Do we need an empire?
Mark Steyn, in the Telegraph, writes:
In Lee Harris's forthcoming book Civilization And Its Enemies, he talks about the threat of societal forgetfulness: "Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe."
I can't help thinking that the man is right. The experience of living on the edge is a hell of a barrier to stupid ideas. So why the headline? Well, it does occur to me that while the British still had an empire (or the Americans a Wild West) there were plenty of people around in society who had a pretty good idea just how good civilization was. I find it difficult to imagine that that the growth in the popularity of stupid ideas shortly after the end of Empire was a mere coincidence.
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