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| 5 Troubling Lessons For America From Ancient Rome |
| 2018-03-04 |
| [Townhall] The Romans spent almost 500 years as a republic before Julius Caesar’s adopted son Augustus became the first Roman emperor. The Romans moved on from having kings to becoming the first republic, to sliding backward into monarchy and tyranny and it’s not impossible that America will follow a similar trajectory. In fact, if you study Roman history, it’s not hard to see the parallels. 1) It’s Extremely Dangerous To Introduce Violence Into The Political Process: Tiberius Gracchus was an arrogant Roman Populist who cared little for the niceties of tradition and even less for the opinions of his opponents. He proposed confiscating land from the rich to give to soldiers and poor Romans. This was a terrible policy which helped lead to the fall of the Roman Republic, but unsurprisingly it was quite popular. However, there was quite a bit of resistance to the policy in the Senate and passing legislation of this sort without the approval of the Senate simply wasn’t done in ancient Rome. That is until Tiberius Gracchus found a loophole and did it anyway, earning him the outright hatred of the Senate. Later, a misunderstanding made the members of the Senate believe that their hated enemy was going to overthrow the government and make himself king. They responded to this misunderstanding by surrounding him, ripping the legs off benches and beating him to death. This was the start of a long, violent, slippery slope in Rome as political violence became ever more common. In time, politicians had their own gangs that fought in the street. Senators were knifed on the floor of the Senate and eventually, the leadership of the nation was determined by who could bring the biggest army to Rome. Here in America, we are now starting to see politically-motivated violence. Riots at Berkeley to keep conservatives from speaking. A white supremacist driving his car into the crowd. A Bernie Sanders supporter shooting up a Republican softball game. Protests where the protesters and counter-protesters bring weapons. This goes nowhere good and we would be wise to clamp down hard on this sort of violence before it gets out of hand. Four more at link. But you knew that. |
| Posted by:Anomalous Sources |
| #2 In my recent sickness I found myself listening to large parts (about the first 2/3 or so) of the History of Rome podcast. It gave me a lot to think about. I'd like to offer some honorable mentions as far as the fall of Rome: The Gracci brothers' famous grandfather, Scipio Africanus, for coming up with the business model of using a legion to enrich both Rome and the Generals of that legion. When they started pursuing that business model instead of having a working economy, they'd occasionally get stuck and grind to a halt. Sulla, for having the arrogance of thinking he'd come up with a system of political advancement that couldn't be gamed, the "Cursus Honorarium" or whatever it was called. Well, guess what, it could be gamed, and it took very little time for it to degenerate into another civil war. What Marius did after his strokes was wrong but Sulla threw a lot of babies out with the bathwater when he took back power. IMHO. Now that I think about it... Claudius, for centralizing the bureaucracy in such a way that you needed a competent emperor to make things work. AND THEN leaving everything to Nero. (Oh well. Insert my dad's joke about the woman's third husband dying from a cracked skull, because he wouldn't eat the poison mushrooms). |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2018-03-04 19:53 |
| #1 Ya missed "Bread & Circuses" aka welfare and twitter/facebook/instagram/tv |
| Posted by: Mercutio 2018-03-04 07:56 |