The republic that’s failing

I can’t take it anymore. What follows below and next week in this space  are the culmination of a constantly nagging frustration, sadness, anger, despair, disgust and fear — fear for my children and grandchildren — all of which has been building since Barack Obama vowed 16 years ago to transform America. 

Through eight years of “you didn’t build that,” apologies for America and telling me I’m a racist; eight years of diabolical, evil lying and efforts to destroy Donald Trump; and nearly four years now of watching — daily — the nation’s ruling elites abuse and destroy the middle class economically, socially and culturally … all of that has reached a crescendo — especially now with the general and presidential elections 42 days away.

The teapot is screeching, its steam billowing. I need to lift the lid before it blows to smithereens.

In this space this week and next, if you are compelled enough to stick with me, I’ll be taking you on a journey — from 200 B.C. to now —  that I hope will have the following results:

• 1) Make you go sit in a quiet place, stare at the sky or the Gulf of Mexico and think deeply about what is happening to this once great nation and about how you and, more importantly, how your children and grandchildren are being affected and will be affected if our decline isn’t reversed. 

(First, of course, you must accept and admit the obvious: The United States isn’t ascending, it’s declining — fast. I heard Dr. Casey Means, author of “Good Energy,” say two weeks ago Americans’ life expectancy for our newest generation of children is not rising; it’s falling. It has declined recently by 600 days. Declined by nearly two years.)

Think about what that means. We are deteriorating; not just in life expectancy, but seemingly in every way — culturally, economically, physically, socially.

• 2) Help you see how democracy — rule by mob — unavoidably has brought and continues to bring increasing amounts of cultural, social and economic disintegration.
• 3) Help you realize that you are not free. Today, all of us are slaves — slaves to the State. Our democratic republic has devolved into Statism and its relatives of fascism, collectivism and rule by authoritarian elites. The State and the “collective,” the democratic mob, have crushed your liberty. If you think you own your property, your house, the lightbulbs you want, your gas stove — you don’t. The State controls them. 

I will show you how we are nothing close to a free-market economy; we are living under destructive, State-controlled economic and cultural fascism.

We have sacrificed every aspect of our lives to the State.

• 4) Help you see that neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris can rescue us, but that a Harris administration and Democratic Congress would take us further than we already are into the depths of communist and fascist rule.
• 5) Spur you to stand up for our Founding Fathers’ beliefs and vision: That our government’s No. 1 job is not to rule us, not to sacrifice each of us to the collective mob and the State. Our government’s No. 1 job is to protect your INDIVIDUAL rights. 

The individual is superior to the collective. That principle must be revived. To do otherwise will sentence your heirs to total slavery and despair — except for a few. 

It begins with Rome

Among my list of favorite books is a recent addition: “Empires of Trust: How Rome Built — and America Is Building — a New World,” (2008) by Thomas F. Madden, a history professor at St. Louis University.

Ed Tiesenga, an Oak Brook, Ill., lawyer and longtime Longboat Key snowbird, recommended it. 

For a dozen years or more, Tiesenga frequently has commented on my editorial ramblings — mostly favorably because we share the same politico-economic philosophies: for individual liberty and laissez-faire capitalism. Two odd ducks these days.

At lunch months ago, while I lamented the U.S. being on its way to repeating the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Tiesenga said I should read “Empires of Trust.” You should, too.

“Empires” factually debunks the common belief that Rome fell because of the moral decay of civil and cultural society — in Rome’s case, the orgies, debauchery, gladiator fights, “drunk on hedonism” and fiscal irresponsibility. Many see the U.S. on a similar track.

But Madden’s historical documentation shows that the fall of Rome “is complicated.” In fact, records show there were three falls of the Roman Empire: 

“The first was the fall of the Roman Republic in 27 B.C. … The old republican government was largely abolished in favor of the direct rule of one man — an emperor. … The second fall occurred in A.D. 476 when the last Roman emperor in Italy was deposed and the Germanic barbarians … took over. The third and final fall was the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, when the last remnant of the Roman Empire was conquered by the Turks.”

The factors contributing to each fall were different. Yes, the Romans had their periods of moral decay and fiscal mismanagement; they also had multiple civil wars. But as Madden emphasizes, when discussing the Roman Empire, you must remember it lasted 2,000 years. A lot happens in 2,000 years. 

The United States, by contrast, is only 248 years old. Madden: “The young United States has nothing at all in common with the aged imperial Rome.” Instead, much of the first half of Madden’s book focuses on how the Roman Empire came about and the many striking similarities in culture, national character, core values and moral codes of early Romans and early Americans.

What many of us believe to be what it means to be an American actually came to us from the Romans. And when I share some of those traits below, you cannot help but say: “Somehow, we need to go back to that.”

Our roots: The Romans’ virtuous character

“The earliest Romans were farmers, living in a frontier world in which each family looked after its own interests and well-being,” Madden writes. 

That was the exact story of early Americans as well. When you read Madden’s description of the early Romans, in almost every instance where the word “Romans” appears, you can substitute the word “Americans.”

“For early Romans, the family, living in its traditional round hutlike house, was the place to raise  children, to make a living and to worship. Hard work and calloused hands were not shameful things, as they were in the sophisticated eastern cultures, but badges of honor for Romans.

“Every family was led by the father, who had final say in everything … The father’s word — not the state’s — was the law in those days. … Romans believed that the father’s guiding spirit, called a genius, was responsible for watching over the household.

“Powerful Roman fathers, however, did not mean weak and subservient Roman mothers. Quite the contrary. The Roman wife … was a sturdy and hardworking woman. She was responsible for looking after the young children, going to local markets, taking care of the house, baking and, of course, spinning wool, sewing and other crafts. 

“Roman women would pursue their own interests and could even own property … All in all, they were rugged and independent, much like their husbands.”

For Romans, homeschooling was the norm. Both parents were teachers, paying particular attention to their children’s moral character. Boys were grounded in the most important Roman traits: dignity, self-control, diligence, goodwill, loyalty, a sense of duty, candor and, above all, courageous manliness. (Sadly, where is that today?)

Religion and worship were also foundational for the Roman family. Roman families would pray together every morning, asking the spirits “to give them a good, safe and productive day.” Each family worshipped as it saw fit, and “held fast to the idea of maximum personal freedom — an idea born on their family farms.”

This image of the Romans and their cultural traits are identical to those of early Americans — as Madden put it: “a self-sufficient family, hardworking, honest, courageous, friendly and pious.

“The history of American culture begins on the frontier and the family farm, and despite modern affluence, wealth and power, those agrarian values are still held up as quintessentially American. No American today, no matter how rich or cultured, wants to be called ‘an elite.’ Yet, conversely, describing someone as ‘down-to-earth’ is always considered to be quite a compliment.”

Romans also expected their family traits and values to carry over into public life. They regarded the ideal Roman as strong, patriotic, efficient, honest, hardworking and “first and foremost” a man with religious and moral principles.

Madden cites the Greek writer, Polybius, who lived in Rome after 167 B.C., and said of the Romans: “The quality in which the Roman republic is most distinctly superior is in my opinion the nature of its religious convictions.”

Polybius wrote that in spite of many layers of “copyists” and witnesses in Greek government, its public officials “cannot remain honest.” “Whereas elsewhere it is a rare thing to find a man who keeps his hands off public money, and whose record is clean, among the Romans one rarely comes across a man who has been discovered in such conduct.”

Yeah, well, many of our public officials today are nowhere near as virtuous with other people’s money (E.G. the national debt). Nonetheless, the Romans’ characteristics had a profound effect on America’s Founding Fathers. When they were creating the Constitution, they were convinced the stability and strength of the republic required American citizens’ belief in God. Madden quotes John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington affirming that. 

Jefferson: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are a gift from God?”

Washington, in his farewell address: “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Where did we go WRONG?

For American Baby Boomers and those in the Silent Generation (1928-1945), the descriptions above of early Roman and American life should bring to mind visions of the way it was in the United States up through the mid-1960s.

You can say that for our first 175 years, even though most Americans likely had no idea, the nation’s cultural ethos and values indeed were rooted in the early Roman way of life — that of a self-sufficient, religious nuclear family; hardworking, honest, independent, friendly and pious. 

But what happened?

Of course, we know we have never been perfect, just as the Romans were not. We know the list: Slavery; Civil War; the treatment of Americans Indians; Great Depression; 1960s race riots and Vietnam War strife, George Floyd-BLM. 

But even so, the overall trajectory of the United States over, say, the first 225 years has been mostly that of a nation on the ascendancy, similar to the way it was for the early Roman Empire. But then …

Always simmering underneath the United States’ increasing prowess and progress, rarely detected except by a few, there was what the Founders feared — and summarily and decisively rejected: democracy. A government whereby decisions are made according to the collective will of the majority. 

The Founders totally opposed a democracy of majority rule. As James Madison, father of the Constitution, pointed out in his famous Federalist essay No. 10, once a faction of citizens becomes a majority, “tyranny threatens. … A democratic tyranny may seem a contradiction in terms, but it can be all too real.” 

In a letter to a friend in 1798, John Adams said democracy would ultimately evolve into despotism.

And that is exactly what has occurred over the past 248 years. The frog floating at the top of the pot, unaware that the water’s temperature is slowly, slowly rising, ultimately boiling it to death.

When the Founders created the Constitution, instead of democracy, they created a republic, which, as Madison envisioned, would delegate power to “a small number of citizens elected by the rest.”

Madison had an idealistic view and pragmatic view of these representatives. 

Idealistically, he thought the selection process would produce representatives “whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.” In other words, he envisioned legislators who would not put their political ambitions first. (Ha!)

Pragmatically, he thought that electing few representatives who came from all over the country to legislate in the capital would bring “a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.” In other words, there would be little chance of majority-mob  rule by factions, or special interests. (Ha!)

Finally, in their boldest measure to protect individuals from an overpowering government, the Founders adopted the Bill of Rights. 

All of it was genius: a government of few representatives; a balance of power with three equal branches; a government with limited powers; and a government whose first and foremost role was to protect the rights of individuals. 

The Founders knew a powerful government, a majority-rule democracy, was the biggest threat to individual liberty.

Democracy: Results are in

Today, Madison undoubtedly would be manically despondent at how his grand vision has turned out. Take the assessment of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, an Austrian economic libertarian and anarcho-capitalist, who authored the 2001 book: “Democracy: The God That Failed”: 

“The results are before our very eyes. The tax load imposed on property owners and producers makes the economic burden even of slaves and serfs seem moderate in comparison. Government debt has risen to breathtaking heights. Gold has been replaced by government manufactured paper money, and its value has continually dwindled.

“Every detail of private life, property, trade and contract is regulated by ever higher mountains of paper laws. In the name of social, public or national security, our caretakers ‘protect’ us from global warming and cooling and the extinction of animals and plants, from husbands and wives, parents and employers, poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia and countless other public enemies and dangers.

“The only task a government was ever supposed to assume — of protecting our life and property — our caretakers do not perform. To the contrary, the higher the expenditures on social, public and national security have risen, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed and depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: of personal independence, economic strength and private wealth.”

Hoppe pretty much sums up the state of the U.S.  

We were warned. Continuously. 

Going back to the 1880s and up to today, scores of authors, historians, journalists and economists warned and showed that what the Founders feared was occurring and has — the rise of the State overtaking individual liberty, the rise of democratic rule subverting individual liberty, the slow boiling frog.

• 1884: Englishman Herbert Spencer, “Man Versus the State”: He warned of “the coming slavery” as governments grew.
• 1926: H.L. Mencken: “[The State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot.”
• 1935: Albert Jay Nock, “Our Enemy, the State”: “[T]he rate of America’s approach to [the collapse of social power and rise of rhe State] is being prodigiously accelerated; and there is no evidence of any disposition to retard it, or any intelligent apprehension of the danger which that acceleration betokens.” 
• 1945: Isabel Paterson, “The God of the Machine”: “It is not liberty and equality that are incompatible, but liberty and democracy. … Such is the inherent contradiction in the theory of democracy: Personal liberty is wiped out at the very beginning. No matter how often a democracy might be tried, it must shortly collapse into despotism.”
• 1964: Ayn Rand, “The Virtue of Selfishness”: “Instead of being a protector of man’s rights, the government is becoming their most dangerous violator; instead of guarding freedom, the government is establishing slavery; instead of protecting men from the initiators of physical force, the government is initiating physical force and coercion in any manner and issue it pleases; instead of serving as the instrument of objectivity in human relationships, the government is creating a deadly, subterranean reign of uncertainty and fear, by means of non-objective laws whose interpretation is left the arbitrary decisions of random bureaucrats; instead of protecting men from injury by whim, the government is arrogating itself the power of unlimited whim so that we are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: The stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.”
• 2019: Randall Holcombe, “Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History”: “The principle of liberty suggests that first and foremost, the government’s role is to protect the rights of individuals. The principle of democracy suggests that collective decisions are made according to the will of the majority…The greater the allowable scope of democracy in government, the greater the threat to liberty … Unfortunately, many Americans do not appear to fully understand these dangers as they continue to push the foundations of their government away from liberty and toward democracy.”

And so it continues, unabated — the destruction of liberty and individual rights and the expanding power of the ruling class and majority mob. Holcombe is being diplomatic when he says the more democracy there is “the greater the threat to liberty” and when he says “many Americans do not appear to fully understand.” 

It is more than a threat; it is real. And it is overwhelmingly clear the majority of Americans do not understand.

They do not know the difference between a republic and democracy, so they go along, like the brainless frog in the pot. That is why I urged you in the beginning to think deeply of what has been and is happening — and imagine, if these trends continue, what that will mean for your children and grandchildren.

Next week: How democracy leads to the worst being elected; the destructive social and economic consequences of redistribution; which presidential candidate and party will take us faster to the Road to Serfdom; and what you can do to stop the decline.