Harbingers of upheaval?

How soon before the Barbarians are at the gate?

Our modern society forgets just how fragile civilization is. All around us, we are seeing civilization threatened by the uncivilized or falling apart from within because of self-indulgence. Consider a few news items that might be harbingers of something bigger than a one-paragraph news brief:

1. The documents posted by WikiLeaks reportedly contain a listing of the United States' 10 most essential strategic sites, things such as computer servers, natural gas pipelines, air traffic control centers, transportation infrastructure, online banking centers, etc. Regardless of what you think of WikiLeaks, the publication of this document could be an invitation to terrorists or international enemies to pick a strategic spot or spots to plant a bomb or two. Disruption of credit transactions or automated teller networks for a few days could create chaos. It wouldn't be long before desperate people began doing whatever it takes to survive.

2. Drug gangs have taken over some cities in Mexico, killing off local elected officials, running the police out of town and replacing social and governmental networks. Parts of Mexico, the United States' next-door neighbor, are looking more and more like Somalia or some other "failed state," in which government ceases to function and the law of the jungle replaces legislated laws. This violence is already spilling over into the United States.

3. The institution of marriage is slipping among the demographic groups that were once its strongest supporters. A recent poll found "Middle America" losing its respect for marriage and young people seeing no point in marriage. Out-of-wedlock births are approaching 50 percent of all births, and the trend cuts across social, ethnic and economic strata. Children reared without the security of a two-parent household are less likely to succeed in school and careers and are more likely to suffer emotional and criminal problems. This outcome is especially acute among boys raised without a father, who, without the discipline and role modeling of a father, tend to revert to force and violence. More than 40 years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was alarmed by the potential harm to society when illegitimate births among one ethnic group was under 25 percent.

4. The decline of civic clubs and civic responsibility has been well documented. Americans have reverted to "cocooning," spending time alone or with a limited cohort of like-minded friends or relatives. Few take seriously collective responsibility for the "greater good." Even Congress seems incapable of seeing collective needs and creates gridlock over individual wants, each person or interest group unwilling to share and compromise for the whole.

5. Riots in France over delayed retirement pensions and in Britain over higher college tuition offer examples of how uncompromising anger and violence can subvert legislative processes and hasten the day when mobs take over from democratically elected officials.

6. Expatriate Muslims in Europe are demanding that they be allowed to plant their society in their adoptive countries, even to the point of ignoring local laws or establishing their own religious laws and courts. The disassembling of national authority leads to the unraveling of the social fabric and even the dissolution of nations. We have seen in the former Yugoslavia and the former Czechoslovakia that long-established nations are not inviolate and can be dismembered from within.

7. The rise of extra-national groups, such as al-Qaida, makes national governments both powerless and irrelevant. The Soviet Union could not subdue the Afghan insurgency, and the United States is having a tough time there, too. Pakistan maintains a hands-off policy toward some of its territory, which is ruled by tribal groups allied with Islamic terrorists. In Somalia and some other Third World countries, warlords have replaced national governments, which have become governments in name only. If this trend spreads, world trade and cooperation could be crippled.

8. American tax policy is increasingly favoring the "haves" over the "have-nots," with potentially dire consequences. The last time American wealth was so concentrated among the few gave rise to the Populist movement. More than a century later, the have-nots might be less willing to pursue political solutions in a system more closed than it was in the 1800s and will revert to violence instead.

The survivalists of a generation ago worried that the world would fall apart, and each man would have to defend himself and his family. The survivalists' stockpiled food and hoarded weapons and ammunition seemed comical, but today, we all have reason to be uneasy. Rome was the unchallenged ruler of the world for centuries, but it gradually collapsed from internal corruption and external attacks, and the great civilizing force of Greco-Roman culture was nearly extinguished.