Preserving Democracy. Elgin L Hushbeck

serving as Governor in Gaul or as consul in Rome, Caesar was immune from prosecution. The problem for Caesar was that there would be a gap of several months from the time his Governorship ended till the elections for consul. Normally, this would not have been a problem. There were several ways to manipulate events to maintain his immunity. But two could play at this game, and his opponents were blocking his every move.

      In all this political maneuvering, his opponents had two key advantages, first they were in Rome. Caesar’s power base was in the masses, but out of sight, out of mind. Second, his opponents had by this time managed to turn Pompey against Caesar. In the end there was no way for Caesar to keep his immunity. Nor was it likely that he could win in court, which by this time had ceased to be a source of justice and was little more than just another tool to be used to attack political opponents, or to protect political allies, depending on who was in power at the moment. Then again there was the problem that Caesar had played a little fast and loose with the law in any event. Like so many others of the time, the law for Caesar was simply another tool to be manipulated when possible for one’s own political purposes.

      So if he left his command and returned to Rome, he faced certain conviction and the end of his career, if not his life. But if he did not return to Rome, the center of all political power, his career was over anyway. For Caesar to continue his power, there was just one way that remained open to him. So in 49 B.C., Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the river in northern Italy that at the time marked the end of Gaul and the beginning of Italy, and came to Rome. But he did not come alone. He came with his army, bringing down for the last time the remaining facade of a democracy that had lasted for 460 years.

      Parallelomania?

      There are two big dangers whenever we try to learn from past events. The first would be to focus on the similarities and see too many parallels. When early scholars of religion began to compare the different religions of the world they started to see parallels between them. Out of this came a number of theories on the interrelationship of religions which they began to pursue. They found that the more they looked, the more parallels they found. For several decades they believed they had discovered something truly significant, and continued to search even deeper until they started seeing parallels everywhere, even between things that could not possibly have any connection.

      The noted Jewish scholar Samuel Sandmel began to set things straight in the early 1960s in an article, entitled Parallelomania⁵. The main flaw in parallels is that they are selective and thus superficial. They are selective in that they take only those things that match, and ignore differences. This is what leads them to be superficial in that the mere appearance of a parallel however weak is taken as a parallel. The net result is that you can find meaning and significance where it does not exist. For example, consider all the parallels that have been noted between the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy.⁶

      So the easiest way to go wrong would be to claim that American democracy is going to fail, ‘just like Rome.’ One could certainly find parallels between Rome and America. For example parallels could be found between Gaius Gracchus and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both, when frustrated in their political aims, tried to increase the size of the institution blocking them in order to stack it with their own people. Gaius Gracchus tried to increase the Senate, and FDR the Supreme Court. Both would also go on to break the tradition that limited their terms. But while perhaps interesting, this ultimately has little significance in and of itself. While one can always find such parallels, there are also lots of differences. History rarely if ever repeats itself in that way.

      The other danger, equally flawed, would be to focus on the differences and claim that American democracy is so different from Rome, or the other earlier attempts, that we have nothing to learn, and that American democracy will always exist. Now it is true that the parallels, in and of themselves, are irrelevant, as are the differences. They tell us little about what will actually happen to American democracy.

      But there are some important and valuable lessons to learn here. A more reasoned approach would be, rather than looking at the superficial parallels and differences, to look at the underlying factors and conditions that led to the demise of the Roman Republic. While events and situations change, people in large part remain the same.

      There may be little similarity between the threats Rome faced during the time of Marius and Sulla and the threats faced by America in the 21^st century, but the basic things that drive peoples’ actions, ambition, fear, greed, love, etc., have not changed all that much. Given the differences in time, culture and circumstances, these will certainly work themselves out in different fashions, as different people respond to different events and conditions. But they still exist.

      While the parallel between Gaius Gracchus and Franklin D. Roosevelt mentioned earlier is not all that significant in and of itself, at a deeper level there is something to worry about. As we saw, one of the things that caused Roman democracy to fail was the breakdown of law and tradition. A key difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy there are strict rules that govern what those in power can and cannot do. Thus while the superficial parallels tell us little, the deeper disregard for the rules and traditions that such actions reveal, is troubling.

      This is not some new or revolutionary idea. The Founding Fathers knew very well the story of Rome. They also knew of the other democracies of history and of their failure, along with the writing of philosophers on the strengths and weakness of democracy. The resulting system they created included checks and balances.

      In the chapters that follow, I will look at some of these deeper trends, and will show there is a great deal to worry about. American democracy is well into our own stroll into the desert. I don’t think we have yet reached the point of no return, but as we will see, there is at least some cause for concern.

      Taxes and the Welfare State

      There is no part of the administration of government that requires extensive information and a thorough knowledge of the principles of political economy so much as the business of taxation.

      Alexander Hamilton⁷

      I t ALL SEEMED SO SIMPLE and straight forward. The war had lasted seven years, and was in fact the most expensive the country had ever waged to that point in its history. Over the course of the war, the national debt had more than doubled. The war had been fought, at least in part; to defend a remote area governed by the country, and in fact had been started by those living in that area.

      Compounding the problem was the fact that those who lived in that area, while prosperous, paid only one-fiftieth of the taxes compared to the average citizen in the rest of the country. Making matters even worse, large amounts of tax money from this area were being lost each year due to tax evasion. What better way to pay off the debt incurred during the war than by raising taxes on the very people who had most benefited from it, especially given the fact they were not in any event paying their fair share to begin with.

      But it wasn’t quite so simple. Taxes never are, especially to those who have to pay them, and abstract concepts of fairness normally do not have as much weight as the more concrete reality that suddenly one has to do with less because now they have to give more money to the government than they did before. Even those who did not have to pay the new taxes were split. Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the leading thinkers of this period, wrote defending the actions of the government saying that taxation was “the supreme power of every community” and that it was, in fact, “considered, by all mankind, as comprising the primary and essential condition of all political society.”⁸ Yet, his close friend and biographer, James Boswell, disagreed with the government’s action, believing that the newly taxed were “well warranted to resist.”⁹

      And resist they did, which only brought on a more determined effort to collect the taxes on the part of the government. Before long what had been a resistance to paying increased taxes, became a resistance to the government in general, and then a desire for independence from that government and then finally another war, this one a war for independence. So, what had started as a means for Great Britain to pay off its debt from