What Price Peace?

When I first heard the statement, it shocked me. After a moment's thought, it frightened me. An apologist for the welfare state opined on Fox News this morning that we have to continue the unemployment benefit extensions and the expansion of food stamps so that we don't end up with riots like Greece. Really? Americans will turn to violent revolt if we don't give them what they want. Has it really come to that?

As Rome slouched toward collapse twenty centuries ago, one contemporary commentator moaned that her citizens were being bribed with "bread and circuses." The comment I heard this morning sounds eerily similar. In her column posted last year on the Bloomberg web site, "The Danger of Living on Bread and Circuses,"  Alice Schroeder said, "Drowning a country in vicarious debauchery may be a lousy way to sustain a civilization. Still, there is something to be said for Half Pint Brawlers and its ilk. TV-watching keeps people at home, instead of marching in the streets."

There must be other less costly, more righteous ways to keep people from "marching in the streets." Certainly there are better ways to spend one's time than watching anything television has to offer. In fact, I suspect that modern entertainment does more to incite marching in the streets than to curtail it. The glorification of wealth, power and sex which dominates all forms of entertainment only whets the appetite of already hungry people.

A 2009 study cited by Schroeder claimed that people over 15 spent 58% of their leisure time in front of either a TV or a computer. My guess is that the majority of those TV hours were not on the History Channel and the Internet time was not spent taking free online college courses. Entertainment, games and social networking consume vast quantities of most Americans' time. Given such a diet filled with "vicarious debauchery," it is not surprising that a mood of unrest might be abroad among the people.

And so because my conservative values preclude any thought of censorship of the circuses, I can only agitate for self-discipline. I struggle with it myself, but I recommend the Apostle Paul's attitude of being content no matter the circumstances. I wonder if I am being utterly foolish to think that the only healthy way to keep Americans from marching in the streets is to encourage healthy habits at home: reading the Bible instead of watching WWF Smackdown; playing Monopoly instead of Grand Theft Auto; taking an invigorating walk through the nature center instead of spending an inebriating evening at the sports bar.

God help me; I think I may have turned into a crazy old geezer. Now I am frightened again; this time I fear that a conservative, biblical lifestyle, which is the answer to almost all society's problems, begins to sound ridiculous. Maybe we had better increase the food stamps.