Rome, The American Revolution, and the Madness of King George W.

I may have mentioned to you that I have had a lot of free time on my hands as of late. With this free time I have been watching the series Rome on DVD, reading the opinion line in the always-entertaining Wichita Eagle, and reflecting on the laws that govern this country of ours. I don’t know if this is in response to being back in the heart/homeland, or if it in preparation for the study of law into which I shall enter in 23 rather short days. Whatever the case may be, I have been thinking often about tyranny, and the threat thereof.

Tyranny was what got Julius Caesar murdered, to make a long story short. There was a lot of grumbling about the upper classes getting less of the vote, and there was a lot of good that Caesar did for the regular people living day to day. On the surface he seemed gregarious and generous, personable and noble. He paid at least lip service to the ideals of Rome, speaking of needing to consent to dictatorship for a period of time in order to repair the Republic. We will never know if this was indeed lip service or truth, because as we all know Caesar was killed in the senate, at the hands of the senate, because of his tyrannical tendencies. There was nothing a Roman Republican abhorred more than a Tyrant, a King, or an Emperor.

Of course, their plan backfired and led in part to the Roman Empire, but it is their convictions, their steadfast adherence to ideals, at least on the surface, that struck me as relevant to what is happening in this country now. After the death of the Republic the people went into a decline that led to Bread and Circuses, a gluttonous, debaucharous lifestyle, and eventually the fall of Rome and the sacking by the Goths. It was not unrelated to the lack of ideals Rome was founded on, and we are headed much the same way, in my mind. We are the new Rome, we have been for years, and never have the parallels been clearer or more striking. If you look closely, you can see the same grisly mindset at play in “To Catch a Predator”, “American Idol”, Biggie size everything and NASCAR that you could in the combat of Gladiators and the advent of Vomitoriums. Keep the people occupied with trivialities, and they cannot pay attention to politics. We are at the moment when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and there is no turning back.

Fast forward from Rome to the present day, where we find that we as a nation are under the rule of a Tyrant, as we have been once in the past. I have already made a case that the behavior of the King George of which the Declaration of Independence speaks has eerie and clear parallels to the behavior of the current President of the United States. Some of the grievances that were written about in the DOI include (parenthesese mine, otherwise taken directly from the DOI):

“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. (See what has been going on in the Justice Department with the firing of Attorneys)

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. (Homeland Security, anyone?)

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. (Yeah, I know this is now legal, but still).

He has combined with others (Cheney ((who apparently is his own private branch of government)), Rove, Rummy, et. al) to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent (See the District of Columbia until very recently, and threatened by a veto when offered representation)

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences (Guantanamo Bay, secret prisons all over Eastern Europe, Saudi Arabia, etc.)

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments (Patriot Act)

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. (Halliburton and all the other contractors in Iraq)

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. If you aren’t with us, you’re against us.”

You catch my drift. Our founders, much like the Republican Romans hated a tyrant, and created a set of laws that gave the executive branch arguably the least power of the three. They safeguarded us through checks and balances, hoping to avoid the creation of a King or Emperor, and yet, they wrote from an idealist standpoint, with the hope that the men who would follow them would be better men, even more committed to equality than they. It is this pervasive hope and righteous indignation that make the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution such beautiful, and in some ways very moving documents. They believed that better days, and better men were ahead.

We find they are mistaken. This man, this so-called President, is committing many of the same atrocities (yes, I said atrocities) that caused us to revolt in the first place. The question now is, are we going to react like Rome, attach ourselves to a Tyrant and rally around his banner, while the ideals of this once great nation go up in smoke, or will we behave as our forefathers did, and refuse to subject to this tyranny and fight for our inalienable rights has human beings and our legal rights has United States citizens? We can no longer ignore this; we can no longer allow this man and his henchmen to wipe their feet on the Constitution on their way to greater power and even greater wealth. We are a nation of laws, and this criminal must be brought to justice, just like any other man that causes great harm. This is not a problem that will just go away on it’s own, it will get worse, or it will get better, but whatever direction it goes, we will be responsible.

I revel in the free speech that allows me to say these things freely, yet I fear that may be gone soon as well. Speak the truth, while you still can.