How a Republic Dies

A timely book to read. “Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny”, by Edward J. Watts, ISBN 978-0-465-09381-6, 336 pages (2018).

The decline of the Roman Republic was a long process with many characters and many twists in the tale, but it can be summarized quite simply: a Republic rots from the head.

The Roman Republic began around 509 BC, when the Romans expelled their last king, and lasted until about 27 BC when Caesar’s heir Octavian became Emperor Augustus – although the Republic had obviously been degenerating for centuries before that.

The Republic was at its height in 280 BC when King Pyrrhus invaded Italy and won a major (although expensive) victory over the Romans. When the Roman Senate sent Fabricius as an emissary to negotiate terms, Pyrrhus did the normal thing of trying to bribe him into accepting a deal which was unfavorable to Rome. Fabricius turned down the bribe, saying that his reputation in Rome was worth more to him and his descendants than any amount of gold. In contrast, when Caesar crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome in 49 BC, frightened Roman Senators abandoned the city and ran.

An interesting assertion in Watts’ account is that the role of huge estates owned by the wealthy and worked by slaves (a la Spartacus) may have been over-stated as a contributor to the decline of the Republic. The underlying problem was Roman law – a farm had to be divided equally between all the male heirs. Over time, the size of each individual farm became insufficient to support a family. Since Roman citizens were expected to provide their own military equipment, those descendants of farmers became too poor to be eligible for military service. Additionally, agricultural production fell, making Rome dependent on imports of grain from North Africa.

While the situation was obviously deteriorating, Senators fiddled around enriching themselves (often through corruption), failing to address the issues. The Gracchi brothers in the 130/120s BC proposed land reforms to correct the situation, but they were murdered by forces acting for the ruling Senators, and land reform died with them. The Roman military changed as indigent citizens were hired, armed, and paid by generals, with the soldiers owing allegiance to their particular general rather than to the Roman Republic. All this led eventually to Caesar, and the end of the Republic, probably unlamented by the vast majority of the Roman population.

The particulars of the situation in the West today are of course very different from Roman times, but the story seems all too familiar. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

10 Likes

Maybe forms of government are self-limiting? They have a life span, as all mortal enterprises do?

I was writing elsewhere today about the National Popular Vote Compact. There are now enough states adopting it to make up 77% of the electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
That’ll be a switch from our republic to direct democracy.
Is change inevitable, after 250 years?
The Times Literary Supplement this week reviews a book called “No Democracy Lasts forever:How the Constitution Threatens the United States.” (E.Chemerinski)
There comes a tide in the affairs of men, when institutions, people, things, ideas, are rejected and reviled just because they are THERE, they’re standing. It totally sucks when you find you yourself have slipped over to the wrong side of the temporal divide.

6 Likes
2 Likes

Are you suggesting that for this Constitutional republic, adolescence brings senescence?

6 Likes

A rerun of the same situation in Russia:

3 Likes
1 Like

Do you mean the USA is still only in its adolescence? Personally I think that our adolescence transpired the first time we tried to commit national suicide, in the 1970s after Watergate.
If Trump doesn’t win, I reckon it’s time for me to go gentle into that good night. Try to see things from now on through my daughter’s eyes, from her perspective. WHY does she want the things she does? Because, whyever, her PoV will win out, it has to
UNTIL her generation is superceded in its turn. (ha, ha!))
We are in God’s/Fortune’s/ Time’s hands now.

3 Likes

No, not necessarily. There are conservative people her age making the next generation. (Like my thirty-something son, his equally conservative wife, and their three young-uns. And not sending them to public schools.)

7 Likes

There’s a long history of cycles of renewal within a system:

Screenshot 2024-11-03 at 9.37.30 AM

2 Likes

I concur with your timeline. In the '70’s adolescence began with all the emotive lunacy, but without the learning from mistakes, which is what happens for normals. Here, the narcissists and sociopaths got hold of the societal emotion in a period where all limits on expression were discarded. Then a societal version of progeria set in with the attendant senescence. One might observe that our esteemed ‘leader’ is obviously senile.

The interesting thing, to me at least, is the fact that, while it is au courant for the elderly and infirm to be seen (and treated) as disposable (see “MAID” in Canada), his disposition was being merely prevented from renewing the charade that he is in charge of anything. Our medium-term future, I believe, is entirely dependent on the number of manufactured votes the dems are able to create. Given their absolute control of the voting apparatus of every large city - where they can do anything they want - I am not optimistic. Success at that enterprise will only hasten the final demise of what was once a Constitutional republic designed to retain limits on state and federal power - even as limits on individual behavior disappeared completely.

The entire thrust of the enterprise of governance since time immemorial has been to place some limits on the actions of both- individuals and whatever form of state existed. Sadly, our once-promising federation has been fatally wounded; the significant injuries began to accumulate, obviously, in the early 20th century with the advent of the “progressive” era. These folks have intentionally and incrementally undone the Constitutional limits on their power and enabled the neo-Marxist utopia using the highly refined tools of the new fascism (enabled and fostered by big tech ‘media’) - initially cloaked with velvet gloves - which have recently been removed. Even worse, about half the population (as a result of the successful long march through the institutions - which we watched in slow motion and did nothing to prevent) thinks this is just fine and clambers for more.

7 Likes

There is hope. Look at this dramatic contrast between the polished old and the vigorous new:

The king has no clothes.

4 Likes

Her opponent in NH is married to the execrable Jake Sullivan

3 Likes

It would be good to understand the world through your daughter’s eyes. I have a lot of problems understanding what Lefties see.

One issue they do not appear to recognize is that every action (no matter how well-intended) will have consequences beyond the intended ones. An example is the pride that many Greenies had in the 1990/2000s about US successes in cutting pollution. Definitely a good thing! What they did not recognize was that much of the reduction came from offshoring production to other countries with laxer regulations – which did not reduce pollution on Planet Earth at all, while destroying millions of jobs for US citizens and depriving the US government of untold $Billions in tax revenue.

No-one’s POV will win out in the end. Rather, Reality will win out in the end. The US has more government than it can afford, and eventually Reality will prevail – there will be major roll-backs from the courts to the military to social security and beyond.

The decline of the Roman Republic arguably took about 150 years – 6 generations of Romans. The decline of the US Republic arguably started in the 1970s – we are now into our third generation of decline. I suspect things will move more quickly for us than they did for the Romans.

7 Likes

In the case of the Millennials, I think it’s misplaced compassion. How can we NOT feel sorry for these wretched people? (including aliens and poor Americans). A few years ago my daughter said to me with tears in her eyes in response to some remark I made about those women with babies standing in line at the border stations: “Oh, mommy! I know you would do the same thing for me, because I know how much you love me!”
How CAN we be so selfish as to put “America first!” Remember they were raised to think “bullying” is a crime. I just hope THEIR kids will stiffen up the sinews a little…

2 Likes

The compassion is not misplaced; it is wonderful that people feel compassion. The problem is that it is simply cost-free to the individual getting personal gratification from feeling compassion.

Suppose the only way your daughter could help those women with babies standing at a border station was to take them into her own home and pay for all their expenses herself? And then find a never-ending line of other women with babies standing at her own front door? Of course she would still feel compassion – but that compassion would be tempered with realism.

There is a lot to be said for having compassionate charitable acts go directly from the donor to the recipient, human being to human being. The intervention of FedGov may make the compassionate person feel better in the near-term, but there will be a heavy price to be paid in the longer-term.

6 Likes

Sentiment cannot be the basis of public policy. Individuals can have compassion. Nations cannot afford to be compassion for reasons financial and geopolitical etc

Edit: I hated W Bush and his compassionate conservatives. Many conservatives volunteer and donate their time and money to charitable causes (no NGO)

5 Likes

No, @Gavin , @Citizen_bitcoin , I get all that, I’m not arguing for it. But oh the innocence, the tenderness….just sayin’……

2 Likes

Yes! Fully agree. There is something touching about child-like compassion – whether it is for chicks that were pushed out the nest, or women with babies standing at the border. That compassion is certainly a great expression of our humanity.

Eventually, many of us come to realize that helping one person directly can harm another person indirectly. The illegal alien who is brought into the country and subsidized is better off (Hurrah!) … but the struggling citizen who then faces competition for housing and jobs is worse off (Damn it!).

The interesting question is why so many laudably compassionate individuals never come to realize that other people have to bear the costs of their well-intended compassion.

3 Likes

In the case of the millennials, I think they are very conscious of their comfort and prosperity, and they think (although as you point out, so far only in the abstract) that they/ we SHOULD bear the loss, we’ve enjoyed so much. Very Christian, really: the last shall be first, etc.

2 Likes

Who should bear the loss? Millennials or their parents?

Maybe it’s guilt not compassion? Or worse virtue signaling hypocrisy?

Not your daughter but her generation

2 Likes