Empires: Rome and America The Death of Republican Government
By Al Cronkrite The Covenant News ~ June 7, 2004
"We are watching our society disintegrate in front of our eyes, my friends. We have a situation where business leaders, political leaders, religious leaders and media leaders throughout the length and breadth of this country are compromising things that are right and necessary for selfish and sinful purposes. Then when we come to a discussion on the survival of our country someone who believes in the Constitution suggests that in order to achieve victory we have to omit the great moral issues." --Reverend Doctor Chuck Baldwin running for Vice-President on the Constitution Party Ticket with Michael Peroutka.
In the June 2004 Issue of the John Birch Society Bulletin, Steven C. Bonta published an excellent Article entitled "Why Morality Matters". He describes the paralleled decline of moral standards and the Roman Republic.
For over ten years I have been writing about the symbiotic relationship between freedom and morality. Freedom is only possible for a people restrained from within. For this reason our Founders were ardent supporters of Christianity. John Adams said that the American Constitution was created for a moral and religious people and that it was totally inadequate to govern any other.
In spite of the sage advice our Founders provided, America has abandoned the Constitutional Republic bequeathed to us and accepted the anarchic tyranny of the majority which is the unavoidable result of Democracy. So brain washed are our citizens that the most erudite among us will regularly, in public, refer to America as a Democracy and support the spread of this most abominable form of tyranny to other nations.
America has become the "any other" referred to by John Adams.
In an essay entitled Political Philosophy and The Unwritten Constitution Claes G. Ryn, Chairman of the National Humanities Institute and Professor of Politics at The Catholic University of America, writes eloquently about abstract group morality as it is being touted today.
Concerning this abstract morality Professor Ryn writes
"It can be espoused by the worst of human beings, by people who are very difficult to live and work with. These same individuals can ooze benevolence for people in the abstract and talk incessantly about "justice," "human rights," and "the common good." They can advocate schemes for sweeping social and political change. In fact, the wider the scope of their virtuous project, the more compelling is supposed to be the evidence of a superior morality."
Individual responsibility was inherent in our Christian heritage. The desire to improve our individual behavior - to become more "Christ-like" used to be a goal of the majority of our population. Emphasis of the new morality is abstract and non-personal, theoretically good but without subjective application.
The Clinton administration was characteristic of this new apostasy. While spouting morality and the common good, in true Machiavellian style, he, himself, lived in debauchery. Those that provided his support maintained his personal life had nothing to do with his ability to function as a President. To them morality was an abstract behavior that had to do with others.
While President Bush touts freedom and Democracy for the Iraqi people, American soldiers and Iraqi civilians are being killed in an aggressive and coercive war. This abstract morality requires that Iraq become moral but the American President may use amoral means in bringing it about.
Abstract morality is everywhere; guns are the cause of murder, MacDonalds is the cause of obesity, whites are the cause of black poverty, parents are the cause of poor education, poverty is the cause of crime, and all societal disorder is caused by a lack of government control. Ryn maintains that this tendency to vest responsibility in others results in transferring it to government resulting in ever more centralization.
The old virtue tends to decentralize, placing responsibility on each individual while the new virtue tends to centralize. Ryn concludes
"To revive American constitutionalism, if it can still be done, would require, not more people who talk all the time about "justice," "the common good," and "the best regime," but people who are able to shoulder concrete responsibilities, so that the reconstruction of society could begin where it matters most, in the personal lives of the citizens."
Professor Ryn is right on target, stopping the American Empire must involve a change in her citizens. Our Constitution was written to reign in the power of Government and allow a "moral and religious" people to exercise maximum freedom within bounds of God’s immutable mandates. As the new abstract morality results in the failure of our citizens to restrain themselves under the rule of God, it becomes necessary for the government to restrict their freedom with additional laws.
Ancient Rome experienced similar problems. Though their Republic lasted over 500 years, as the Republic fell away and empire invaded the nation the increasing need for hegemony centralized power in a despotic Emperor; moral standards began to deteriorate, the freedom and order experienced while living obediently under The Twelve Tables of Law waned in favor of a less moral but more tyrannical government.
The design of the Roman Republic was quite similar to that of ancient Israel. The Twelve Tables of Law were carved into stone tablets. The law and the penalties for breaches were know to every citizen. Prisons as implements of punishment were unknown. Certain crimes carried a death sentence.
Roman society was divided by class. Upper class patricians who had a vested interest in society were the voters and law givers while lower class plebeians were free but had little say in government. Marriage between classes was prohibited.
As Roman moral standards began to deteriorate avarice began to trump obedience and in the words of Roman historian Sallust,
"Avarice destroyed honor, integrity, and every other virtue, and instead taught men to be proud and cruel, to neglect religion, and to hold nothing too sacred to sell. Ambition tempted many to be false, to have one thought hidden in their hearts, another ready on their tongues...Poverty was now looked on as a disgrace and a blameless life as a sign of ill nature...Honor and modesty, all laws divine and human, were alike disregarded in a spirit of recklessness and intemperance... Equally strong was their passion for fornication, guzzling, and other forms of sensuality. Men prostituted themselves like women, and women sold their chastity to every comer."
American moral standards may now have fallen below those of Sallust’s Rome. Christian antinomianism has created an effete religion that allows our leaders to consort with foreign religions, entertain and support debauchery, lie to the citizens, and covet the dominion of emperors. The privilege of voting has long since been desecrated, traditional marriage has not only been sullied but has been invaded by unprecedented anatural unions between same sex couples. This abomination is always a harbinger of death.
Probably the biggest single factor in the decline of the American Republic has been the failure of the Christian Church to maintain the sound all encompassing theology brought to America by its Puritan founders. When law is ferreted from religion, religion becomes a worthless charade. In America, God has become a servant to the creation rather then the creation becoming an obedient servant to Him. This rank lawlessness infects the social order and culminates in a disregard for Constitutional mandates as well.
Like the chicken and the egg, it is difficult to fix particular responsibility for the precipitous decline of moral standards. Certainly the Christian Church is culpable. However, the subtleties of cause and effect are often difficult to find. One can point to the amorality of judges and courts or the arrogance of the meritocracy or the dishonesty of our government or the new world order agenda, or the tendency of our citizens to resist righteousness and embrace evil, the causes are complex and there is plenty of blame to go around.
Morality connotes obedience to law and as it deteriorates not only is a coarser government necessary to restrain the population but the legal platform that defines a Republic is breached and another form of government must being instituted.
When the Roman Republic was overthrown, Julius Caesar became the first Emperor. In America the change has been more gradual but little by little the American President is gaining in power. Congress no longer exercises the responsibility of checking the dominion and legality of the Executive and Judicial branches. More and more power is being vested in the President. Since the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt American Presidents has been a defacto Emperors. Voting has become a charade with presidential candidates being pre-selected and the field circumscribed. Congressmen have manipulated their districts so their defeat is almost impossible. Despotic laws are in place to control citizens and the stage is set for the proclamation of Empire.
Ancient Rome had the principles of freedom in place and for a time enjoyed the fruit of justice, morality, and obedience but in the end Steven Bonta writes,
"sexual mores had deteriorated with prostitution and sexual perversion rampant...Abroad, the face of Rome was one of continuous cycle of conquest, spoliation, and slaughter...Hundreds of thousands of Romans perished as a result of endless internecine warfare and purges during the dreadful century and a half that approximately bracketed the life of Christ."
The Roman legacy provides a lesson in the results of antinomianism and immorality. However, it does not provide much hope for those of us that struggle against the seemingly inexorable law of Entropy. Rome fell and America is at the brink of the precipice.
The success of the Roman Republic does offer an additional example of the characteristics that make for a peaceful, prosperous, and successful nation. America’s Constitution was finely crafted to restrain government but its mandates were soon breached. The Twelve Tables of Law that served as a Constitution for the Roman Republic provided the legal structure that God’s Laws should have provided for America. If the Laws God gave to Moses had been codified it would have prolonged the life of our Republican form of government. Law needs to be simple, remedial, immutable, and known to all citizens. God’s Laws, given to us by The Creator, are specifically designed to provide the maximum amount of peace and freedom for those who obey them.
When America’s Empire falls there may be an opportunity for another noble experiment in freedom and individual responsibility. We must endeavor to educate those young enough to survive in the principles necessary to sustain a free nation.