Is it any wonder that only 22% of people polled can name the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, while 66% can name at least one celebrity judge on American Idol, or that more people can name all five of the Simpson family members than can name the five freedoms protected under the First Amendment?

This misdirection of energy and attention cannot be without negative consequences for the future of American society. Much as Rome's rejection of the fundamental social, spiritual, and cultural components that made her a mighty empire precipitated her downfall, America's preoccupation with "bread and circuses" to the exclusion of more important matters portends a bleak future for our republic.

Who is responsible for this unfortunate phenomenon? Many blame the media for our obsession with entertainment. After all, the media bigwigs—the proverbial wizards behind the curtain—decide what to broadcast and what to leave on the cutting room floor. Are these behemoth corporations, in their quest for ratings, feeding America's baser instincts? Are they exploiting our prurient nature in order to make a quick buck? Even if this is the case, the American people are still left holding the bag of responsibility. We choose what media to consume, which websites to visit, which books to read; we choose how to allocate our time and attention. We are the ones who find reality TV and celebrity culture more entertaining, more fun, less boring, and less hard, than the real world.

But reality TV is not reality, and the truth is that many celebrities' lives are plagued by drug abuse, domestic scandals, and professional failure. From Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, to Anna Nicole and Heath Ledger... the lifestyles of the rich and famous often end in desolation and despair. Yet our society has deified these individuals and glamorized the lives they portray, leading more and more Americans to feel that the only kind of life worth living is a life lived in front of the camera.

The price paid for this delusion is that our society is increasingly losing its ability to celebrate what English writer, philosopher, and Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton called the really human things—those things required for a just society to endure. And as our spirits become more vacant, more disordered, and more obsessed with titillating drivel, we run the risk of suffering the same decline as our forebears in the Roman republic. As Kirk noted, "The late Roman world, then, was a culture spiritually impoverished and disordered, lacking a common core of belief. It has been called a dead world: a time in which the old Roman virtues had been lost by the mass of men.... It was a world spiritually and intellectually bored. Mankind can endure anything but boredom. Because men could not order their own despairing souls, the order of the commonwealth could not be saved."

We Americans must ask ourselves whether we are prepared to suffer the fate of our Roman forebears, or whether we are wise and disciplined enough to learn from their mistakes and make the changes necessary to get this great nation back on the right track.