by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n By\u00a0a.d.\u00a0200, the\u00a0Roman Republic\u00a0was a distant memory. Few citizens of the global\u00a0Roman Empire even knew of their illustrious ancestors like Scipio or Cicero. Millions no longer spoke Latin. Italian emperors were a rarity. There were no national elections.<\/p>\n Yet\u00a0Rome\u00a0endured as a global power for three more centuries. What held it together?<\/p>\n A stubborn common popular culture and the prosperity of Mediterranean-wide standardization kept things going. The Egyptian, the Numidian, the Iberian, and the Greek assumed that everything from Roman clay lamps and glass to good roads and plentiful grain was available to millions throughout the Mediterranean world.<\/p>\n As long as the sea was free of pirates, thieves were cleared from the roads, and merchants were allowed to profit, few cared whether the lawless Caracalla or the unhinged Elagabalus was emperor in distant\u00a0Rome.<\/p>\n Something likewise both depressing and encouraging is happening to the\u00a0United States. Few Americans seem to worry that our present leaders have lied to or misled Congress and the American people without consequences.<\/p>\n Most young people cannot distinguish the First Amendment from the Fourth Amendment \u2014 and do not worry about the fact that they cannot. Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln are mere names of grammar schools, otherwise unidentifiable to most.<\/p>\n Separatism is believed to bring dividends. Here in\u00a0California, universities conduct separate graduation ceremonies predicated on race \u2014 sometimes difficult given the increasingly mixed ancestry of Americans.<\/p>\n As in\u00a0Rome, there is a vast disconnect between the elites and the people. Almost half of Americans receive some sort of public assistance, and almost half pay no federal income tax. About one-seventh of Americans are on food stamps.<\/p>\n Yet housing prices in elite enclaves \u2014\u00a0Manhattan,\u00a0Cambridge,\u00a0Santa Monica,\u00a0Palo Alto\u00a0\u2014 are soaring. The wealthy like to cocoon themselves in Roman-like villas, safe from the real-life ramifications of their own utopian ideology.<\/p>\n The government and the media do their best to spread the ideals of radical egalitarianism while avoiding offense to anyone. There is no official War on Terror or against radical Islamism. Instead, in \u201coverseas contingency operations,\u201d we fight \u201cman-caused disasters,\u201d while at home, we deal with \u201cworkplace violence.\u201d<\/p>\n In news stories that involve crimes with divisive racial themes, the media frequently paper over information about the perpetrators. But that noble restraint only seems to incite readers. In reckless fashion they often post the most inflammatory online comments about such liberal censorship. Officially,\u00a0America celebrates diversity; privately,\u00a0America\u00a0is fragmenting into racial, political, and ideological camps.<\/p>\n So why is the\u00a0United States\u00a0not experiencing something like the rioting in\u00a0Turkey or\u00a0Brazil, or the murder of thousands in\u00a0Mexico? How are we able to avoid the bloody chaos of Syria, the harsh dictatorships of\u00a0Russia\u00a0and\u00a0China, the implosion of\u00a0Egypt, or the economic hopelessness now endemic in southern\u00a0Europe?<\/p>\n About half of\u00a0America\u00a0and many of its institutions operate as they always have. Caltech and MIT are still serious. Neither interjects race, class, and gender studies into its engineering or physics curricula. Most in the\u00a0IRS, unlike some of their bosses, are not corrupt. For the well driller, the power-plant operator, and the wheat farmer, the lies in\u00a0Washington\u00a0are still mostly an abstraction.<\/p>\n Get up at\u00a0