an aristocratic family, he began moving up the cursus honorum and was elected quaestor. Sent out to help stabilize the rebellious provinces in Spain, Tiberius negotiated with an enemy that had defeated a hapless Roman governor so as to allow twenty thousand Roman soldiers to depart who would otherwise have been slaughtered.

As his star rose in the realm of Roman politics, Tiberius turned his attention to a longstanding problem that was reaching critical proportions, to which we can draw analogies to the developing employment crisis in our own time.

Rome had originated as a society of citizen farmers and small landholders. Members of older, noble families might control more land, but the strength of the Republic was personified in the simple, stoic Roman farmer who owned his own land. Only such men were allowed to serve in the legions, for they could provide their own weapons and equipment (nobles, for their part, provided the officer corps and the cavalry). The grain of the farms fed Roman mouths and modest land taxes financed the state. For centuries, the system worked remarkably well.

The Second Punic War proved a turning point. For one thing, Hannibal's depredations in Italy inflicted terrible damage on the Roman agricultural economy. For another, the manpower of Rome was almost fully mustered into the legions, where much of it was slaughtered. For decades, Roman farms were worked largely by the women and children who had remained behind on the fields. Even after the end of the long war in 202 BC, Roman legions campaigned for decades in regions remote from Italy, going as far as Spain, Greece, and into Asia.

As the wars finally wound down with the firm conquest of Greece and the destruction of Carthage, the long-suffering soldiers returned home to find their lands (or, conceivably, the lands that they thought they had inherited from their fathers and grandfathers) were no longer theirs, but had been bought up by the wealthy citizens when the families occupying them become so desperate that they had no choice but to sell. The vast tracts of public land (ager publicus) that had been seized by Rome from its enemies had become, in effect, the private property of wealthy citizens, too. Making this bad situation even worse was the enormous influx of slave labor into Roman lands, men captured in war and prisoners from conquered cities. The common Roman citizen quickly discovered that his small farm could not hope to compete with vast agricultural estates worked by slaves.

Soon, a steady stream of impoverished people were moving from their failed farms into the city of Rome itself, looking for work or some other means of survival. The population expanded rapidly and stretched municipal resources to the breaking point. A large class of urban poor was created. Very soon, the mob that had come into being would be a decisive factor in Roman politics. Also alarming was the fact that only landowners were legally allowed to serve in the Roman legions; the growing proportion of landless citizens threatened Rome's source of military manpower.

Tiberius Gracchus recognized the dispossession of the poor from their land as a crisis which, if it were not dealt with, might bring down the Republic altogether. In 133 BC, he was elected a tribune of the plebs, an office created to protect the interest of the common people, and Tiberius took up the cause of the landless poor in general and homeless veterans in particular. He proposed a law that would redistribute land to these people, giving them the ability to support themselves and no longer be wards of the state. The Senate, whose members were universally of the wealthy, landowning class, refused to even consider these reforms. Rather than accept this, Tiberius went over the head of the Senate and proposed the laws directly to the Concilium Plebis (the "Plebian Council" or "Popular Assembly"), made up of the whole of the common people. This was technically within his rights as a tribune, and it was also technically within the rights of the Concilium Plebis to pass legislation, but these powers had not been exercised within living memory, so completely did the Senate dominate the political landscape of the Senate.

The aristocrats were determined to block Tiberius, for they had no intention of sacrificing the wealth that the newly acquired land represented. They persuaded one of Tiberius's colleagues in the tribunate, Marcus Octavius (incidentally an ancestor of the future emperor Augustus), to veto the proposals when they were passed by the Concilium Plebis. Most likely he had been bribed to do so, either with money or with promises of favors after his term as tribune ended. Tiberius saw the actions of Octavius as a serious violation of the man's pledge to protect the interests of the Roman people.

Tiberius then did something unthinkable. He instructed his supporters to physically remove Octavius from the Assembly's meeting, which they promptly did. This turned what had been a political controversy into a serious constitutional crisis, for tribunes were sacrosanct and it was strictly forbidden for any Roman citizen to lay a hand on them during their term in office. This was more than a mere rule, for it was essentially a religious and sacred obligation. In violating the sacrosanct status of Octavius, Tiberius was moving far beyond the traditional methods of Roman statesmen. Members of the Senate now suspected that Tiberius intended to overthrow the Republic altogether and make himself a king.

Tiberius now proceeded to use his tribunal powers to veto every single piece of legislation that came before the Concilium Plebis, shutting down government entirely, and asserted that he would continue doing so until his land reform proposals were made into law. He eventually was able to get the Assembly to both remove Octavius as a tribune and ram his proposals through so that they became law. A special committee was created to oversee the redistribution of land, which Tiberius promptly filled with members of his own family. The Senate refused to provide the committee with the necessary funds, but Tiberius simply allocated money to it that had come to Rome from the defunct Kingdom of Pergamum in what is today Turkey.

The Senate now believed that the survival of the Republic was at stake and that, since Tiberius had chosen to violate all constitutional norms and traditions, it was now necessary for them to do the same. After Tiberius was reelected to the tribunate (again, technically legal but a violation of tradition), he promised further sweeping populist reforms. A mob of senators and their supporters swarmed around Tiberius when he next appeared in the Forum, beating him to death and throwing his body unceremoniously into the Tiber River. For this, they earned the wrath of the common people, who had looked upon Tiberius as their hero and champion.

The younger Gracchi, Gaius, took up the cause after the assassination of Tiberius. His story was almost an identical repeat of what happened to his older brother. Taking office as a tribune of the plebs, he proposed an expansion of the land reform law, extension of Roman citizenship to other Italian cities, and the provision of grain to the poor at state expense. For all this, he suffered his brother's fate, differing only in that he committed suicide when cornered by senatorial supporters rather than being killed outright by them. Either way, he was just as dead.

The violent deaths of the Gracchi marked a turning point in Roman history. Previously, while political debate in Rome had often been heated and acrimonious, it had not involved outright violence and bloodshed. The episode of the Gracchi brothers, however, shattered long-established traditions and constitutional norms, making violence an acceptable part of the political process in the Republic. The course was now set inexorably to the violent, unconstitutional usurpations of power by Marius, Sulla, Caesar, and the eventual collapse of the Republic altogether. What rose from the ashes was the autocratic Empire, which certainly reached great heights of power and culture, but was in no way at all a free society.

When I reflect on the steady consolidation of larger and larger shares of the economy into a few powerful corporations and the terrifying potential of the automation/robotic/artificial intelligence combination to entirely replace human workers rather than simply make individual workers more productive, I am filled with foreboding. To me, the consequences might well be similar to those that swept through the Roman Republic when the small landowners were dispossessed of their farms during the 2nd Century BC. Now, as happened then, the gates will be opened for charismatic populists, for either well-meaning or self-serving purposes, to shatter the foundations of the society and so wreck its governmental framework that the whole structure will eventually fall apart.

We are currently living through an age in which the dangers of populist demagoguery are all too clear. How much more dangerous will populism be if measures aren't taken to ensure an economy that has enough worthwhile jobs for its labor force? Decades from now, when tens of millions may have been thrown out of work by artificially intelligence robots, how much more easy will it be for unscrupulous demagogues to whip the people up into frenzies?

It is, at the very least, something to think about.

The Warnings of Cyrus the Great and Cato the Elder

When Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire and one of the great conquerors of world history, was at the height of his power, a group of nobles came to him with a question. The Persians had emerged out of a rough and resource-poor region where life was hard and uncomfortable. Now that they had conquered so many rich lands, the nobles thought it would be a good idea for them to relocate their royal court to somewhere more pleasant.

As the Greek historian Herodotus describes it:

“Seeing that Zeus grants lordship to the Persian people, and to you, Cyrus, among them, by bringing Astyages low," [said the nobles], "Let us now remove out of the little and rugged land that we possess and take to ourselves one that is better. There be many such on our borders, and many further distant; if we take one of these we shall have more reasons for renown. It is but reasonable that a ruling people should act thus; for when shall we have a fairer occasion than now, when we are lords of so many men and of all Asia?” Cyrus heard them, and found nought to marvel at in their design; “Do so,” said he; “but if you do, make ready to be no longer rulers, but subjects. Soft lands breed soft men; wondrous fruits of the earth and valiant warriors grow not from the same soil.” Thereat the Persians saw that Cyrus reasoned better than they, and they departed from before him, choosing rather to be rulers on a barren mountain side than slaves dwelling in tilled valleys.

Cyrus was making an excellent point that his ancestors would have done well to remember. In his own time, the Persians overthrew the empire of the Medians, then conquered the powerful states of the Neo-Babylonians and the Lydians, creating an empire that stretched from the Indus River almost to the Aegean Sea. Even after his death, with his people retaining a feeling of their roots, the empire continued expanding, with his son Cambyses bringing Egypt under Persian sway. But as centuries passed, the Persians lost their respect for the values that had brought them success and began to fall into decadence, just as Cyrus had feared. The tough generation of Persians that Cyrus had led eventually gave way to the enfeebled courtiers of Darius and Xerxes. The once mighty Persian Empire was defeated by the Greeks and, a century-and-a-half later, easily swept aside by Alexander the Great.

It's a story repeated many times throughout history. Take a look at Rome. In the centuries following the establishment of the Roman Republic in 509 BC, the small city-state on the banks of the Tiber River maintained its independence in the face of attacks by more powerful peoples, then embarked on a campaign of conquest that brought the entire Mediterranean under its control. For centuries, law and order prevailed over a vast realm in a way never since equaled. As with the Persians, though, the notions of virtus and pietas that had once characterized the Roman mindset eventually gave way to wealth and debauchery. When this process was completed, the Roman Empire collapsed under the weight of internal decay and the spears of barbarian warriors.

I was led to this line of thinking at a recent "professional development session" for history teachers (why we don't just call them "training sessions" is beyond me). To illustrate the problems faced by students for whom English is a second language, we were asked to read a passage in Italian describing simple facts about the solar system. Some words were obvious due to their close relation to English, others could be divined through context clues, while others remained mysterious. After we finished the activity, one of my colleagues pulled out her smart phone, took a picture of the paragraph, and held up the screen to reveal a perfect English version, done by a translation "app" in less than a second. Most people in the room were impressed, but I found it more than a little unsettling.

The English language happily provides me with sufficiently strong verbs - such as loathe, detest, despise, abhor, and execrate - with which to express my feelings about smart phones. I have many reasons for feeling so, not least because they are simply the most annoying invention ever created (their only possible rival being car alarms). But my fundamental problem with them is that smart phones are a manifestation of a seemingly unstoppable social trend: things are simply getting too easy and too convenient.

If our smart phones are capable of instantly and perfectly translating one language into another, what is the use of learning another language? Most people would simply consider it a waste of time, since it is far easier and cheaper to buy a smart phone than to endure the time and rigor involved in learning to speak and write in a language one did not grow up speaking. Many will applaud this, calling it progress. After all, it makes things easy and convenient, doesn't it?

It does, but therein lies the problem. Learning another language does far more for a person than giving them a practical skill. It also trains the mind, instilling a sense of cerebral discipline and preparing us for the rigor that comes with difficult mental efforts. This is why I encourage my middle school students to take Latin when they get to high school. In fact, if I had my way, no American student would be allowed to graduate high school without a firm grounding in Latin.

This problem is as real in our physical lives as in our mental ones. We used to worry about malnutrition, fearful that our children were not getting enough to eat and would go hungry. Now, our chief health concern is obesity, because we are simply eating too much. Worse, we are eating the wrong kinds of stuff, gorging ourselves on fast food and frozen pizza that consist more of chemicals than anything resembling food. Our forefathers grew or raised their own food, earning their calories with their own sweat and effort. It made their meals rather more meaningful, I expect.

Consider one of the most ridiculous inventions we have come up with: the "StairMaster". We invent elevators and escalators to free us from the burden of having to walk up stairs. We then realize that not walking up stairs has diminished the amount of physical exercise we get and is contributing to our increase in obesity. So we invent the StairMaster, put them into gyms all over the country, and now look ridiculous as we walk up an endlessly repeating flight of stairs that goes nowhere. If we simply got rid of elevators and escalators, we could toss all the StairMasters into the garbage. Indeed, we could toss all such exercise equipment into the garbage and simply take walks outside. If it's cold, hot, or raining, so much the better, as Americans need to toughen themselves up.

Everywhere we look, we see examples of the problem. I don't know if any academic study has been done about the prevalence of the words "easy", "hassle free" or "no need to worry" and other such things in our advertisements, but I think we can guess just how common they are. We see books titled "A Complete Idiot's Guide to [Insert Subject Here], suggesting that complicated and complex ideas can be easily packaged and understood without much trouble. TEDTalks, the popular online lecture series, tries to cram expert ideas on complicated questions into eighteen minute slots, which is frankly impossible and gives the false impression that mastering such things can be easy.

One of my heroes, whose picture adores the wall by my desk at work, is the Roman statesman Cato the Elder, sometimes known as Cato the Censor. He is most famous for coining the phrase Carthago delenda est ("Carthage must be destroyed"), with which he ended every one of his speeches in the Senate, no matter what the subject. Yet in his time, he was renowned for he adherence to the old Roman ways of virtus and pietas and his opposition to the steady encroachment of luxury and dissipation into Roman society. As wealth flooded into Rome after the conclusion of the Punic Wars, Cato strenuously opposed the repeal of wartime laws limiting the amount of jewelry and finery women could display, much to the anger of the city's females. He even prosecuted Scipio Africanus, Rome;s greatest general and the man who had defeated Hannibal, for corruption and what might be called conduct unbecoming a Roman general.

Cato was a wealthy man himself, being a successful farmer and businessman, but he always ate from the same bench as his slaves, consuming the same cheap bread and cheap wine as they did. He labored in his fields alongside them. He would never have considered wearing fine clothes, content to don the shabby tunics of the peasants. Yet he also could be generous, once dispensing the hard-won loot of a military campaign among his soldiers when he might have kept it for himself.

He was against the introduction of Greek philosophical ideas into Rome, worrying that they would contribute to the disintegration of the values that the Roman Republic had been built up. Rome had grown from a small city of the Tiber River to a powerful state dominating the Mediterranean because it had adhered to the values of civic virtue, agrarianism, and individual self-denial. Becoming fixated on Hellenistic culture, Cato believed, would bring no good and much ill into Roman society. Better, by far, to cling to the old ways.

Now, Cato the Elder is an extreme case. I highly doubt that reading Greek philosophy contributed to the fall of the Republic and its replacement with the autocratic Empire. But I believe Cato was correct when he worried about the decline of traditional Roman virtue and that this was the root cause of his society's eventual collapse. In America today, we face the same choice.

Does the convenience of using smart phones make up for the dependence and loss of self-sufficiency that inevitably goes along with it? Does the ease of consuming frozen food or drive-through meals compensate for the absence of meaningful connection between ourselves and our food? Do we really think we can read a single book or listen to a single brief lecture and obtain the knowledge of a topic that can only truly come from long and in-depth study?

We would be wise to heed the warnings of both Cyrus the Great and Cato the Elder. If we really want to build the kind of society in which we want to live, we are going to have to work for it. Nobody is going to do it for us. We have to abandon our obsession with ease and convenience and come to grips with the fact that we have a heavy responsibility before us. Unless we do this, the United States of America will eventually go the way of the Roman Republic.