What causes the slide from greatness? Perhaps the answer was provided Lord Alexander Tytler, on the fall of the Athenian republic, who said: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
Don't think so? Well, maybe it doesn't always have to be that way, but just look at one of the most famous examples:
We are now in the beginning of a third millennium, consider that even before the inception of the first millennium, at a time when Rome had reached its zenith in both wealth and power, before it became an Empire and before the advent of Christianity, there were those who spoke out against the politics of envy and growing confiscatory taxation while trying to explain the reasons for the general dissatisfaction of the population (stop me if this sounds familiar!). Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) predicted civil strife, revolution and the fall of Rome--the shining city upon the hill--as the populace traded their votes and their vigilance for panem et circenses(bread and circuses), and their rights and liberties for false security and the yoke of oppression.
Cicero pleaded to his fellow lawyers to challenge the lawmakers and cry to them, "This is unconstitutional and an affront to a free people, and it must not pass!"He asked, "Will you rise up from your offices and tell the people the inevitable fate of Rome unless they return to virtue and thrift and drive from the Senate the evil men who have corrupted them for the power they have to bestow?"
The Roman people continued to trade their voices and their votes for state benefits. As Cicero struggled to change things, "moderate" politicians and the "establishment" were seeking to silence him. He pleaded his case before the Roman Senate, but influential senators such as Julius Caesar, Marcus Crassus, and Pompey the Great just turned away from him. Cicero warned, "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."At the same time, the bustling middle class told him, "We do not meddle in politics. Rome is prosperous and at peace. We have our villas, our boats, our houses, our comforts and treasures. Do not disturb us with your lamentations of disaster."
Later, when Brutus came to Cicero complaining that Caesar had betrayed the Republic, Cicero responded, "Do not blame Caesar. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall be Rome's, with 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.'"
As forewarned by Cicero, the Roman Republic after nearly 400 years of glorious constitutional rule, triumphant conquests, and enormous expansion, fell prey to populist demagogues who claimed to speak for the people and the lower classes, but spoke for their own selfish ends and their unquenchable thirst for political power. They promised land, bread and circuses; instigated riots and insurrections; and preached class hatred and warfare. A long, bloody civil war ensued, chaos reigned, and the ancient Roman precept of the rule of law was discarded. The Republic was transformed in to a tyranny of the government-dependent majority--a majority that, no longer informed and vigilant, could be manipulated on the promise that its members would be given other peoples' money, land, and wealth.
In the end, as law and order disintegrated, the citizenry yearned for peace and security, and ended up giving up their liberties and handing power over to a dictator, Julius Caesar, who overthrew the Republic in 44 B.C. The Roman citizens gave up their votes and their constitutional, republican principles happily, to partake of public largesse and other panem et circenses, to which they had become immorally inured.
Excuse me? Why do I feel like this is torn from the front page of today's paper? Just substitute the names with those of today's politicians, and the story might just as easily run on the evening news as the History Channel. So now that we recognize the trap, will we avoid it? You know, forewarned is forearmed, and all that?
Probably not. Georg Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831) said, "What history teaches us is that men have never learned anything from it."
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