Ron Paul & Dennis Kucinich Way Ahead for Reelection
Eric Garris,
February 28, 2008
Polls released yesterday and today show that Antiwar congressmen Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are well ahead in their reelection campaigns. Both polls were conducted by Public Policy Polling.
Ron Paul leads his only GOP opponent, Chris Peden, 63-30%. He has no Democratic Party opponent.
Dennis Kucinich leads his Democratic opponents with 55%, over 29% for Joe Cimperman. Three other candidates register 5% or lower.
fearn
February 28th, 2008 at 11:12 am
It is often clear that the American people want peace and their tax dollars spent on helping others. Unfortunately the American people don’t run American and haven’t for some time. America is run by the plutocracy who routinely lies and manipulates so that they can have even more. The addiction to wealth is Americas greatest problem but can be minimized if millionaires are rejected at the polling booth
Phil
February 28th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Chris Peden…..now better known as a true “Jobber for dollars”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_%28professional_wrestling%29
Alfred Koppel
February 28th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
The Democrat’s Pelosi keeps handing our U.S. blank checks (stolen without our approval!)to her sub-literate totally incompetent never do well scion of another Bush idiot she calls her ‘Decider’, to the tune of $15 billion a week wasted on that arrid part of this earth called the Mid East, squandered on oppressive foreign terrorists and soldiers of fortune, thugs, hoodlums and street goons; then we Americans are made to pay $42.4 Million to Wronged Iraqis Since Early 2005, if any members of their families live to file claims! All the above an unsurmountable amount preferably spent in our U.S. economy. Meanwhile we are being terrorized to foot these congressionals irresponsible bills for them so that they may self-serve themselves with ill-gotten gains and profits at our Americans loss and cost!
It’s time for us the Americans to change horses so that we can ride ourselves into a brighter, more satisfying eventful future, and not be dragged down by these present congressional vermin, who are paid our U.S. tax dollars to work for us, into the path of total perdition!-Al Koppel.
John Lowell
February 28th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Can we hope that these polls are not a portent of some kind of a 2012 “Return Of Paul”. I think I’ve had quite enough, thank you.
Don Yarish
February 28th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Well I hope we hear ever more from Ron Paul one of the truly honest and great men in our increasingly Fascist Government.
On its current track the welfare-warfare state will colapse upon itself like the Roman Empire in the next 10 years.
I guess Mr. Lowell above, “Can’t handle the truth” unfortunately he is not alone and has many benighted friends in America.
John Lowell
February 28th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Oh, I wouldn’t feel criticized, Don, it hasn’t got even a smiggen to do with you. Its just that Ron was rather ineffectual, and, if we’re to consider such things as important, more than a little inauthentic running as a National Socialist the way he did. And then to tank just at the moment when he could have done us the most good as an independent. I’d have voted for him under those circumstances even as out of control as his campaign so obviously was up until that point. But, yes, I’d have to agree, there are a great many who feel as I do that they’d rather not soil themselves anymore with someone who can only see himself viably as a candidate when he’s got the National Socialist label fronting for him.
Eugene Costa
February 28th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
And just how did the Roman empire collapse, may I enquire?
Gibbon? Ah yes, Gibbon, he rightly fingered the Christians as one of the causes in the West. The rest, in the East, declined and fell over another thousand years.
Unless one wishes to count what was not Holy or Roman or an Empire.
Dave Libori
February 28th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
John Lowell:
I have been a supporter of Ron Paul for over 20 years and never have noticed any “National Socialist” tendencies in him. Is his lack of support for special treatment for Israel what prompts you to put this smear forward?
‘Ron Paul & Dennis Kucinich Way Ahead for Reelection’ « DetainThis
February 28th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
[...] February 28, 2008 By Eric Garris ∙ AntiWar.com Blog ∙ February 28, 2008 [...]
Marja
February 28th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Which leads to an obvious point: The Eastern Roman Empire, and the Goths and Vandals, were each as Christian as the Western Roman Empire. If we consider Christianity “the” cause of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, why did it have such different effects on the Eastern Roman Empire?
badri
February 28th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
lowell dude get a life . even better get your own freeking blog .
these repetitive one note long winded posts on other people’s blog sound like awful broken record .
Eric
February 28th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Hallelujah!
Eric
February 28th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
From Joe Cimperman’s website:
“Joe On Israel & Middle East:
I support a two-state solution to bring stability and peace to the region. This road to peace can only be possible if the Palestine Authority, and other Middle Eastern nations, fully commit to denouncing and dismantling the terrorist networks that jeopardize the survival of Israel.
“Neither the United States nor Israel can broker a peace with organizations or governments that are controlled or infiltrated by terrorists. I will strongly support legislation that would hold nations accountable for harboring, supporting, or sponsoring terrorists. I support comprehensive legislation that will stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction. The United States must work closely with the international community to strengthen sanctions aimed at stopping Iran’s quest of nuclear weapons.”
In other words, he’s an AIPAC a$$-licker.
I’m so glad I gave lots of money to Kucinich!
Michael G.R.
February 28th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
That’s good news. I guess it shows there’s about 1 in 100 decent human being in politics.
Robert Fallin
February 28th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
The best way to assure peace in the Middle East is to stay the heck out of there, and to abandon all our “special” relationships.
Several ostensibly Arab nations have noticeable Jewish minorities (Iraq is a very good example), and it was widely reported (AP and Reuters) that they were very concerned when we invaded Iraq. Israel, by all accounts, treats it Arab minorities as “second class citizens,” and its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied (i.e., taken by force) is condemned even by a sizable minority in Israel. If we held Israel and ourselves to the same standards as we do the rest of the world, the entire world would benefit. Whether or not we won any new friends, we’d be better people for it.
John Lowell
February 28th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
I simply can’t believe I’m having to ask this question – particularly here – but you’re still calling Republicans, “Republicans”, Dave? If so, you must have slept through the whole of the last seven years.
Dave Libori
February 28th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
John:
You are one confused dude! Where do I say anything about Republicans? Got mixed up with another posting where you are trying to smear Ron Paul?
John, lay off the liquor and rejoin the debate, when you are talking coherent.
Eugene Costa
February 28th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
It might be useful to read Gibbon closely before erecting what seems to you “an obvious point”, but which is not obvious at all as a criticism of his thesis anyway, rather than what you think his thesis must be.
The Eastern Empire was what was centered around Constantinople, which was founded as a specifically Christian city and the “New Rome”, which foundation itself, by drawing resources and attention away from the West, helped also to contribute to the collapse of old Rome.
In fact, Gibbon’s work in thrust and volume focuses mainly on the history of the Romaioi, the Greek-speaking Christians of the East, and is mostly what is now considered Byzantine history rather than Roman.
In a sense survival in the East, where the barbarian incursions were initially less frequent and serious, was predicated on letting the much poorer West go its own way and collapse.
Too, items that arguably strengthened the Christian imperial hand in the East, at the expense of the old culture, like the virulent and violent monasticism directed at the temples chronicled in Libanius, weakened and destroyed the culture and traditions of the Latin West when transplanted there.
Constantinople was in effect the foundation of a new and competing empire in which the Greek-speakers of the old Hellenistic East reasserted themselves as overlords in Christian and Caesaropapist garb, centered around the city of Constantine.
In the West, Christianity, according to Gibbon, helped contribute to the collapse by drawing many of the best and ablest into the service of the Church, a state within a state, while barbarians knocked at the gate across a vast frontier, secured only at one end by the new city of Constantine.
The irony, palpable in Augustine and Jerome, is how shocked some of these Latin-speaking Christians, doting on what later was described as the City of God, were when Rome, taken as both material and eternal, suddenly fell to Alaric.
j. write.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
But oh, Chritianity had nothing on the mismangement and decadence and the lax immigration policy. The Romans let the Germanic tribes into the Empire and even used them as soldiers in the Roman military. Eventually when things were falling apart and the hordes from central Asia were pushing against the Germanic tribes they just took over the whole thing. That immigration policiy didn’t really work out so wonderfully, now did it?
The Presidential Candidates
February 28th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Good to hear. Dennis & Paul are good people. They are both right on some of the biggest issues facing America -> Civil Liberties & Foreign Policy.
Chris Baker
February 28th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
I think Elizabeth Kucinich should run for office as well!
Eugene Costa
February 28th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Actually Christianity also played an increasingly key role among the barbarians outside the empire as well.
But your analogy is specious and silly.
In the Late Empire most of the legionaries were ethnically German in the West, but were also clearly Latin-speaking and Roman, as, for example, the great Flavius Stilicho, whom the Eastern emperor left in the lurch.
And those whom you would class as threatening “immigrants” were the wandering warrior tribes from the the outside who, with Huns and Mongols behind them, when not intent on pure plunder, were eager also to become part of the more settled oikoumene.
The Roman Empire and its supposed “Fall” is one of the prime models for beating this or that social or religious or ideological drum.
It is in fact a rich source of useful analogies, few of which ever greet the public eye, as, just for an example, the state of the curiales in the Late empire.
It is a pity so many who make all the more popular analogies know so little about the Empire they refer.
This is especially true of the Christians who are still connecting the Fall of the Empire with Nero and his non-existent fiddle.
Chris
February 29th, 2008 at 12:06 am
to the office in my bedroom. she’s hot.
bread&circuses
February 29th, 2008 at 12:56 am
It collapsed for the same reasons that all empires collapse: loss of internal social cohesion brought about by an overly skewed distribution of the society’s burdens and rewards across classes as well as internecine conflicts and competition between the elite, resulting in an atomized and divided society.
The famous conflicts between Rome’s aristocrats are well known. No need to repeat them here.
It’s no coincidence that wealth inequality within the empire reached its maximum around A.D. 400. Long gone by that time were the small landholders of the early republic, which had been replaced by landless peasants working the large estates owned by the aristocrats. A crushing tax burden to support a bloated government that increasingly fell more and more on those of middling and low wealth expedited this process of destitution.
There was a time when Rome’s wealthiest citizens were the first to step up when additional state revenues were required. As the overall tax burden increased along with the size of the state bureaucracy and reached punitive levels, the wealthy reacted just as they always have throughout history: tax avoidance via the bribing of public officials.
Also long gone by the fifth century A.D. were the days when the senatorial aristocracy were more likely to be killed in wars than your average Roman citizen, such as in the battle of Cannae when the senate lost one third of its members, and when only those who owned property were required to fight in the wars.
Exacerbating class tensions was the fact that the wealthy had traded their old conservative values of frugality and modesty with grotesque levels of conspicuous consumption.
The early Roman republic as seen through the eyes of your average Roman citizen can be characterized by a sense that “we are all in this together.” It was certainly a more egalitarian society. By the fifth century A.D., your average Roman citizen no longer had a stake in society and no longer cared what happened to Rome. The wealthy had retreated into their estates and villas and had begun to hire private militias. The Roman state was bankrupt by that time in every sense of the word and had all but lost its grip on authority. No wonder a third rate military was able to sack Rome, despite being heavily outnumbered by the inhabitants of the Italian peninsula. The common bonds were gone.
It all sounds so eerily familiar.
Bill
February 29th, 2008 at 1:51 am
Civil libs & Foreign policies….you bet,…and most of the rest too…..
How can the USA sustain these current account deficits of $120 Bill p.m.?
I think it was the economist Ziz Zielglar?? who said about 20 yrs ago you are “importing debt & exporting jobs”……..When you couple this with massive immigration & little competitive industry wheres is lead to? I wonder how can the US fight long future wars & ocupations with no money?
Isn’t this like Rome?
R. Nelson
February 29th, 2008 at 2:40 am
Yep, we all know how effective independent parties have been in America.
Eugene Costa
February 29th, 2008 at 2:47 am
Yes and no. All of what you note has pertinence to some degree, and each point easily asks treatment at great length.
Certainly Christianity contributed to the political collapse in the West as did the unceasing waves of tribes being pushed out of the Asian steppes by fiercer tribes behind them, and in the Late Empire especially by the Huns, whom Alaric himself was fleeing.
Some also add the beginning of climate change in North Africa, the breadbasket, and the drain of gold eastward to the trade in spice and silk.
The depreciation of currency? Sure. Price controls? Indeed (under Dicoletian most notably). Heavier and heaveir tax burdens? Absolutely.
Slavery, after Walbank and lack of technical innovation? There probably not, for the technical sophistication of the Late Roman world, which was once being attributed to Germans, is now being discovered for the first time in the modern era, as in the use of water power on a large and industrial scale.
There is also the Pirenne thesis, persuasive in some degree, and the view of Piganiol–was it?–who observed that the Roman Empire did not fall but was assassinated.
Otto Seeck–after a marvellous and still unmatched treatment of the Late Empire–he, very turn of the century middle class, fingers of all things the decline of marriage. Read with a dash of Ibsen perhaps.
Lead mixing bowls and lead poisoning among the nobles?
Yes, but the nobles were a very fluid and changing class (as the Britishers Namier studied), so they were replaced quickly.
Religious and cultural conflict? Again yes–of many different kinds.
Part of modern naivety is thinking in categories that are at best shorthand for one small aspect of the picture.
Barbarian tribes pressuring the south were not new. From the beginning there had been pressure from Gauls.
But after Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, its Celtic population became thoroughly Latin and Roman, making what the “Empire” was something completely different geographically from what it was before.
Thus the empire in the West is now also ethnic Gauls being pressured by the German tribes that were moving behind them into Gaul.
The fact is that looking for this or that date or one overweening cause is naive, and particularly organizing it around a specific event.
There are also distinctions to be made. Augustine and Jerome were shocked by the sack of “Rome”, but that was the fall of the city to a man who had had and was still seeking an imperial command.
Rome the city was sacked but Rome the “Empire” in the sense of the western “civilized” world did not “fall” at all, and no one at the time would see matters in that fashion.
When does Latin become Italian? It is a long process beginning much earlier than most moderns suspect.
Even the claims of the Holy Roman Empire were not totally empty nor purely symbolic and it was a continuation.
For all that, the founding of Constantinople, as Gibbon saw, was a key divide of what once was singular into what became two, and then one again in the East.
Also important is to realize that in some very real sense Rome was very defensive, from the very beginning, and that the “Empire” was not the result of a deliberate imperial program in either the ancient or the modern sense.
Caesar indeed was looking for Gallic gold and military distinction but the Gauls attacking south were a centuries long bother of the first magnitude, and Caesar sought to solve the problem, not to create one.
Unlike many ancient empires and most modern ones, the Romans expanded reluctantly and only under attack, and often then often withdrew more than once, as in Dacia or Mesopotamia.
It is the modern imperialists who look at the map of the Roman empire at its greatest extent and hunger for an expansion of their little worlds with an eye the Romans themselves never had.
Population figures are debatable. The city of Rome itself perhaps at one point reached a million, and was the largest in the world outside the Far East. The empire itself may have included, depending on what and how you count, anywhere from fifty to a hundred million people.
This all defended by a highly mobile but comparatively small army of at most a couple of hundred thousand at the core, whose main business, when not fighting civil war, was keeping those on the outside from getting in.
In a sense this was more of a “civilized world”, the oikoumene, than an “empire” in the modern sense, with an emphasis on the various meanings of “civil” and with willing, mostly very eager subjects.
R. Nelson
February 29th, 2008 at 2:48 am
Ask a simple question, Marja, get a windbag answer. Your point still stands–if Christianity were a vitiating factor in the Roman empire, it would have been so everywhere. Rome and Constantinople faced different circumstances to some degree, but the latter wasn’t undone by Christians as the former allegedly was.
John Lowell
February 29th, 2008 at 2:57 am
Dave,
Oy, and on you go, David! You’re not exactly with it, are you. Here it is for you in bold colors:
Step 1. I used the term, “National Socialist”, in place of “Republican” to describe Ron Paul’s political affiliation because the Republican Party has become fascist in character over the last several years. Most folks here would realize that without any difficulty.
Step 2. Missing that allusion entirely, you complained about my accusing Ron Paul of being a National Socialist when in fact I merely had referenced his party identity.
Step 3. Pinch yourself.
peace
February 29th, 2008 at 2:59 am
Just goes to show that the voters in the region of Austin, Texas and in Cleveland, Ohio have good sense. Thanks to them for giving us the Honorable Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.
CarterM
February 29th, 2008 at 4:06 am
Can we hope that you will keep to the haunts more familiar to you: NRO, Weekly Standard…the rest of us have had quite enough of you, John Lowell, thank you.
Ron Paul 2012!!!
brad smith
February 29th, 2008 at 6:12 am
Get a clue John. equating Ron Paul with Socialism is one of the dumbist things you have said. And thats saying a lot. Ron Paul is not a Socialist and neither are his supporters. Do you even know what Socialism is? If so look at Ron Paul’s record and you will see that he is the least Socialist of any one out there. Is it posible you have gotten Ron Paul confused with Dennis Kucinich? I believe Dennis Kucinich is a decent man, but I would not support him based on his Socialist tendencies such as Socialised health care, increases in welfare, etc.
When you say you “merely had referenced his party identity” you are either completely ignorant, purposely smearing or both (most likely).
Mechanized
February 29th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Perhaps the most accurate–indeed interesting–explanation regarding the decline and fall of ancient Rome is best exemplified in Nicholas Davidson’s piece below.
The Ancient Suicide of the West
A proper understanding of economic science is essential to the interpretation of historical events.
Eugene Costa
February 29th, 2008 at 7:26 am
Pretty poor stuff actually.
That is not to say that one can understand the Roman Republic or the Roman Empire without understanding economics and the larger economic context, especially of the Mediterranean, but this fellow has no clue.
paulite
February 29th, 2008 at 7:41 am
First, John Lowell should learn to spell “smidgen.” Then he should take his negative comments regarding Ron Paul and stuff them.
Thank godness for sterling men such as Ron Paul. At least he doesn’t change his tune based on the latest polls.
There was never any doubt he would be sent back to Congress. We only hoped the American people would appreciate him as much as the Texans do.
Buddy
February 29th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Change horses? It’s time to get off the horses and mules and do away with these incompetents. We do not need a political class!
John Lowell
February 29th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Yep, typically a lot more effective than Ron Paul has been. It wouldn’t be hard to surpass Paul’s achievement when he wusses out on you at just the critical moment. By the way, do you know what happened to the $20,000,000 he took in? I get reports that his staff of 17 year old yahoos spent it all on one ad in New Hampshire. Can you confirm that, R. Nelson?
bread&circuses
February 29th, 2008 at 9:24 am
The point is that many of the singular causes put forth for the collapse of the Western Empire (climate change, disease, etc.) don’t hold water as a primary cause for the simple reason that too many counter-examples can be found throughout history that demonstrate how societies characterized by a high degree of social cohesion or capacity for collective action have been able to overcome similar challenges. Although climate change for example may contribute to push an already weakened society past the tipping point, it fails as a primary cause of collapse on the basis of testability.
The early Roman empire was characterized by a high degree of social cohesion and had a remarkable capacity for collective action. The “defensive” nature of the republic you mention was in a large measure responsible. Nothing like a common enemy to bind people together. You will find this dynamic in the creation of all empires, the US empire included. The early republic was able to come back from the brink on a number of occasions that would have done in the late empire for this reason.
Empires over time tend to lose their degree of social cohesion, especially as the frontier borders get pushed outward and more and more of those in the internal core are no longer involved in defending the empire’s borders from those on the other side of a cultural divide–”them.” The tendency for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer is also part of the process of a society losing its capacity for collective action.
Though the degree of social cohesion and capacity for collective action over time ebbs and flows with empires, it is eventually exhausted after 2-4 secular cycles.
Eugene Costa
February 29th, 2008 at 9:25 am
A smitch of Tristram Shandy early enough in one’s education may be a cure for that sense of authoritative and final orthography so often associated with other finalities, from the nature of divinity to proper penmanship.
For an American it may also prepare one for George Washington’s spelling in all its glorious anarchy.
In any case–smidgen, smidgeon, smidgin–are all allowed, so learning how to spell it may be a matter of some larger consistency, in any one immediate area at least.
The etymology is interesting if not final, some investigators deriving it from the Anglo-Saxon smic, under which if one is daring enough, and careful enough, one might include everything from smidge to smirch as well.
j. write.
February 29th, 2008 at 9:27 am
I didn’t make an analogy. So I don’t see how it could be specious and silly
John Lowell
February 29th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Oh, goodness, brad, St. Paul doesn’t require anyone else to smear him, he’s quite expert enough at that all by himself. Have you heard, incidently, whether or not there’ve been any violations of the child labor laws when it comes to the Paul campaign? I know certainly that questions have been raised as to whether or not Ron’s experienced staff of 17 year olds plans to do any accounting for the $20,000,000 they raised over the internet, but they’re too old to qualify. :-)
John Lowell
February 29th, 2008 at 10:24 am
And while I’m hoping just a smidgen that St. Paul will spare us any further of his presidential aspirations, can we get you to spell “goodness” properly, paulite? Funny how we come to step in our own ca-ca, isn’t it? :-)
bread&circuses
February 29th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I should add that although it may appear that I’m overemphasizing the class conflict angle, the inevitable conflicts that arise between a society’s elites as part of secular cycles are just as critical to understanding how a society’s degree of social cohesion atrophies over time.
Eugene Costa
February 29th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Again we agree and disagree, but at least we are looking at the same object, vaguely at least.
I certainly commend comparative history, after the initial object is known thoroughly, and there is nothing in what you say that I would reject as silly.
The trouble is your refrain, “All Empire”, and your jump from Rome to other instances of what a modern calls Imperialism.
The category itself is too skewed.
“Collective action”–an interesting and useful abstraction perhaps, though with the flavor of sociology.
Rome was defensive from the beginning partly because of the world in which it was founded, and the threats were very real.
There is no sound analogy with the United States on that score, which for the most part has actively constructed and imagined the outside threats that justified its expansion.
True enough the British burned the capital in the war of 1812, but that is not the story of the Capitoline geese, is it?
As a foundation Rome was a very new idea, that is, an urbs that was not the work of one tribe or people, and that fact, evinced in myth, has been confirmed by archaeology.
The “collective action”, therefore, was unique from the beginning and the methods of “social cohesion” also distinctive.
This is a continuing theme, with a snaggle-toothed red-haired Cato adopted from an outside people, and the great Maecenas, though thoroughly Latin and Roman, still known to be Etruscan.
In fact it might even be stimulating to argue that in some ways “social cohesion” increased during the course of empire, as patricians and plebeians became collective nobility, or as Massilia, a Greek city in origin, became a leading light of Latin rhetoric in the late Empire.
You also will not get far without the language and the religion.
The Romans literally constructed their own language as fit for literature, and invented grammar in the process, the model being ancient Greek.
What does it mean to see Caesar in Gaul on the way to battle dictating a treatise De Analogia in off hours?
Partly, at least, that leading Romans were very conscious of building not only a city and roads and bridges and aqueducts and a military, but also a language and a culture.
An innovation of my tutor, Erich Gruen, when I was an undergraduate, was to emphasize that the Roman Republic was a Hellenistic state.
He was completely right, but at the same time there was a clear consciousness of the strength of not being Greek, seen in the Latin language developed by an educated class that was almost always bilingual.
In religion I emphasize the Fetial Priests, early and late, and the ceremonies necessary to declare war, which in fact the Roman psyche, in many aspects, despised but found all too necessary.
It is exactly from the Fetiales and the Roman tradition that the idea of just war arises, later adopted by the Latin Christians.
These are only a few scratches on the surface.
The poor stuff of the economist referred above is partly his not coming to grips with the Roman res publica first, and in great detail, and but instead applying his modern ideas to a polity he thinks he understands as a result of some encompassing theory.
“The Romans had no science of economics”, he says in one place, for example.
My dear fellow, the Romans from the beginning were very keen economists, even if they did not have your confident definition of a “science”.
But you will not even locate where those economic ideas are expressed or how without knowing the both history and sources in intimate detail and not for just a few centuries but for thousands of years, and in the original languages, Greek and Latin.
That is where thinking, such as Gibbon, the first “philosophical historian”, also pertains.
My dear sir, one says to the economist, a body politic does not ban its senators from trading unless: (1) they were trading excessively at one point, and (2) some other part of the body politic, knowing exactly the results, forced the law for a specific reason, indeed, for a reason that clearly manifests an idea of political economy in some rudimentary sense.
In fact, the economist cited jumps to misleading conclusions from one source, Cicero. Behind the Roman Senators were the Roman Equites, who had both their own share of political power and strong ties to Italian traders, and who did not like the competition of magistrates and ex-magistrates as both ruling elite and competitors in trade.
Nor does the economist even mention various important Latin works on agriculture, which was still allowed to the Senatorial class.
In any instance, though you seem to know the historical object better than the economist, my suspicion of your supposed “rules of empire” might easily lead to an new irony–to wit, that the very Roman imperium from which most moderns get their ideas of empire and imperialism was quite nicely fully atypical, and because of that much more long-lasting than any of its modern, misfiring imitators can grasp.
This is much more than saying that the moderns are, in Roman terms, incompetent imperialists (which they are).
It is also to say that, in terms of most of these moderns, the Roman imperium may not have been what they call an empire or imperialism at all, at least in its innermost workings.
This is not to be argued out in one or two sentences, especially to the those who are still talking of the “fall” of the Roman Empire both as a straw man for their own ideas and an ill-made straw man at that.
But I make one quick stab.
How essential is jingo to modern imperialism as a cohesive force?
Strange then that the Romans, as seen in most of the history they wrote themselves, and also in much poetry, were singularly unjingoistic, don’t you think?
Eugene Costa
February 29th, 2008 at 10:58 am
corr” “both the history”. Pardon this and any other typos.
brad smith
February 29th, 2008 at 11:38 am
John you are obviously an idiot. I commented on socialism. What is your answer? Some BS about 17 year old volunteers. You really need to get a life. Smearing the best candidate we have seen in years with your so smart comments just makes you look stupid. Show me even one Socialist program that
Ron Paul supports. First you claim he is a Socialist and now you say young people should not be allowed to participate in politics. I guess only you should have a vote or a choice.
Go John Go another idiot without a clue.
brad smith
February 29th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Give me a break John. Why do you think all the third party groups want him to help them out? It’s because he woke people up while they have done nothing but the same old same old. They are glomming on to him because he has devoted supporters and they don’t.
You get reports from where? Mars? You spew the same old crap day after day. You should at least get some new garbage to throw around. I will say one thing for you, at least you are consistant, consistantly ignorant.
Go John Go, another idiot who stands for nothing.
brad smith
February 29th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
John the Moron strikes again. You say you would vote for Ron Paul IF he ran as a third party candidate. But who are you going to vote for now? Yourself? If you want to further the debate why don’t you do some homework and actually bring something in that makes sense. Socialist, 17 year olds, and all your other BS, say one thing that brings something to the conversation. I don’t think you can, you are just a negative living off of the negative.
Go John Go Another Idiot standing for nothing!
brad smith
February 29th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Yah, I say who gives a rats a$$. I have yet to see how spelling makes one bit of difference. It’s a blog not professional journalism. Showing off with big words doesn’t impress me one bit. Ideas do. However, at least the comments by bread&circuses and Eugene Costa are intelligent, if not on point, in regards to the article. Intersting reading for sure.
Bill K.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
And? We should just become accustomed to Warmongers in the White House? I cannot support this.
John Lowell
February 29th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Not CarterM, one of the group of 17 year olds now leading the charge for St. Paul whether he wants them to or not? Tell us, Carter, will Ron tease again next time, making sure that he holds on as tight as he’s able to his favorite system party, the National Socialists, only to wuss out later when it counts? And, Carter, about the 20,000,000 pezuzies, can you give us some help as what may have happened to all of that scratch? Don’t you think Ron ought to have been pro-active enough to keep that much out of the hands of babes and the child abusers that may wish to prey upon them? I don’t know, maybe Ron’s too busy back there in the Principle – or is it Principal – Department to care. I mean, after all, there’s that profoundly influencial House seat of his to keep in mind.
paulite
February 29th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Funny, Lowell, but anyone can spot a typo from someone who can’t spell.
What caca are you talking about – your posts?
John Lowell
February 29th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Oh, I just thought it enormously entertaining watching you step right into your own poop by mispelling goodness, paulite. And now the rationale, “it was a typo”? Sure it was, son. You just keep believing that. And while you’re cleaning the do-do off your shoe perhaps you’d want to explain to us how it was that all of that came about. I mean who’d a thunk it, someone with your feel for precision.
bread&circuses
February 29th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Eugene, you said:
“There is no sound analogy with the United States on that score, which for the most part has actively constructed and imagined the outside threats that justified its expansion.
“True enough the British burned the capital in the war of 1812, but that is not the story of the Capitoline geese, is it?”
Not much of a cultural or ethnic fault line between the early U.S. and Britain, and neither were the conflicts particularly long lasting, so I think you miss the point.
Allow me to quote from Peter Turchin’s War and Peace and War:
“What was the impact of the frontier on the European settlers who made their little homes on the American prairie?
“The first European settlers to America arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, followed shortly by the Dutch on Manhattan Island and the Pilgrims at Cape Cod. The frontier was a true fault line, on which two very different civilizations came in contact, soon to become conflict. On one side were the European farmers originating from urbanized literate societies with a monotheistic religion (mostly, assorted Protestant sects of Christianity). The various Indian societies, on the other side of the fault line, were almost a perfect opposite, except some Indians also practiced farming. Given such deep cultural differences, it was inevitable that the two groups of people would come into conflict. Indeed, the first war between the settlers and the Indians broke out in 1622, and the cross-fault line hostilities went on with few interruptions until the western frontier was officially declared closed in 1890. The conflict, therefore, was almost three centuries in duration.
“Modern histories do not emphasize this aspect of the conflict, but it was very intense, at times genocidal. The history of the massacres that the U.S. Army inflicted on the Indians during the last 30 years of the conflict was powerfully told in 1970 by Dee Brown in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. However, both the Indians and Europeans committed genocide and atrocities. The Indians were more inventive in coming up with horrible tortures, but the settlers were ultimately more successful at exterminating the Indians.
“We also tend to forget that the Indian Wars inflicted higher casualties in proportional terms than any other wars in American history. On the very first day of the first Indian War, between the Virginian settlers and the Powhattan Confederacy in 1622, the Indians massacred 347 men, women, and children out of the population of only 1,200. This is a casualty rate of 30 percent! By contrast, the American losses in the World Wars I and II were only 0.1 and 0.3 percent of the total U.S. population, respectively. In the Second Powhattan War, the Indians killed 500 out of 8,000 settlers. In the King Philip’s War of 1675-76, about 800 Puritans were killed out of the total population of 52,000. More than half of New England’s 90 towns suffered from Indian attacks. As Nathaniel Saltonstall wrote in 1676, ‘in Narranganset not one House [was] left standing. At Warwick, but one. At Providence, not above three.’ It took years for the area to recover.
“The violent acts committed by the Indians on the Whites were not limited to indiscriminant killing and property damage. During the King Philip’s War, the Indian atrocities included ‘the raping and scalping of women, the cutting off of fingers and feet of men, the skinning of White captives, the ripping open the bellies of pregnant women, the cutting off of penises of the males,’ and so on.”
Turchin goes on at length to describe the intensity of the conflict, but you get the idea. He concludes:
“These are just a few of the stories out of many illustrating the extraordinary intensity of the Indian-settler conflict in North America. A recent compilation counted more than 16,000 recorded atrocities committed by the Whites on the Indians, the Indians on the Whites, and the Indians on other Indians during the 268 years of conflict. This works out to an average of more than one atrocity a week! Actually, there were many more, because not every incident left a historical record. The impact of these incidents on the settler community when they were reported in newspapers (such as the torture story described in Benjamin Franklin’s newspaper) and books (such as Mary Rowlandson’s bestseller) was much greater than it would be in a preliterate society. It is hard for us to envisage the psychological impact that the continuing barrage of such reports would have on the collective psyche of the settler population. Imagine hearing on CNN that yesterday yet another American town was wiped out by the ‘Reds. ‘ (Let’s leave the precise identity of the enemy unspecified.) All men were killed, women raped and then also slain, and those children who were not slaughtered immediately were instead carried away to be sold on the organ black market. Or that the Reds again tortured a U.S. serviceman to death, videotaped it, and showed it repeatedly on the Al Reddiyyah channel. Or perhaps an interview with a ransomed captive about her horrible experiences at the hands of the Reds. You would hear a story of this kind once a week throughout your life; and the same state of affairs was in place when your parents and grandparents grew up. Without doubt, any society subjected to such pressures for generations would be transformed.”
Fascist Nation
February 29th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
I wouldn’t trust good news until the election results come in and are final March 5th. The bad guys count the votes. And clearly they have been under counting Paul in virtually all states. Even when someone screws up as in Alaska, they can respond very quickly and fix the results.
brad smith
February 29th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Sounds like John is off his meds again.
Eugene Costa
March 1st, 2008 at 12:12 am
Not pertinent as a comparative case save in establishing exactly the distinctions from that of the founding of Rome I have suggested.
Jamestown is irrelevant.
As for Plymouth, it was a much different situation. Most of the Massachusetts native peoples had died from small pox left by a previous excursion by Sir George Fernando Gorges and the area was largely depopulated.
The only real question was whether Gorges’s gift was deliberate germ warfare.
At any rate, the colonists in Massachusetts early assumed the character of just another tribe but with an overseas support system and an orientation toward the colonizer, as the Dutch in New Amsterdam, for example, who allied immediately with the Iroquois.
So also with the French in Canada, and not even to mention the Spanish colonizers who were already in what later became the United States long before that mythic “New England” first Thanksgiving.
The analogy here is not with early Rome, but with some of the early Greek overseas colonies in Italy, Sicily, Spain, Africa, and better yet on the Black Sea.
Have you read Gary B. Nash’s Red, White,and Black: The Peoples of Early North America by the way?
Some very interesting and original observations.
Eugene Costa
March 1st, 2008 at 12:14 am
I am not sure my latest addition is in the right box, bread&circuses, check below if it is not.
Eugene Costa
March 1st, 2008 at 12:30 am
“Smiggen” is hilarious, and nicely pointed. “Smiggin holes” in New south Wales is also pertinent, from the Scottish “smiggin”, which also relates, as you surely know, in the way of a smirk.
Were they perhaps Picts or just sweeps?
Such curious, criminally misspelled surnames–O tempora! O mores!
John Lowell
March 1st, 2008 at 2:04 am
Ah, yes, Eugene Costa. Thank you for these further elucidations. Be on your guard, however, as some here can’t manage the challenge involved with words of greater than, say, three or four letters and have, in fact, so acknowleged publically. I’m afraid they’d be eclipsed should you go on. :-)
Eugene Costa
March 1st, 2008 at 2:20 am
Si. (jeje).
Dave Libori
March 1st, 2008 at 9:01 am
My thanks to Eugene Costa and bread&circuses for the interesting and enlightening dialogue about colonization and the fate of empire.
Maybe even AIPAC frontman John Lowell can learn from this.
brad smith
March 1st, 2008 at 9:57 am
I agree good stuff from Eugene and bread. But don’t worry about John he already knows it all, just ask him he will tell ya (in big $50 words).
bread&circuses
March 1st, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Eugene,
You are hung up on a comparison between the U.S. and the Roman Empire, which is to miss the point: groups with a high capacity for concerted collective action arise on metaethnic frontiers, or fault lines between two metaethnic groups. These are places where competition between different ethnic groups is intense.
When imperial boundaries coincide with one of these fault lines, they give rise to empires, defined as a large, multiethnic territorial state. These multiethnic frontiers are an important factor in their development.
The Indian-settler conflict that lasted from 1622 to 1890 in N. America, as Turchin details, was intense. It certainly qualifies as a metaethnic frontier.
I haven’t read the Nash book. I’ll have to put it on the list.
Eugene Costa
March 1st, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Once again we disagree. You have “rules of empire”, which indeed may be plausible in some contexts, mostly modern, and indeed where people are already thinking in your terms.
My point is simple–the ultimate model, the Roman imperium, is atypical.
One of these days, for example, we’ll have to go at “boundaries”.
In reqard to “Rome”, there were in fact a number of very distinct and different types.
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May 12th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
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