Re: The Last Days of the American Republic

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 3/14/07, Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> When someone treats the Roman Republic as though it were any more a
> democracy than the Roman Empire, I began to wonder about the whole
> analysis. The Roman Republic was (a) a tyranny and (b) every bit as
> imperialist as the empire.

The analogy ain't all bad, since the US "republic" is (a) a class
tyranny and (b) every bit as imperialist as a possible future empire
ruled by hereditary emperors. The US, being a rich country (by world
standards), is able to afford to give the downtrodden a certain amount
of civil liberties and the like. But, just as the patricians ruled
Rome before Augustus, the capitalist class rules the US.

the shift from "republic" to "empire" is really a matter of the
centralization of power from a broad ruling class to a smaller
fragment of that class.
--
Jim Devine / "The truth is more important than the facts." -- Frank Lloyd Wright