The Stagnant Mediterranean

Victor Davis Hanson | Jun 06, 2013

From the heights of Gibraltar you can see Africa about nine miles to the south and gaze eastward on the seemingly endless Mediterranean that stretches 1,500 miles to Asia beyond. The Romans called it Mare Nostrum, "our sea," and these deep blue waters allowed Rome to unite Asia, Africa, and Europe for half a millennium under a single prosperous, globalized civilization.

But the Mediterranean has not always proved to be history's incubator of great civilizations -- Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Florentine, and Venetian. Sometimes the ancient "Pillars of Hercules" at Gibraltar's narrow mouth of the Mediterranean marked not so much a gateway to progress and prosperity as a cultural and commercial cul-de-sac……the Mediterranean is not a shared postmodern vacation getaway. Instead it is increasingly a stagnant premodern pond of religious, political, and economic tensions…..Before we see another Mediterranean renaissance, constitutional government must sweep the Muslim world. The fossilized bureaucracy of the European Union must radically reform or disappear. A new generation of Michelangelos and da Vincis must believe that they can think, say, and write whatever they wish in a climate of economic confidence, prosperity, and security.

Unfortunately, Mediterranean culture is reverting to its stagnant 18th-century past rather than leading the 21st century….To Read More…..