In a Constitution Theory class I've mentioned before, the liberal-minded professor would occasionally get off-topic. On one such occasion, Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War and makes some allusions between Athens and the United States. The thesis basically was that the US could learn a thing or two about how the Athenians fell. Athens had become alienated and engraged its neighbors. So much so, that they rised in rebellion against them. A couple years before, a professor in a humanities requirement asked us if we saw certain parallels between Athens and the United States. The correct answer was yes.

I don't remember a whole lot of the specifics of Thucydides work, though I'd like to go back over it and read it again some time. What I do remember, though, was the impression that we were more like Sparta than Athens. Sparta was a very serious, insular warrior culture with a strong work ethic while Athens seemed more culture-minded and, as time progressed, became arrogant and got their comeuppance during that war. It's that last part where people draw the connection.

The argument goes that the United States has become arrogant and so drunk with its power that it is alienating everyone else, much as Athens did. The implied solution is for the United States to stop being so heavy-handed and start engaging the world in a more egalitarian manner. The US will not be on top of the heap forever, and our arrogance will be our downfall. While I agree with the notion that the United States utter dominance of the rest of the world is likely impermanent, I don't agree with their proposed remedies.

They suggestion that our collapse is imminent and we should turn our eye towards softening the fall will only hasten it. Their seems to be an assumption that we are on top by a matter of luck or something that is out of our control. This is where we part company. I believe that we are on top because we work smarter, work harder, and have a society that encourages innovation like no other. We do not dominate the world because we starve our children to fund our military. We dominate because we don't have to starve our children. We dominate because militarily because we dominate economically. The entire concept of hegemony is based on economics. We don't go to India with guns in hand and tell them that we will install a McDonald's there of they will die. Instead, we offer them money, which they can pump into their economy and that makes them financially better off. If it didn't they would stop accepting our offers. It's not a matter of bribing the leadership, either. The more democratic a nation is, the more likely they are to have a McDonald's.

As long as our economy remains unsurpassed, we will remain on top. Of course, there are those (Will Hutton comes to mind) that suggest that our successful economy is a fluke and eventually it will be demonstrated by one and all that there is a better way. If so, I have yet to hear it. Japan looked like a threat for a while and made us re-examine our corporate structure, but in the end their financial system got the better of them. They were not successful because of their system, they were successful because of their awesome work ethic. It is in fact their system that lead to their collapse. Socialist Europe has been on the skids for some time now as barriers to innovation are constantly put up. The communitarianism over there does not make them stronger, rather it ties them down. We remain successful because we are not tied down. Unsuccessful and bad ideas are rejected and replaced when they don't work (when we're at our best, anyway), whereas there they are not. It is all issued from the top down. In the US, it's bottom up. It all begins with the consumers. A popular criticism is that consumers are merely pawns for the corporations, but really it's the other way around. We the consumers determine who succeeds, who fails, and which ideas carry on and which are abandoned. It is this, not a matter of luck or a gift from God, that makes us successful.

Athens had a superior system, too. However, theirs was based more on culture and governance than production and the military. They simply did not keep themselves strong enough and that left them overextended when the vultures began circling. They never realized this and when the Spartans joined the opposing alliance, they remained overextended until they collapsed. The United States has many faults, but overextention is not one of them. In fact, prior to 9/11 the more common complaint was isolationism. Another complaint that has been en vogue for a while is that we are ignorant of the rest of the world. Would we really be ignorant of it if we were determined to control it? To the extent that we do control it, it is with the compliance mentioned above. If they want to stop our hegemony, they need to find a way to convince their people that McDonald's does not serve good burgers at a good price. Our corporations will then withdraw and we could care less. The problem is that they can't because our products are better and/or cheaper because the ones looking at expanding have learned the rigors of competition by thriving in the competitive US markets. If they weren't better and/or cheaper, they wouldn't be buying them.

Athens became so (rightly) enamored by their (superior) ideals that they became vulnerable from a military standpoint. They were caught in the middle of the inherent conflict between an empire and a democracy. The people were uninspired to fight to their last breath and they lost. Indeed, we too could have fallen victim to that fate. We could have lost sight that before we can even have a culture, we must be able to protect it. Many argued that we indeed already had. September 11th changed all that. Prior to 9-11 we generally had a live-and-let-live attitude. When we got involved in international conflicts, it was generally at the request of the region (this includes the Gulf War). During the Cold War, a superpower was forming that, if had been allowed to grow, could have threatened our own shores. The same can be said for the Axis powers during World War II. September 11th proved to us that Islamism was also such a threat. It proved to us that if we don't engage the world, it will come to us.

We could have reacted by trying to bribe the enemy. It certainly would have been easier. However, it wouldn't have worked and we knew it. We were more concerned with defending ourselves and our way of life than we were in our own petty interests. We decided "never again" and "we will never forget" and have acted accordingly. Unlike the Athenians, we have not lost our sense of purpose. We didn't lose it by becoming an empire like Athens did. We have always been a focused society and our primary focus has always been freedom. We never forced it on the rest of the world because, quite frankly, our freedom has always come first. We intuitively knew that if we overextended, the entire enterprise might collapse. Thus, we avoid the fate of Athens.

Freedom, however, requires security. What we're doing now abroad is ensuring our security at home. What happened in Guantanamo Bay and with the immigrants being detained in the northeast against our stated ideals is to assure us that freedom will be defended. We have not become so enamored with our ideals that we would sacrifice our nation, the embodiment of the pursuit of them, to those who hate such freedom and are determined to destroy it. We have chosen to bloody our cloak so that our ideas will not die with our nation, as Athenian ones did with Athens until they were revived elsewhere. We are an idealistic nation, but realism is required to protect the best of ideas. Athenian democracy made their military response time slower. Their insistance on maintaining the ideals of Athens cost them Athens.If we had placed our ideas above the interest of protecting them, we would be doing the same.

None of this is to say that we should completely forsake our ideas. None of this is to say that there shouldn't be serious discussion whenever we do so. It is to say, however, that the surest way to follow in the footsteps of Athens is to ignore that the survival of our nation is and should always be our utmost concern.

Survival is not mutually exclusive with the unilateralism that would "soften our fall," but often it is. The International Criminal Court being a primary example. By signing on, we would potentially be tieing our hands. To carelessly sign on with the idea "it could never happen to us" would only assure that it would. By signing up for the Kyoto Treaty, we would be sacrificing the economic superiority that keeps our nation on top. That is not to say that it is sometimes in our best interest to limit ourselves, but the Kyoto Treaty was so warped that not even its biggest supporters have signed it and the Senate unanimously rejected it. We approach international issues with our national interest at heart. Signing on to programs that will drag us down and submit us to foreign nations only makes us more vulnerable. If we try to be all things to all people, we will lose the focus that has made us unique and successful. Athens became distracted with its empire. We don't have an empire, but we could very easily be distracted by "international consensus" derived largely by nations hostile to our interests.

There has never been a powerful nation that wasn't hated by the rest of the world. We could drive ourselves crazy trying to make a cushion for the fall or we could avoid falling in the first place. We choose the latter.