Deculturation by Immigration or an ‘Etatiste’ Assault on Civic Society: Heather & O’Donnell on Rome’s Collapse
Two recent books on the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West at the end of the Fifth Century speak trenchantly in many ways to the current condition of Europe and North America. Peter Heather’s Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (2007) and James O’Donnell’s Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History (2008) offer different, almost irreconcilable, explanations of the legendary decline and fall; but in the minimum of their shared interest in the breakup and disappearance of a longstanding and seemingly eternal world polity, the two historians, whether intending it or not, caution us concerning our own hybris. Heather and O’Donnell are participants in a reawakening of interest in the latest phase of what Peter Brown famously dubbed Late Antiquity. Both men go far in persuading us that the late Fifth and early Sixth Centuries were important for the West, formative of the Middle Ages, and not to be written off as a mere sordid epilogue to greatness.
Obama: Eyes Wide Shut on Foreign Policy?
In May 2008 then presidential hopeful Barack Obama spoke to a fundraiser of US ex-patriots in Britain via telephone link. The “special relationship” between the two countries needed to be “recalibrated,” he told the audience. “We have a chance to recalibrate the relationship and for the United Kingdom to work with America as a full partner,” Obama said. Britain’s “poodle” status would end, and in this new equal partnership that Obama would bring about, there would be times when Britain would lead and the US would follow, and vice versa.
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