"The Lessons of the Roman Empire for America Today"

[tocqueville]

http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/hl917.cfm

Q: It is in a sense ironic that this lecture is named for Russell Kirk, one of the early “paleoconserva­tives” who would, like Pat Buchanan, favor a republic rather than an empire. What is the fate of those of us who would prefer our American Republic rather than the imperial superpower role into which it seems to be segued?

A: The American people will have to make that decision as to whether we want to be a free repub­lic or a superpower. That is a crossroads that we will come to just as the Romans did. They first attempted to govern their empire with this old constitution, and it simply did not work. It is, however, possible to adopt a constitution so that you preserve the essence of political liberty and, at the same time, develop the institutions that can govern such an empire and preserve and expand the position of a superpower that brings peace and prosperity to the world.

.....................................

this article shows the thinking of the Heritage Foundation :

1) becoming an Empire is "good", we don't even hide that we want that

2) other liberal democracies are a threat, no to talk about "Persians"...

3) only a military dictatorship can be the solution, the US consitution isn't adapted to that task.


so that's what the thinktank behind Bush is about. You cannot say you haven't been warned.... couldn't be more explicit

[bloom]

1. This is nuts... $%#^ @#%&@ ^%#*&^

"By an absolute superpower I mean a nation that is dominant militarily, politically, economically, and culturally. The United States is absolutely dominant militarily, politically, economically, and we dominate the world culturally. We may never produce a Beethoven or a Bach, a Goethe or a Shakespeare. That is not how our culture dominates. It is our music, our McDonald’s, our popular culture that spreads all over the globe. Look at a terrorist. He will be holding someone hostage while wearing sneak ers, Mickey Mouse tee-shirt on, listening to terrible music and dreaming of a McDonald’s when this is all over. That is how our culture rules the world....

Lesson one would be that liberal democracies do not make for good neighbors. The liberal democracies of Greece led to constant war... The peace and prosperity of the Roman Empire was brought about by subordinating those liberal democracies to an all-encompassing imperial rule. The Romans were not afraid to take up that bur den of imperial rule. As the poet Virgil said, the Greeks will always be our superior in literature and sculpture, even in science. It is the destiny of the Romans to wear down the haughty and to raise up the weak. That is how they saw their mission in bringing peace.

Second, the institutions of freedom are very dif ficult to transfer. The Roman Republic was a nation of liberty and, under law, a democratic republic. That could not be transferred to other parts of the world. The Romans came to understand that free dom is not a universal value: that people over and over again have chosen security, which is what the Roman Empire brought, over the awesome respon sibilities of self-government.

Third, the Romans learned that you cannot gov ern a world empire with a constitution designed for a small city-state. That is what Rome was when it was founded in 753, and when it became a republic in 509 B.C., it was a small republic by the Tiber River. That constitution could not bear the burden of a world empire, and the military dictatorship of the Caesars was a result of the decision the Romans had to make. Did they wish to remain a free repub lic or be a superpower? They chose to remain a superpower and to accept the military dictatorship of Julius Caesar and his successors.

That was their fourth lesson: Once you have begun upon the path of being a superpower, there is no drawing back... Once you have become a power, you cannot step back from it; you have aroused too much hatred..."


:nuke: :grr: :nuke: :grr: :nuke: :grr: :nuke: :grr:

[teryang]

2. The author is delusional

The balance of power has been shifting away from us at an accelerating pace in the last several years.

The manufacturing base has been shifted to Asia. We are no longer the productive powerhouse of the world. History shows that when industry is exported, capital follows. The elites of the former hegemonic power become corrupt and cruise on prior capital accumulations invested in the new dominant foreign markets while the professional and working classes at home suffer a loss of standard of living. Power, political, commercial, and military ebbs away. Fear of competition causes excessive risk taking to secure a detiorating position. When elective overseas military campaigns are embarked upon and fail, the decline accelerates.

[bpilgrim]

3. our modern day Ciceros, shill'n for the man, same as it ever was...

The Assassination of Julius Caesar

A People's History of Ancient Rome

Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the Late Republic of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility. They regard Roman commoners as a parasitic mob, a rabble interested only in bread and circuses. They cast Caesar, who took up the popular cause, as a despot and demagogue, and treat his murder as the outcome of a personal feud or constitutional struggle, devoid of social content. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, the distinguished author Michael Parenti subjects these assertions of "gentlemen historians" to a bracing critique, and presents us with a compelling story of popular resistance against entrenched power and wealth. Parenti shows that Caesar was only the last in a line of reformers, dating back across the better part of a century, who were murdered by opulent conservatives. Caesar's assassination set in motion a protracted civil war, the demise of a five-hundred-year Republic, and the emergence of an absolutist rule that would prevail over Western Europe for centuries to come.

more...
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Caesar.html

****** This book was chosen "Book of the Year" 2004 (nonfiction) by Online Review of Books (www.Onlinereviewofbooks.com). ******

peace

[cliss]

4. A frightening quote from an article about

the 'Decline of the Roman Empire'.

"The Empire makes a tacit agreement with the people that it will go out and loot wherever it can. The people get to enjoy the loot that's brought home.

In exchange, they offer up their young people to go out and fight and die in the Empire's wars of conquest."

Ugh. It's not without "gain" to the people at home.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Sparta sure as hell was not a "liberal democracy", at best it was a

"Q: You mentioned that liberal democracies make bad neighbors, and that stands in stark contrast with our current belief that democracies won’t attack one another and, therefore, all the world should be a democracy. How do we extrapolate that lesson to today’s world?

A: There are two ways of doing that. One is what most contemporary analysts do when they refer to the ancient world: define out all other democra­cies. They say the democracy of Athens was not a liberal democracy because individual rights were not guaranteed. That’s just nonsense. The individ­ual Athenian had a core of rights guaranteed as much as anything we have today, such as the right to trial by jury, freedom of speech, so it was as much a liberal democracy as ours is by its own lights. Sparta, too, was a democracy. Yet Greece was literally destroyed in its greatest age by the long war between Athens and Sparta. It was essen­tially a war over competing ideas of freedom.

Moreover, the most democratic century in histo­ry was the 20th century, and it was a century of the two greatest wars. Hitler came to power in what was a democracy, the Weimar Republic. So I think it is a very false notion that liberal democracies do not go to war with each other. We’re simply pour­ing that into the old framework of the nation-state, which has been so unstable in the 20th century."

militant one. This last paragraph disagrees with it self. When Hitler took over power and burned their equivalent of a Parliament (Reich stag), Germany was not a democracy anymore it became an empire just like the author apparently hopes the U.S. does. Hitler became emperor just like the author apparently hopes Bush or some other neocon does. I believe this is why we created the United Nations, while it may not be a pure democracy, it is the closest thing to it that planet Earth has ever had.

When glorifying the Roman empire, and mentioning his view of great emperors, he forgets such luminaries as Caligula.

His reasoning as applied to an individual seems to be, if you commit murder or other atrocities, don't stop there, become a serial killer.

Empires dumb down society and kill synergy, just when you need intelligence the most. For all it's greatness, if the Roman Republic had not devolved in to empire, it might still be around.