Warning signs that a large and unwieldy Republic might backslide into autocracy (Congress, enemies)

[atltechdude]

There's been a lot of discussion about whether the US is seeing a slide toward authoritarian rule (whether you think that is going to be from the left or right). That would be like having an emperor in the Roman example. After doing some research on the Roman Empire and Republic, these are the top 10 warning signs I noted that started to occur in the decades before the Republic collapsed and the transition to autocracy occurred. Some of them do seem eerily similar to the US today.

1. Politicians started to hold top offices for longer than was historically allowed
2. Foreign policy decisions started to be made based on personal ambition and the interests of individual politicians rather than in the best interests of the state
3. Loyalties (especially of soldiers) started to shift to individual leaders and generals rather than to the state
4. Individual family farms began to be replaced by large plantations with only a few wealthy owners
5. Political grievances from less privileged groups were ignored for too long
6. The military was turned against the people for the first time to quell riots
7. Violence became more normal as a way to solve political disputes
8. A loss of civic virtue and shared morals among the people
9. Institutional inflexibility to managing growth and changing/expanding empire
10. Increasing factionalism and political paralysis (oligcarchs vs democrats)

Everything on that list is referencing the period of the late 2nd through early 1st century BC.

[atltechdude]

I’d like to expand on these one at a time. Let’s take the first.

Politicians started to hold top offices for longer than was historically allowed.

We’re definitely seeing this. Although presidents are now limited to 2 terms, we’re only a couple of decades out from the need we had to codify this into constitutional law. This came directly from the decision of FDR to break with Washington’s tradition of service and decide to become president for life. And we’re seeing the average length of Congressional service increase. For the first century of our history the average rep term was 3 years and the average senator 5 years. It’s now almost 10 years for reps and over 10 years for senators.

When the Roman Republic was healthy and vibrant (and by extension I’m clearly saying the first century of the US was better in this respect), many citizens held political office and term limits were short. Holding political office was a desired social notch to be reached by many people as the offices had respect. So you had a situation where you had many citizens holding these offices and they were all respected for doing so. Today in the US we have almost the opposite, few citizens holding these offices (career politicians), and they are reviled by most people. Worse still, that revulsion has started to seep over into revulsion at the institutions as well as the people.

[jetgraphics]

Personally, I prefer the republican form wherein all men are born equal before the law, and have Creator endowed rights that governments were instituted to secure - and nothing more without consent of the governed.

But if you want a democracy, where a majority can legally persecute a minority, who am I to stop you?

[atltechdude]

Foreign policy decisions started to be made based on personal ambition and the interests of individual politicians rather than in the best interests of the state.

We just saw a textbook example of this with Ukraine. While it was not in the bast national security or foreign policy interests of the US to condition financial and military assistance to Ukraine on the furnishing of politically damaging dirt on Biden, it was in the personal interests of an individual politician. When politicians place their own interests ahead of the interests of the state and by extension the people, that’s a very dangerous thing that can clearly lead to bad outcomes.

[Ex New Yorker]

Originally Posted by jetgraphics

Personally, I prefer the republican form wherein all men are born equal before the law, and have Creator endowed rights that governments were instituted to secure - and nothing more without consent of the governed.

But if you want a democracy, where a majority can legally persecute a minority, who am I to stop you?

[Cape Cod Todd]

Originally Posted by atltechdude

Foreign policy decisions started to be made based on personal ambition and the interests of individual politicians rather than in the best interests of the state.

We just saw a textbook example of this with Ukraine. While it was not in the bast national security or foreign policy interests of the US to condition financial and military assistance to Ukraine on the furnishing of politically damaging dirt on Biden, it was in the personal interests of an individual politician. When politicians place their own interests ahead of the interests of the state and by extension the people, that’s a very dangerous thing that can clearly lead to bad outcomes.

And the most frightening part of your scenario with the Ukraine is the willingness of the mass media to cover for a politician while actively engaged in destroying another.



There were millions of voters that had no idea about Hunter Bidens involvement in the Ukraine and other countries where there were kickbacks to "the Big Guy" meaning Joe Biden. They also did not know that Joe bragged about actually committing the same crime as VP that the Left was trying to connect to Trump with his phone call so they could impeach him.



The media has become the enemy of the People. They tell us what the Left tells them they want us to hear. Case in point the border crisis. Imagine if Trump had barred the media from going to the border and put gag orders on federal employees there to not talk about the atrocities. How would the media have responded?



We are being led down a bumpy path to ruin and the checks that used to be the media are complacent in it.

[atltechdude]

Loyalties (especially of soldiers) started to shift to individual leaders and generals rather than to the state

I do think we’re seeing this to some extent among the people, but less so the military. Many people are more and more staring to think of themselves as Republicans or Democrats before Americans. Worse still, we’re starting to see cults of personality on both sides (Obama and Trump both had aspects of personality that were cultish) where loyalties go to individual politicians first and not the offices or positions they represent in their service.

Thankfully, the military has a through grounding in these issues which is reflected in the training and almost universally soldiers consider their loyalty to the country first and not to politicians or parties. Julius Caesar was only able to do what he did because the loyalty of his soldiers was to him first, and to the Roman state and people second. But that shift in loyalty happened over time and during the healthy years of Roman republicanism the loyalty of soldiers was always to the state first as well.

[atltechdude]

Individual family farms began to be replaced by large plantations with only a few wealthy owners

While certainly we’ve seen this with farms literally, I think the more general parallel is corporate consolation at the expense of small business. In the healthy days of the Roman Republic, the ideal model of the virtuous citizen was the farmer-citizen-soldier. The idea was that every man ran his own farm, essentially his own business. He grew what he needed for his family (so as to not be dependent on the state), and he could sell the excess thus contributing to economic output. His duties as citizen included participating in public political life, voting, and potentially running for office himself (since many citizens did so), and then as soldier if military resources were needed then he had to be ready to be called to serve in the Roman army if a conflict was present and more soldiers needed.

By having as many citizens as possible operate their own farms (their own mini economic engines), production was spread out and risk to the overall system reduced. Any farm could fail, and thus that farmer might become dependent on the state, but we’d only be talking about a couple families so the overall burden would be low. Once farms started to consolidate into larger plantations, then the risk increased because if you had a failure then it might portend widespread famine or a disruption in food production that would affect many people. I’d argue we started to see this kind of thing in corporate consolidation with the economic crash of 2008. When you have companies deemed too big to fail, basically that means there has been such a consolidation that as much as a single failure can increase the risk of destabilizing events to the entire system. That’s also when the risk increases of a strongman coming in and promising to fix it all if only you give him absolute power.

[atltechdude]

Originally Posted by Cape Cod Todd

And the most frightening part of your scenario with the Ukraine is the willingness of the mass media to cover for a politician

Indeed. The fact, during that scenario, that some media decided to go with Russian propaganda as an interference tactic over calling out the corruption of our foreign policy for the personal advancement of a single politician's ambition was quite disturbing.

[atltechdude]

Political grievances from less privileged groups were ignored for too long

This takes us right to George Floyd. When you have groups of citizens that have had a marginalized status for a long time, but were promised the right to full citizenship, that festers and creates resentment which can boil over into destabilizing events when citizenship disparities become too pronounced.

When the Roman Republic was consolidating control over the Italian peninsula, it granted full citizenship rights to some subjugated peoples. To others it granted what was called half citizenship. This basically means you had the legal rights and protections of a Roman citizen, but you were a non-voting citizen who couldn't play a part in choosing the political leadership. For centuries these citizens had had the promise of elevation to full citizenship teased in front of them, but it was very late in coming. This meant when the Republic finally fell, it had many internal enemies that resented their own status within it, presenting ripe ground for the undermining of the prevailing political order.