Saturday - June 18, 2005
Bush = Hitler, Bush = Caesar
I got the following email from my friend,
Joe.
From: My friend Joe
Sent:
Tuesday, June 14, 2005 7:03
AM
To:Skyler
Subject: Fwd: Progress
Report
Mike,
My
nephew sent this to me. Thought of you when I was reading it so am fwd for
your thoughts since you are a much better student of history than I am.
Can't say that I agree with the writer's conclusion since I do not view the
parallels he uses as the same in the
present.
Trust all is
well.
Check
Six!
S/F,
Joe
Here's
a link to the article he sent
me:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=3178
I
thought I would share my response in a rant.
Joe,
The writer has a good
general grasp of history, with only one significant error that I would deem
worthy of mention. He suggested that Nero was a patron of the arts. This is a
bit absurd. He was a patron only insofar as he had a tendency to attend arts
competitions and have his pathetic drivel declared the winning entries. Hardly
a patron, he destroyed the integrity of Greece's millenia-old art
festivals.
Okay, that being
said, it's a good history lesson with absolutely nothing to tie it to today. He
makes wild accusations about the legitimacy of the election of Bush with no
facts to back it up. Of course there are no such facts, the correct and
objective understanding is that the democrats tried and failed to usurp the
election in Florida, stopped only by the common sense of the US Supreme Court
rightfully telling the hacks in the Florida Supreme Court that they exceeded
their authority. It's consistent with the past dozen years that the democrats
exceed the law and force the courts to correct their power grab. This strategy
allows them to either grab power or, failing that, to sling mud at their
opponents when they are forced to correct the injustice. This essay is another
example of their audacity. Of course, even if the first election were
fraudulent, and it wasn't, the second election was certainly not. With nothing
concrete to compare Caesar to Bush, they simply do so and give no reasons for
doing so. Without giving any reason why the Patriot Act is bad, they simply
declare it bad. With no reason for why Bush has an Empire, they simply say he
has one.
And I'm not one
to say that the Patriot Act is good, but it has hardly been the death rattle of
our rights and freedoms that it has been made out to be. There have been far
more serious attacks on our rights, such as the War on Drugs, the perversion of
the Interstate Commerce Clause, and F. D. Roosevelt's infliction of socialism
onto us.
The invasion of
Iraq was wildly popular when it happened, with people from most political
parties supporting it with enthusiasm. The writer dismisses this popularity by
saying that it is nothing more than evidence that the congress has become
nothing more than a rubber-stamping machine for the will of the president.
Again the writer gives no evidence for this, his argument is simply that the
Roman Senate lost all power and agreed to everything that Caesar wanted. The US
congress agreed to this war, therefore it must also be subverted.
Essentially, this entire
polemic is a variation on the "Bush is Hitler" type of reasoning, except now
this man is saying "Bush is Caesar" and he accompanies this slur with a lot of
well-written history. This historical background is provided because most
people don't know the story of the Rape of Lucretia, or how the military
Consuls, starting small with Scipio Africanus usurped the normal constitutional
process in Rome. So the reader gleans how Rome was transformed into a
dictatorship, and is told without justification that this is the same as what is
happening today. What the writer is missing is something showing how the
military leaders are usurping or undermining governmental power. All he does is
insinuate it, giving no concrete examples.
For instance, he compares
our overseas military bases to an empire. Our occupation of Germany and Japan
have long ago ceased being coercive, and our other overseas bases exist at the
uncoerced invitation of the host nations. With all these bases we have written
agreements which limit our actions. This is hardly an empire, by any
definition.
The author
does one thing right in that he labels himself a political hack by repeatedly
calling Bush the "Boy Emperor." He also clearly has a disgust for the military.
He's just a slightly more polite man than the jerk who made the news recently
for having a website devoted to "forsaking the troops." His political agenda is
clearly displayed and hopefully most readers will recognize that he has nothing
concrete to base his accusations on. But then, since this is written for "The
Progressive Report," where progressive is a modern euphemism for socialism, he
clearly is just telling his readers what they want to
believe.
It's been popular for a long time
to compare the United States to the Roman Republic. This is partly because,
like this man points out, our nation was designed by our founders to have an
improved version of their government. It's also because we have grown powerful.
But rather than point out the unparalleled (until our time) peace and
prosperity of the Romans, it is popular to predict doom and gloom. History is
not required to repeat itself. Man can improve, and has improved. We will wax
and wane in our development, but so far we are rocketing higher and higher in
peace and prosperity, to levels undreamed of even a hundred years ago.
Now we are faced with an
enemy that cannot defeat us, but nonetheless poses a risk to our peace and
safety, and this man wants to compare our struggle against them to the demise of
the Roman Republic with nothing to base it on except slurs with no relation to
reality.
It's clear that
this is written not by a historian, but by a man with a poor understanding of
current events and a political agenda.
Skyler
Go Back to the Start, Do Not Collect $200 Send me your two cents
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