Blue Cord

The NY Times has a great opinion piece today written by Robert Harris, a historian of the Roman Empire. He draws a connection between the attack on the Roman port city of Ostia by a group of pirates and the 9/11 attacks in America.

In both cases, he notes that the attackers were not a part of a state. They were individuals who were not a part of a state. They were terrorists. But more disturbing is the fact that in both cases the people of Rome and the US moved quickly to hand over some of their rights to the government in order to be protected. In Rome, this eventually led to the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire. The people gave Pompey absolute authority to protect their freedom. Anyone who dissented was called “soft” or “traitorous.” It spelled the end for the Roman constitution.

Harris draws parallels between that vote in the Roman senate and what is going on in Congress right now.

Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the
similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of “serious” physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.

It is commonplace to say in such situations that those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it. Given the state of education in the US, it is not surprising that many people do not know history. What is sad is how many people who read Harris’s piece will still not learn from history and will still willingly trade their freedom — and ultimately their humanity — in exchange for security.

The two or three people who read my blog on a regular basis have probably noticed that the frequence of my posts dropped a good deal in September.  This is due to two factors.  One, of course, is the start of the school year, something that affects most academic bloggers.

This other is the fact that I am currently in the job search process.  My three year contract at LCC will be finished as of next May, so I am looking for a job for next fall.  Because most of the positions hold interviews at the SBL meeting in November, the deadlines for the applications fall between September 15 and October 31 (although some are later).  There are about ten positions that fit my specializations, so I have been busily preparing letters to these schools, printing out my curriculum vitae, writing my philosophy of teaching, and editing writing samples.  Because I am in Lithuania, all of this has to be done early so that the applications will arrive in the US on time.

Once all of this is doing, the bloggings will return to their previous level of profundity.

The latest biblical studies blog carnival is on-line at Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean.  Phil Harland has done a good job of pulling together the best that the biblioblogosphere had to offer in September.  For those of you who have not visited his blog before, this would be a great chance to become familiar with his work.  He covers a very different area of biblical studies than I do.