…Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions – everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

— from Wikipedia, from Juvenal’s Satire X.

I hate to be that glass-half-empty guy, but it sounds about right for much of society’s relationship with its government these days. I suppose, as they say (to follow one cliché with another), “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

He presents a strong and compelling first lecture on the subject here.

Perhaps the most important thing we can take from this is the issue of responsibility. As he states, “The most outrageous part of this story of corruption is that this is corruption primed by the most privileged within our society. And the second most outrageous part is that this is corruption permitted by the passivity of another class of privileged, namely us.”

While those of us who are “wealthy, secure, and articulate” have not committed the wrongs leading to corruption of our government, we are complicit in these wrongs if we sit back and fail to take action.