Rome a model?
June 16th 2007 13:33
Cenacle is big on politics this week. To sign off, here's an interesting article about immigration in Rome, a historical reflection to advance the fierce debate surrounding the issue currently taking place in America. It's interesting to me because I wrote a couple of posts about demographics in literature including many ancient epics where it was a palpable theme. My aim was to start a thread on the topic. Like all good intentions, I didn't follow it through. With this article, I am going to bring it back. (It is time, I think, to start separate categories for concrete topics like this one.)
The article itself is pro-immigration and paints a mellow picture of Rome as being a model for America to emulate. I have reviewed a book called The Cults of Roman Empire which portrays quite a more complex picture of the Roman world than this article suggests. Nevertheless, is Rome a worthy model for America to follow?
In Rome too citizenship didn't come up to multicultural people in that bloodless way Murphy describes. Several wars were fought on the issue of Roman citizenship. Rome was first a big city and the surrounding Latin counties waged bloody wars to be granted Roman citizenship. And once this pattern started, Rome began to grant citizenship to one territory after territory after much bloodletting and in the end, what was a city became an empire. For many native Romans though, this was never a comfortable trade-off, and I suspect, neither for the foreigners. They basked in the Pax Romana for a brief while but the brilliant classical civilzation succumbed to enormous inclusionary pressure brought onto it and Dark Ages ensued.
As V.S.Naipaul flatly stated some years ago, much of anti-Americanism is actually a reactionary behavior to the fears of spurned citizenship. When 9/11 happened, the over-riding fear the world over was that America would tighten the immigration procedures. The popular anti-Americanism is for the most part a mixture of anti-immgiration fantasy of the nativists and the anti-American nativist fantasy of those who want to go there. After all, sentiments such as the one where the world should have a vote in American elections were made by respectable newspapers round the world too. Or else, the oft-expressed anitpathy for constitutional requirement barring foreign-born people to be elected to presidency. A Roman parallel was achieved when a foreigner named Severus was made emperor after Marcus Aurelius, who is usually taken by many to be the symbol of the beginning of the end of the classical world.
And its not just Rome. The same barbarians who descended on Rome also ended the brilliant oriental civilzations of India and Iran. (The world was as connected then as it is now, making globalization a fatuous and an unnecessary concept. ) Such end-of-the-world scnarios are the central concerns of the epics whether it is Mahabharatha or the Old Testament, Aenied or the Beowulf. All of them are tinged with sadness by the passing of their repsective civilizations. We live in a PC world, so matters which are not mandated by the Brotherhood recieve little or no representation in art today.
All this portends to a curious fact. America is not a empire YET. but, it is one its way to becoming one and the biggest indicator is the massive flood of illgeal immigrants in the country and the persistent attempts to legalise it. Citizenship is a boundary but once its breached, it cannot be contained. No matter what the cynics say that America's moment is over, it's still a young country and it has a lot of steam in it. These massive poachings on traditional boundaries are a way to supercede them and make them obsolescent. Much of the display of anti-Americanism is actually a latent desire to be included in the folds of the republic; in essence, making it into an empire.
No matter how many times, it is said so, America is not an empire. The republic is a unique institution in history and it would be a tragedy to lose it.
The article itself is pro-immigration and paints a mellow picture of Rome as being a model for America to emulate. I have reviewed a book called The Cults of Roman Empire which portrays quite a more complex picture of the Roman world than this article suggests. Nevertheless, is Rome a worthy model for America to follow?
In Rome too citizenship didn't come up to multicultural people in that bloodless way Murphy describes. Several wars were fought on the issue of Roman citizenship. Rome was first a big city and the surrounding Latin counties waged bloody wars to be granted Roman citizenship. And once this pattern started, Rome began to grant citizenship to one territory after territory after much bloodletting and in the end, what was a city became an empire. For many native Romans though, this was never a comfortable trade-off, and I suspect, neither for the foreigners. They basked in the Pax Romana for a brief while but the brilliant classical civilzation succumbed to enormous inclusionary pressure brought onto it and Dark Ages ensued.
As V.S.Naipaul flatly stated some years ago, much of anti-Americanism is actually a reactionary behavior to the fears of spurned citizenship. When 9/11 happened, the over-riding fear the world over was that America would tighten the immigration procedures. The popular anti-Americanism is for the most part a mixture of anti-immgiration fantasy of the nativists and the anti-American nativist fantasy of those who want to go there. After all, sentiments such as the one where the world should have a vote in American elections were made by respectable newspapers round the world too. Or else, the oft-expressed anitpathy for constitutional requirement barring foreign-born people to be elected to presidency. A Roman parallel was achieved when a foreigner named Severus was made emperor after Marcus Aurelius, who is usually taken by many to be the symbol of the beginning of the end of the classical world.
And its not just Rome. The same barbarians who descended on Rome also ended the brilliant oriental civilzations of India and Iran. (The world was as connected then as it is now, making globalization a fatuous and an unnecessary concept. ) Such end-of-the-world scnarios are the central concerns of the epics whether it is Mahabharatha or the Old Testament, Aenied or the Beowulf. All of them are tinged with sadness by the passing of their repsective civilizations. We live in a PC world, so matters which are not mandated by the Brotherhood recieve little or no representation in art today.
All this portends to a curious fact. America is not a empire YET. but, it is one its way to becoming one and the biggest indicator is the massive flood of illgeal immigrants in the country and the persistent attempts to legalise it. Citizenship is a boundary but once its breached, it cannot be contained. No matter what the cynics say that America's moment is over, it's still a young country and it has a lot of steam in it. These massive poachings on traditional boundaries are a way to supercede them and make them obsolescent. Much of the display of anti-Americanism is actually a latent desire to be included in the folds of the republic; in essence, making it into an empire.
No matter how many times, it is said so, America is not an empire. The republic is a unique institution in history and it would be a tragedy to lose it.
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