Tag Archives: Caesar

Now that democracy has failed in America, let’s try it in Iran and Cuba!

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Half a century ago, American children were taught in elementary school that “representative democracy” was the highest form of government.

Part of me wondered even then, why should everyone get an equal say in things? That wasn’t how it worked in my elementary school, I observed, even as they taught that creed. The students and the janitor didn’t get the same say as the principal and the teachers.

Some people are smarter, more diligent, better educated, work harder, and pay more taxes. Shouldn’t they get more of a say in how those taxes are spent than people who are not smart, not diligent, don’t work, aren’t educated, and don’t pay taxes?

The only plausible answer to that question as to why everyone should get an equal say, is that everyone should feel like a stakeholder in the nation.

That’s a nice sentiment, but there are several problems with it. First, allowing – nay, begging – stupid lazy people to vote is a high price to pay to make them feel like stakeholders. Second, it doesn’t work. They still don’t feel like stakeholders.

Third, if you want people who don’t pay taxes to feel like stakeholders in the nation, maybe a good first step would be to ask them to pay some of the nation’s taxes.

As it stands today, the bottom 40% of earners pay about one percent of federal income taxes. Is it any wonder that those so-called taxpayers always want to increase taxes? It’s because they themselves never pay them.

The Founders recognized this fallacy with the democratic republic they created. They recognized that at some point the lazy stupid masses might come to realize that they could vote for a “redistribution” of the wealth of the smart hardworking producers. That’s undoubtedly the reason that the Constitution originally did not allow for income taxes; it took the 16th Amendment. (Nearly all amendments after the first ten were mistakes, BTW.)

In another genius of socialist branding, the stupid lazy masses have dubbed this legalized theft “fairness.”

But let’s leave the tax tangent and get back to the broader failure of American democracy.

What we have now is mob rule. Everyone has a microphone in the form of the internet, including me. With that microphone, they can get “clicks” on what they post. Those clicks are more or less exchangeable for cash.

Human nature being what it is, many people are owned by their desire for cash, and thus many internet posters are owned by their desire for clicks. They post stuff that is designed to generate clicks and cash.

That’s why we now have horrible creatures out there like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens who are willing to generate clicks/cash with blood libels of the Jews.

Barely better are the people behind “Instapundit” who post misleading headlines appealing to notions in my tribe such as all Democrats are transexuals who want to conduct “gender affirmation” surgery on children in schools while burning the flag in Satanic rituals in the playground. (I’m sure the leftist websites have similarly weird headlines about Republicans, but I don’t see them because I don’t go to those websites.)

It’s political porn; it panders to the worst instincts of political junkies; it’s addictive; and it’s destructive to them, us, and our society.

And it works – for the perpetrators anyway. Ask Tucker.

(I have a friend who says he habitually clicks into Instapundit, but only to get the links. Uh huh. And I’m sure he got Playboy just for the articles.)

Speaker of obscenity, there’s the legislative branch. That’s the branch of government where a majority of the people elected to do the voting are supposed to enact and repeal laws.

Except it takes more than a majority to do both enacting and repealing. The Senate filibuster rule (another thing not in the Founder’s Constitution, or even the current one) means that it takes 60 of the 100 Senators to enact or repeal almost any law.

That means that the minority party – the political party that the people decided should be fewer in number than the other party – has a veto over any enacting or repealing of the laws.

That’s a bit weird. The “rule” is that that majority rules, except that the minority gets a veto. Huh?

It gets worse. Not only does the minority get a veto, they can shut down the government unless the majority concedes its power to them.

The minority shut down the government for over a month last fall, demanding that the majority pretend that the minority was the majority and the majority was the minority, by repealing part of the tax bill that was passed by the majority months earlier.

Now the minority is doing the same on a narrow issue, with the result that people are waiting hours in TSA lines at the airport. (I say fire TSA anyway; it’s all theater.)

The latest is the minority’s filibustering of a law to require photo ID when you vote, just as you’re required to have photo ID when you board an airplane, borrow a book, or cash a check – a law that is supported by 80% of Americans.

Maybe the majority should formally concede that it is effectively the minority. Then they can turn the tables and demand those minority filibuster rights. At which time the minority would say, “Not so fast, we’re  the minority, so we’re in charge here!”

Yep, that’s American “democracy.” Don’t even get me started on the European kind.

And sooooo . . . .

Let’s impose this farcical system on Cuba and Iran. Given their history of ecumenical largess (I have no idea what that phrase means, but it popped into my demagogue head; help me here, Tucker) they’ll surely be every bit as successful with it as we currently are.

OK, don’t go away mad. Here’s a tidbit to brighten your day. Donald J. Trump is not a Democrat, and I’m not even sure he’s a democrat.

But bear in mind that the greatest leader of the ancient world – the one who brought the greatest good to the greatest number – was Augustus Caesar. He wasn’t either.  

“Veni, vidi, vici,” sayeth the Orange One?

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The first to say that was Julius Caesar. After his crushing win over a Persian/Greek king in what is now Turkey, Caesar reported to the Roman Senate with characteristic immodesty and uncharacteristic brevity: “Veni, vidi, vici.”

I came, I saw, I conquered. Caesar had a flair for drama.

He similarly came, saw and conquered most of Gaul – what is now France – in an era well before the invention of B2 stealth bombers. Travelling from Rome to Gaul was an arduous multi-month sea and land adventure. Conquering the barbarians there was a crazy idea for anyone but Caesar.

He laid the foundation for the greatest and longest-lasting empire the world has ever seen. It’s impossible to travel in Europe without marveling at ubiquitous, still-majestic two-thousand-year-old ruins of that empire.

Caesar came from a privileged but not powerful family. Ambitious from the outset, he clawed his way up the political ladder of the Roman republic, a place with a governing structure that we vaguely recognize.

Indeed, we should. Aspects of our own republic consciously imitate Rome, such as the naming of our Senate after the Roman Senatus and even the Greco-Roman architecture of our capital.

Caesar’s foreign exploits were not just to conquer foreign lands. They were to conquer his homeland, Rome. He wanted conquests because he wanted attention because he wanted power – in Rome.

But he also did want to conquer those foreign lands. The Romans were keenly aware of their legendary cousins across the Ionian Sea, and Caesar knew all about the astonishing conquests of Alexander the Great.

When Ceasar was still relatively young (but, he was painfully aware, already older than the age of Alexander when he’d conquered much of the world) he was chosen to be something akin to a prime minister.

Later, during a period of increasing social turmoil in an unwieldy republic deteriorating toward civil war, Caesar was named dictator for life and offered a crown.

He made a show of publicly refusing the crown, but he did not refuse the powers that went with it.

After five years as dictator, at age 56, Caesar was stabbed 23 times by senators. Brutus, too, was one of those senators.

Myth has it that this assassination was because Rome wanted to reclaim its republic from the dictator. The truth is more prosaic – particular senators opposed particular policies of Caesar.

Indeed, the dictatorship, itself, survived and thrived after Caesar’s death. Rome became an empire ruled by a succession of emperors.

That sounds terrible, right?

It wasn’t. It was the best thing that ever happened in the ancient world. For the next centuries, the Pax Romana ensured relative peace, prosperity and enlightenment. There’s a reason that what followed the ultimate crumbling of the Roman Empire is called the Dark Ages and the subsequent period is called the Renaissance or “rebirth” of the civilization that preceded that dark age.

Some Roman emperors were great and good, such as Augustus, Trajan and Hadrian. Rome was at its biggest and best as an empire ruled by emperors, notwithstanding the occasional lunatics like Caligula and Nero. Similarly, Britain achieved the most when it was ruled by kings and queens. Same for Spain and France. There’s a lot to be said for benevolent dictators, so long as they aren’t crazy.

But Americans are taught, or at least used to be taught, that democracy is the ultimate and natural evolution of political governance. Isn’t it wonderful and equitable, say the propagandists, that everyone gets one vote, regardless of what they contribute, what they know, and what they merit?  

Isn’t it genius that we rely on ordinary Americans, 50% of whom are stupider than average, to select our leaders?

To ask those questions plainly stated is to answer them. So why have America and other western democracies been so successful?

Arguably, their success is not so much because democracy works well, but despite the fact that it doesn’t. What has worked well instead is something quite different.

It’s technology. The last two hundred years entailed the industrial revolution, the electronics age, and the ongoing computer revolution. Productivity is through the roof, even as people work far less than ever before.

Today’s average westerner is consequently much richer than the kings and queens of yesteryear. He has air conditioning, a house, one or two cars that take him anywhere he wants, only 1.7 children to feed, and a gadget in his pocket to get all the information in the world – and entertainment too – on a magical screen.

It wasn’t democracy that got him all that. It was technology.

If democracy is so great, then why aren’t companies managed by democracies? Shouldn’t we have employees elect their boss by popular vote, just as we elect our political representatives? Shouldn’t there be company-wide referendums by the employees to vote on how hard they have to work and what they get paid for that work?

Again, to ask those questions is to answer them. That system just wouldn’t work. So, what makes us think that such a system works in political governance?

I submit that democracy is not the ultimate evolution of political governance. “One man, one vote,” regardless of merit, does not work over the long run any better now than it did in Athens or Rome – and now we’ve corrupted it still further with universal suffrage and voting by mail.  

In the end, this democratic feel-goodery conflicts with meritorious substance. Almost by definition, the meritorious will win that conflict one way or another. Veni, vidi, vici.