Week of July 2, 2007

Frankly, we don't much care if Tom Cruise (and other Hollywood illuminati such as John Travolta, Priscilla Presley, etc.) are Scientologists or not; we enjoy a good laugh as much as the next moviegoer. What offends us is the idea of a buffoon like Cruise playing a tragic hero of modern history. What's next? Steven Seagal as Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Jenny McCarthy as Anne Frank? Gott in Himmel!

This is the worst period in our 2,000-year history. This really is the most serious period. At this time, now, there is every danger that the entire Tibetan nation, with its own unique cultural heritage, will completely disappear. The present situation is so serious that it is really a question of life or death. If death occurs, nothing is left

There’s one warning sign from ancient Rome’s history, though, that everybody, past and present, seems to have ignored. The juggernaut of Roman conquest stalled in only two places. One, of course, was along the Rhine, where warlike German tribes held the course of empire in check. The other place was the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, or ancient Mesopotamia — roughly, modern Iraq.

For centuries, one would-be conqueror after another marched his legions into the east, only to return in disgrace, or not at all. A few decades before Diocletian, there lived a Roman emperor named Valerian, a man from a fine old senatorial family. His army was annihilated not far east of the Euphrates.

Valerian was taken as a captive back to the enemy capital, where the Persian king, according to one ancient historian, amused himself by using the Roman emperor as a footstool for mounting his horse. When the erstwhile master of the known world finally died, his skin was stuffed with straw as a trophy.