Some Much-Needed Clarity on American Empire

In a recent piece for First Things On the Square, Peter Leithart has at last given us a sneak peek at some of the refreshing and illuminating thoughts on "empire" (which is to say, in our current setting, American empire) that have been gestating inside his fertile brain for the past couple years.  His uncanny ability to bring balance and clarity to highly polarized discussions thick with the fog of war is a great asset for this controversial topic.  Many right-wing Christians still need to be brought to a sober reassessment of their nation's evildoings, but without losing all sense of perspective and hurtling headlong into whichever left-wing or anarchist ideology promises the most fervent denunciation of American empire.  

In his mini-essay, "Towards a Sensible Discussion of Empire," Leithart offers ten modest theses, many of which are "truisms . . . so obvious that it is telling that they have become controversial."  Indeed, it is remarkable how many of these truisms will immediately cause many readers (including myself) to bristle, become suspicious, or even to start casting accusations like those of one commenter who compared Leithart's argument to something that might be "made by a German academic in defense of the Nazis during the period of their rise to power."  Such suspicion is perhaps not a bad thing—we should always be suspicious of any claim that appears to serve the interests of those in power—but it should not keep us from being sensible, and recognizing the difference between a truth and the abuse of a truth.  I won't of course repost the whole essay here, but will simply call attention to a couple of the most fruitful contributions it makes.

Click to read more ...

The Late Great United States: A Lament

Today, August 2, 2011, the US Congress managed to agree not to send the country headlong into bankruptcy.  While we may be glad that the threat of financial Armageddon was averted for the time being, it would be an understatement to call this a Pyrrhic victory, coming as it did at the cost of the last shreds of American credibility abroad and unity at home.  Indeed, perhaps someday this day will be remembered as a symbolic milestone in the decline and fall of the American Empire.  Certainly, whether you mourn or celebrate the end of American hegemony, it is an occasion that calls for a pause for sober reflection.  

It is a perhaps clichéd now to declare that we live in the twilight days of America's world domination; indeed, I suspect that just as the 20th century is now seen as the "American Century," the verdict of history will mark 2001, the turn of the century, as the turning point, the year when the engine of American economic growth sputtered to a halt, when America sought to flex its muscles in response to external attack and gained nothing from the exercise but the hatred of former friends, when a maverick Texan president decided to take the country on a glorious John Wayne expedition against the enemies of civilization that ended up as a ride into its own sunset.

Yet it was only the events of the past couple weeks that succeeded in bringing the fact of our decline home to me--the recognition that we live at the end of an era, on the cusp of uncertain and perhaps unhappy days.

Click to read more ...

A Breath of Fresh Air

I'm prone to forget just why it is that N.T. Wright stands head-and-shoulders above all of his colleagues and rivals in the field of New Testament Studies, until I read an article of his again, after wading through a dozen scholars drivelling an intolerably boring concoction of scholarly minutia and sudden non-sequiturs, mixed (more often than not) with a large dose of heresy.  You turn the next page of the essay collection and out Wright bursts, big, boisterous, booming, and jolly, like a Santa Claus, come to think of it, with a huge sack of goodies on his back, nuggets of insight filled with common sense, clarity, and lo and behold! orthodoxy, delivered with an air of easy jollity and peerless prose.  I found myself typing up whole paragraph-long quotations, out of pure joy at their lucidity and good sense.  They are not, by any ordinary standards, particularly eloquent, nor are they necessarily groundbreaking (although they are helpful for my Romans 13 research).  But they are excellent.  So, here's a few, from "Paul's Gospel and Caesar's Empire" (the tenth essay in the ten-times-more-tedious-than-it-sounds-from-the-title Paul and Politics, ed. by Richard Horsley):

Click to read more ...