In Greek mythology, the prophetess Cassandra was doomed both to tell the truth and to be ignored. Our modern version is a bankrupt Greece that we seem to discount.
News accounts abound now of impoverished Athens residents scrounging pharmacies for scarce aspirin — as Greece is squeezed to make interest payments to the supposedly euro-pinching German banks.
Such accounts may be exaggerations, but they should warn us that yearly progress is never assured. Instead, history offers plenty of examples of life becoming far worse than it had been centuries earlier. The biographer Plutarch, writing 500 years after the glories of classical Greece, lamented that in his time weeds grew amid the empty colonnades of the once-impressive Greek city-states. In America, most would prefer to live in the Detroit of 1941 than the Detroit of 2011. The quality of today’s air travel has regressed to the climate of yesterday’s bus service.
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In 2000, Greeks apparently assumed that they had struck it rich with their newfound money-laden European Union lenders — even though they certainly had not earned their new riches through increased productivity, the discovery of more natural resources, or greater collective investment and savings.
The brief euro mirage has vanished. Life in Athens is zooming backward to the pre-EU days of the 1970s. Then, most imported goods were too expensive to buy, medical care was often premodern, and the city resembled more a Turkish Istanbul than a European Munich.
The United States should pay heed to the modern Greek Cassandra, since our own rendezvous with reality is rapidly approaching. The costs of servicing a growing national debt of more than $15 trillion are starting to squeeze out other budget expenditures. Americans are no longer affluent enough to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to import oil, while we snub our noses at vast new oil and gas deposits beneath our own soil and seas.
In my state, Californians for 40 years have hiked taxes; grown their government; vastly expanded entitlements; put farmland, timberland, and oil and gas lands off limits; and opened their borders to millions of illegal aliens. They apparently assumed that they had inherited so much wealth from prior generations and that their state was so naturally rich, that a continually better life was their natural birthright.
It wasn’t. Now, as in Greece, the veneer of civilization is proving pretty thin in California. Hospitals no longer have the money to offer sophisticated long-term medical care to the indigent. Cities no longer have the funds to self-insure themselves from the accustomed barrage of monthly lawsuits. When thieves rip copper wire out of street lights, the streets stay dark. Most state residents would rather go to the dentist these days than queue up and take a number at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Hospital emergency rooms neither have room nor act as if there’s much of an emergency.
Traffic flows no better on most of the state’s freeways than it did 40 years ago — and often much worse, given the crumbling infrastructure and increased traffic. Once-excellent K–12 public schools now score near the bottom in nationwide tests. The California state-university system keeps adding administrators to the point where they have almost matched the number of faculty, though half of the students who enter CSU need remedial reading and math. Despite millions of dollars in tutoring, half the students still don’t graduate. The taxpayer is blamed in constant harangues for not ponying up more money, rather than administrators being faulted for a lack of reform.
In 1960, there were far fewer government officials, far fewer prisons, far fewer laws, and far fewer lawyers — and yet the state was a far safer place than it is a half-century later. Technological progress — whether iPhones or Xboxes — can often accompany moral regress. There are not yet weeds in our cities, but those too may be coming.
The average Californian, like the average Greek, forgot that civilization is fragile. Its continuance requires respect for the law, tough-minded education, collective thrift, private investment, individual self-reliance, and common codes of behavior and civility — and exempts no one from those rules. Such knowledge and patterns of civilized behavior, slowly accrued over centuries, can be lost in a single generation.
A keen visitor to Athens — or Los Angeles — during the last decade not only could have seen that things were not quite right, but also could have concluded that they could not go on as they were. And so they are not.
Washington, please take heed.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of the just-released The End of Sparta. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
Mr. Hanson, we all know what you're talking about, but I wish you had made a much stronger point that the biggest reason for the troubles you describe are the democrats and their socialist agenda. We have a cold civil war in this country and the enemy has controlled California for so long, the state is on the verge of extinction. California should have its statehood revoked and be reverted to a US territory under federal control (if and when Americans find a way to reclaim the federal government).
Somebody who goes by "Looking 4 Liberty" wants to revoke the power of a state's democratically elected officials in favor of federally appointed bureaucrats. I think I just got my irony fix for today.
Wait until your tax dollars are used to bail out California, and then New York, by the Federal government, then talk to us about those same "state's democratically elected officials". The state of California, and those elected officials, is playing you and us for suckers, because they consider themselves "too big to fail".
Democrats are not the only Socialists. The debt under George Bush grew tremendously. Republicans voted in another huge entitlement with the drugs flip or seniors. I don't hear any candidate other than Paul talking about cutting back in the ways we must. Ron Paul is our modern-day Cassandra.
Who is listening? Oh I forgot; he is looney. Rather it is sane to borrow .40 on the $ to support wars that are not declared and for which we can not define victory.
Did you not read last week's column? Victor is in favor of going into debt for military reasons, he (like everyone else) seems to only want to cut the programs he doesn't approve of. Ron Paul suffers because he doesn't pander to anyone's pet ideals. He thinks getting the country out of debt should have priority, but too few of us seem to agree.
Many of us have been ringing the alarm bell in California for two decades. And the influx of illegal aliens has had the effect we predicted. Illegal aliens aren't the cause of our decline. But, every problem we have is made worse by the millions of illegal aliens in our state and our country. Crime, education, healthcare, employment and the environment are all negatively effected by illegal immigration and yet it continues.
The Sacramento establishment appears to be as corrupt and incompetent as those in Washington, DC.
I would guess some Romans were predicting the collapse in the 5th Century A.D. And most people just ignored the warnings until Alaric came through the gates of the city, opened by his allies, and then sacked Rome.
No, what is even sadder was that Alaric's sacking of Rome wasn't even that big a deal at the time, save for the blow against morale. That's when you know it's bad.
The bright light in the 'dark ages' was Christianity. The Holy Roman Catholic Church and its members built cathedrals, universities, and hospitals. Monasteries and Abbeys spread education to the general public. Christians campaigned and defended Europe from invading hordes of Turks and Huns. Christianity codified the ethical standards that civilized the west. It was the spring board to our greatest successes as a civilization.
The dark ages are coming as our country and Europe lose their Christian values. People without Christian values have no moral reason to uphold the ten commandments which include the proscription against stealing, lying, cheating, and murdering. People aren't born with compassion. Christianity is the only religion that dictates compassion. People who oppose this view will use examples of Christians who have done bad things. Humanity is prone to doing bad things by its very nature, but the ugliness of atheism or the absence of Christianity was demonstrated clearly by the millions killed by communism, which continues to torture and kill its subjects in countries like China and Cuba, and the millions killed by socialism in Nazi Germany, Mexico, and Central and South America. Because communist and socialist governments reject Christian doctrine they cannot be held accountable in their behavior using Christian values. Liberals in this country exemplify this in that they throw Christian values of fairness and respect for the lives of others in the faces of conservatives while living lives and enacting laws that are in direct conflict with those values. You can't hold them accountable, of course, because they don't adhere to Christian doctrine in the first place.
Islam originated around 625 A.D. It began with a core group of converts, but found that it couldn't expand with out violently forcing people to convert. By the time Islam spread throughout the middle east and northern Africa, Europe was predominantly Christian. A cross section of both societies would reveal wealthy rulers and poorer subjects. Education is available to some but not all. If you look at the progress of Christian society as it compares to Muslim society over the last 1500 years it's obvious that intellectual, cultural, social, scientific and technological advances were made rapidly in Christian societies and little or not at all in Muslim societies. For instance, it's still legal to stone a woman for adultery in countries that follow sharia law. Even in the U.S. Muslims commit honor killings. Slavery exists in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. There are no moral tenets in the Koran that would inhibit the tolerance of slavery, or prohibit the practice of killing women for 'adultery' or killing anyone for homosexuality. There are Bible scriptures in the New Testament that are explicit in prohibiting this kind of stuff.
If you read the Koran and then read the Bible you can see why it would be difficult for a community or a country that followed the teachings of the Koran to progress very far as compared to one that followed the Bible. If you think I'm wrong find me a country that it would be more comfortable to live in that has been dominated by Islam for the last 500 years.
Well, this is simply wrong. Islam had a brief flourish and has declined steadily since. got anything in your house, that isn't a weapon, that proudly says "Made in Syria"? Or Jordan or Saudi Arabia or any other islamic nation? The religion has stagnated and so have its adherents.
What we face now is a reversal. Christianity reformed itself and returned to its basic teachings. Islam is at a cross roads. The reactionaries wish to remain in the 7th century while progress leaps forward all around them.
The guys who did 9/11 flew planes their culture could not build into structures their culture cannot build while relying on technology thier culture cannot create.
It is just silly to make a point of Islam in the middle ages. Compared to christian europe perhaps their was a point in time when the had more, did more, contributed to progress. But ultimately it was the Euro's that excelled and the muslims who stagnated.
Emperors Diocletian and Constantine saw the coming economic wrecking ball that led to the destruction of what would be considered today as the Western Half of the Roman Empire.
Both tried to correct Rome's economic trade imbalance with the Chinese. Both failed.
History repeats itself, and America's day of economic reckoning will come if we do not come together as a nation and use our minds and resources to address and control our budget problems.
It's up to us to do better than what Diocletian and Constantine attempted in addressing their economic problems or prepare for the arrival of a modern day Alaric and a new Dark Age.
Dr. Hansen wrote on this very subject a few weeks past. Also, Dr. Hansen might not have made this observation of Cassandra: most prophets are ignored. Heck, Doctors are ignored all the time. They give a likely senario of the results of over eating and lack-of-exercise.
This poster sees regression of civilization in most of the large Michigan cities. They turn into "donuts", fair suburbs around a hole in the middle. Flint, Saginaw, Pontiac, and - the worst - Detroit all show this regression. What Dr. Hansen can't say is these cities cross the line of pure Democratic party majority and when that happens Democracy itself breaks down, the taxpayers are mere targets for the politicians, and the criminal element smiles. Oh, I'll be attacked by the various trolls for posting the truth. But the trolls are agents of chaos and they overtly like the regression of the USA. The present generation is held accountable for the sins of the past and all that non-sense. That is why some of the more evil trolls at NRO don't mind giving their children tens of trillions in government debt. They want their children held accountable for others sins. Regression has a lot of warped allies.
It matters not to the ruling class that the whole of civilization suffers under their watch. They have a resentful majoity and the politics of envy is one of the most useful ways for destruction of a civilization ever invented.
With Irony it should be noted that the last Commandment is "Thou shall not covet". That is the gateway sin. If you covet then it justifies a lie, stealing, and murder. Civilization can only exist if the sins are kept in check.
Dr. Hansen might want to consider quietly buying some land in Canada and making friends with Mark Steyn because he will have a place to run in 2013.
The Hunter Thompson comment I recall (may have been in The Great Shark Hunt) was he said Carter's campaign to give the American people a governmnt "as good and kind as they were" sounded familiar; Thompson finally realized Carter was saying the American people were going to get the government they deserved - and we have. The decades of liberal crusade against the old values bears new fruit daily.
Oh joy... NRO has attracted a new site pest. Perhaps "Max" just needs to return to either dailykoz or Atlantic. They write simple articles designed to appeal to those types who reply with very simple one sentence posts and run off yapping their delight over a pointless bromide.
See ya, Max. This is where the adults write. The little socialist kids post at the other two sites.
I promise you suffer from the same disease and are as guilty as those whose weakness is food.
In fact I think God hates smugness far more than people loving the food that he gave them too much! Sins of strength are always worse than sins of weakness.
I also know a lot of overweight people who contribute several thousand times the wealth to society as certain average weight individuals.
It's not a myth that you can be honest about weight without being a stinking b hole! Those people who act that way suffer from a far deeper rot in their soul than the overweight.
RE: The "gateway" Tenth Commandment. That's why I always refer to the one party concerned who promotes it's violation as the Demo-Covets (people covet or coveting people). In 2012 their promotion will get much more intense.
