By some accounts, Cicero was a hero. Intelligent, suave, cosmopolitan, he ruled the Senate of Caesar and fought to return to traditional republicanism. He was a champion against the dictatorship of Caesar. He was also a villain by our standards, owning slaves and fighting to maintain a government that privileged and enriched the top echelon of Roman society. What he did, however, was argue for the idea that was Rome, the ideal that was dying, in a world of gluttony and greed.
Tonight I watched the American Congress, a group of elites enriched by the wars of empire, listen to a man tell them precisely what they wanted to hear. He told everyone something pleasing. Some got to sit back tonight and imagine they were the champions of the poor as he said we were going to raise the minimum wage. Others imagined they were protecting trickle-down prosperity as they were told about lowering tax rates for businesses that relocate back to the United States. People cheered or booed as they watched their mortal enemies get their gilded dreams.
Tonight, I was watching along with a portion of the American electorate. We heard patronizing remarks about getting us the training we need. We were told how the paternal powers of the Beltway would aid us into accomplishing the materialism and decadence that they mistake for the American dream. But in the end, we were the children waiting outside, to be told how we were to be cared for.
But they knew that that the engrossing drama of whether snow will stop the festival of fat men slamming into each other for an inflated, artificial bladder will make the children lingering outside forget everything that was said. The chariot races of the Caesars, the gladiatorial contests of the early Empire, the extravagances that Cato railed against, have been replaced by this context, but the intent is still the same. We distract ourselves from our problems, hoping they will go away, or we treat them as a fourth quarter problem to be solved with more Doritos and beer.
Cicero was hunted down by the Second Triumvirate, the last republican in a rising tide of government by the rich (with appeasement and entertainment for the poor). Legend says his last words were, "There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly." The idea that was Republican Rome was slain by the glory it had acquired, but he insisted until the end that it be done with decorum.
In the end, we don't need jobs training programs. We don't need a minimum wage raised, a tax rate altered, insurance benefits applied to the unemployed, healthcare reform, immigration reform, a functioning economy, a smaller military, greater international prestige, better environmental controls, or any other policy objective stated by the President or his Republican opponents tonight. These things are great functions of government, and worth objects of debate. But they are currently only the symptoms of a greater disorder in our beloved Republic.
We have no government. We have adults who claim to be leading a government, but are incapable of doing more than a middle school student government session. Name-calling, gossiping, scandals, accusations fill the air, but these things do not a government make. A government is a social organism devoted to leading a people group, especially in the area of sanctioned violence and the prevention of harm. When a group of people calling themselves the government instead spy on its own citizens and fails to see how this is a betrayal of republican values, it is not a government. It is a cabal of the elite, fearing the plebeians at the gate.
We need Cicero today. We need someone to stand for the Republic, unabashedly. We need people who believe in representation of the people, in a decorous, efficient, oratorical, elegant way. We need leadership, and not the brute leadership of the totalitarian or the shrill leadership of the forever opposition. We need wisdom, far-sighted wisdom, that will need a nation that has deeply lost its way. We need integrity, the sort of integrity that acknowledges the nuances of government but is not embarrassed by them. We need a government.
Tonight I watched the American Congress, a group of elites enriched by the wars of empire, listen to a man tell them precisely what they wanted to hear. He told everyone something pleasing. Some got to sit back tonight and imagine they were the champions of the poor as he said we were going to raise the minimum wage. Others imagined they were protecting trickle-down prosperity as they were told about lowering tax rates for businesses that relocate back to the United States. People cheered or booed as they watched their mortal enemies get their gilded dreams.
Tonight, I was watching along with a portion of the American electorate. We heard patronizing remarks about getting us the training we need. We were told how the paternal powers of the Beltway would aid us into accomplishing the materialism and decadence that they mistake for the American dream. But in the end, we were the children waiting outside, to be told how we were to be cared for.
But they knew that that the engrossing drama of whether snow will stop the festival of fat men slamming into each other for an inflated, artificial bladder will make the children lingering outside forget everything that was said. The chariot races of the Caesars, the gladiatorial contests of the early Empire, the extravagances that Cato railed against, have been replaced by this context, but the intent is still the same. We distract ourselves from our problems, hoping they will go away, or we treat them as a fourth quarter problem to be solved with more Doritos and beer.
Cicero was hunted down by the Second Triumvirate, the last republican in a rising tide of government by the rich (with appeasement and entertainment for the poor). Legend says his last words were, "There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly." The idea that was Republican Rome was slain by the glory it had acquired, but he insisted until the end that it be done with decorum.
In the end, we don't need jobs training programs. We don't need a minimum wage raised, a tax rate altered, insurance benefits applied to the unemployed, healthcare reform, immigration reform, a functioning economy, a smaller military, greater international prestige, better environmental controls, or any other policy objective stated by the President or his Republican opponents tonight. These things are great functions of government, and worth objects of debate. But they are currently only the symptoms of a greater disorder in our beloved Republic.
We have no government. We have adults who claim to be leading a government, but are incapable of doing more than a middle school student government session. Name-calling, gossiping, scandals, accusations fill the air, but these things do not a government make. A government is a social organism devoted to leading a people group, especially in the area of sanctioned violence and the prevention of harm. When a group of people calling themselves the government instead spy on its own citizens and fails to see how this is a betrayal of republican values, it is not a government. It is a cabal of the elite, fearing the plebeians at the gate.
We need Cicero today. We need someone to stand for the Republic, unabashedly. We need people who believe in representation of the people, in a decorous, efficient, oratorical, elegant way. We need leadership, and not the brute leadership of the totalitarian or the shrill leadership of the forever opposition. We need wisdom, far-sighted wisdom, that will need a nation that has deeply lost its way. We need integrity, the sort of integrity that acknowledges the nuances of government but is not embarrassed by them. We need a government.
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