Lately I have been doing research and writing on fitness and sports. Everybody knows the country is fast becoming morbidly fat. By official measures, two-thirds of the population is overweight, nearly one-third obese. Few people know, however, that sports and exercise have declined in per capita participation since about 1990, wiping out the gains of the so-called fitness boom — if it was real. In part, our fat is spreading because of the larger quantities of bad food we eat, especially when we eat out, as we do increasingly. Our frantic, produce-and-consume-from-cradle-to-grave society is destroying healthy home cooking. But experts recognize that lack of exercise is a greater contributor to our fatness.

As physical education in schools has declined, watching sports on television has increased. Befitting our global empire, America is replicating Roman spectatorship, not Greek participation, as a model of sport. And there are other signs of late-Roman-like corruption: the increasing gap between rich and poor; the shameful ostentation of the wealthy; the destruction of community and family, with the resulting neglect of children; the high incidence of crime and drug use; the vast numbers imprisoned; the bizarre growth of gambling; the enormous amount of time people spend watching the circus of television; the envious hatred directed at the United States from abroad; the reliance on a professional military to fight that hatred; and, most important, the absence of any viable spiritual alternative to materialism. These could be signs that the rich, imperial, winner society may become the loser society. Degeneracy predicts decline.

Several years before September 11, 2001, I asked my freshman English class at the University of Maine if, under any circumstances, any of them would die for their country. Not one student raised a hand. The question had no meaning for them. In our consumer society, sacrifice has no place. And, the students explained to me, American military technology — as demonstrated to them on television in the Gulf War and in Kosovo — had rendered dying for one’s country obsolete. War for them was a spectator sport.

They were willing, though, to let their country kill. Think what that may mean for us and for the rest of the world: war without sacrifice for us, war without end for them. It pains me to say it about these pleasant, semi-innocent young people — they were probably expressing attitudes learned from their elders — but their way of thinking was degenerate. The war on terrorism has changed nothing. What was the sacrifice President Bush asked Americans to make after September 11? Go shopping.

I am encouraged, however, by the people, young and old, turning out to protest — sometimes sacrificially, by getting arrested — the government’s barbaric rush to attack Iraq. I wish there were more of them. They are defending civilization.

Back to the Thoughts on going to war index.