Catailine = Obama ?

The Roman Republic was the period of time when Rome was governed by a complex constitution, which centred on the principles of a separation of powers and checks and balances and established a republican form of government. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy in 509 BC and lasted 482 years until its subversion in 27 BC into an Imperial form of government. A very interesting phase though is the last two generations of the Roman Republic, when it was falling apart and collapsing, and it is to this phase that I direct my comments today.

Towards the end of the Roman Republic, there were several Roman civil wars. Part of the reason for these civil wars was the increasing disregard of the Roman constitution and the breakdowns in separation of powers and checks and balances, combined with increasing militarism, rising debt, rising welfare policies, and increasing centralization of control in the executive offices in the capital of Rome.

This civil war period began with the Social War (91–88 BC), continued with wars between various top politicians and generals who pretended to want to restore the republic (Sulla's first civil war (88–87 BC), Sertorius' revolt in Hispania (83–72 BC), and Sulla's second civil war (82–81 BC)), then had a phase where people stopped pretending it was a republic anymore (Lepidus' rebellion (77 BC) and the Catiline Conspiracy (63–62 BC)), and ended with a series of wars over who would be the new dictator (Caesar's civil war (49–45 BC), Post-Caesarian civil war (44 BC), Liberators' civil war (44–42 BC), Sicilian revolt (44–36 BC), Fulvia's civil war (41–40 BC), and the Final war of the Roman Republic (32–30 BC)). I'm most fascinated by the Catiline Conspiracy, because it was at that point that I think people knew that the Republic was dead.

Catailine was a Roman politician and general who attempted to overthrow the Republic in 63-62 BC. His desire to do so lay mostly in ambition for power, but he and his followers appear to have been driven by a sense that they were being denied power that was due to them (their comments have a vague sense of entitlement to them) and it also appears that he and his followers had accrued massive amounts of debt that they wanted to cancel or wipe away in the fall of the government. He had multiple plots and schemes going, involving slave revolts, raising of various armies, and a plot to assassinate Senators in Rome, but before those schemes could come to fruition, he was exposed, fought valiantly, killed, and the plot collapsed. But the damage had been done- people had seen that the republic was dead, that the rule of law didn't exist any more, and that the age of rule of men had started. Even though he was unsuccessful, he demonstrated the template that one could follow to dictatorship, and soon the Republic was dead.

Jonah Goldberg began a recent article When Did the Rules Change? with the line "When Rome was “falling,” did it feel like it?". His article is about how the rules of the game are changing, how liberalism is dying and how are nation will once again be a conservative nation of rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances, etc. I'm not as hopeful though.

Increasingly, I feel like the damage has been done by the Obama and the Democrats, damage that is too great and too traumatic for America to overcome. I'm still hopeful that it can be done, but the damage that they have inflicted in so many ways both big and small will take a generation to repair, if that generation has the intelligence and willpower to do so.

Although Obama might only be a one-term President and although the Democrats might lose power, they'll be back, sooner rather than later. They have seen how easy it is to get anyone elected President, even someone with no intelligence and terrorist friends who may not even like America. They have seen how easily it is to fool people into giving them large majorities, where they then jam through massive complicated bills changing the very fabric of our nation without even reading them. They'll fight a ferocious and tough rear-guard action to keep these in place, and eventually voters will get stupid again and put them back in power. Although we may have dodged a dictatorship this time, it is my great fear that the damage is done, and that after a couple Republican Presidents (Romney's two terms and Palin's one) we'll put a Caesar in power and that will be the end of great American experiment in republic.