"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." -Thomas Jefferson
In ancient Rome, in the earliest days of that republic, there was a political figure named Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus who is considered by many to be the embodiment of civic virtue. From a noble family, his fortune was decimated by the imprudence of one of his sons and was thus reduced to the status a humble farmer.
With the Roman Republic on the brink of devastation, at war with neighboring tribes that had cornered her army and laid siege to them in the Alban Hills, the Senate authorized the nomination of Cincinnatus as Dictator for a term of six months. A Senate delegation was dispatched to Cincinnatus' farm to announce his appointment and brief him on the state the Republic was in. Upon their arrival, they found their Dictator with his hand to a plow tilling his fields. With his family facing starvation if their crops went un-sown, Cincinnatus accepted the charge of dictatorial power. Immediately returning to the city, he assembled a civilian army on the Field of Mars and set out to relieve the units trapped in the Alban Hills by the Aequian and Sabine tribes. Personally leading the infantry into battle, the siege was lifted and the enemies of Rome were defeated.
Sixteen days after a sudden and unexpected rise to the pinnacle of power, having fulfilled his mission to the Republic, he went to the forum before the break of day and ceded the absolute authority he was entrusted back to the Senate. Thereafter he refused any grants of land, monetary gifts, or other spoils of war from the Senate, returning to till his fields.
In ancient Rome, in the earliest days of that republic, there was a political figure named Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus who is considered by many to be the embodiment of civic virtue. From a noble family, his fortune was decimated by the imprudence of one of his sons and was thus reduced to the status a humble farmer.
With the Roman Republic on the brink of devastation, at war with neighboring tribes that had cornered her army and laid siege to them in the Alban Hills, the Senate authorized the nomination of Cincinnatus as Dictator for a term of six months. A Senate delegation was dispatched to Cincinnatus' farm to announce his appointment and brief him on the state the Republic was in. Upon their arrival, they found their Dictator with his hand to a plow tilling his fields. With his family facing starvation if their crops went un-sown, Cincinnatus accepted the charge of dictatorial power. Immediately returning to the city, he assembled a civilian army on the Field of Mars and set out to relieve the units trapped in the Alban Hills by the Aequian and Sabine tribes. Personally leading the infantry into battle, the siege was lifted and the enemies of Rome were defeated.
Sixteen days after a sudden and unexpected rise to the pinnacle of power, having fulfilled his mission to the Republic, he went to the forum before the break of day and ceded the absolute authority he was entrusted back to the Senate. Thereafter he refused any grants of land, monetary gifts, or other spoils of war from the Senate, returning to till his fields.
***
As the sons and daughters of another Republic, millenia later and half a world away, we too find ourselves on the cusp of an abyss all too eager to swallow us up. How we approach this political, military, and economic disaster will no doubt profoundly shape the future of our society and culture. I point to Cincinnatus as a model (a man even George Washington chose to model himself after) because he was virtuous - moral, honorable, intelligent, vigorous - and did not abuse public office to satisfy the demands of his purse or vanity.
WHERE ARE SUCH MEN TODAY?!?!?!
Surely such men do not plan our Republic's foreign policy in the Oval Office. Nor are they debating the necessity (let alone the constitutionality) of pending legislation on the floor of the Senate. And when the members of the House of Representatives have prepared budgets over the past 40 years, words like "responsible" and "austere" are hardly synonymous. If men of the same ilk as Cincinnatus walked the halls of our capital city, we most certainly would not find ourselves in this situation.
There is no doubt that our fathers who endured real economic depressions or fought in World Wars were virtuous, some even being numbered among the "Greatest Generation". But in their wake the torch has been passed to a most decrepit and undeserving generation who have governed quite simply in a tyrannical fashion. They've vowed their children to indentured servitude to ensure their own comfort, ransomed personal liberty to assuage their fears, and have torn the fabric of this nation apart over petty and insignificant disputes in order to subvert our Republic to accumulate power.
Now, the intent of this post is not to indict or dwell on the short comings of that overwhelmingly rancid cabal of despots. Whether they realize it or not, if these little Caesars persist in their course of action they will not only inspire men like Cincinnatus to challenge them. Rather they will find themselves face to face with men like Brutus, who will no doubt bear a violent and swift fate for them in the palm of their hands. But regardless of what happens, I need not focus on them as history will more accurately measure out and dispense the meager respect (and abundant contempt) that they have earned.
The focus of this essay is to call upon the children of my generation, to step forward and assume the torch of liberty and justice that has been so carelessly flung about over the past decades, lest our own children find it extinguished. I know many of us are profoundly apathetic. We sit at home and roll our eyes at the empty rhetoric and platitudes that enthral so many into a mindless stupor. Fuck Bush, Obama, Gingrich, Pelosi, Guliani, Limbaugh, Carville, Coulter, and the Clintons. They are civil whores that should be cast away and acknowledged as the pariahs that they truly are.
Step forward Cincinnati and offer a legitimate remedy to this inept regime before before even lesser men and women seize power. You are, as John Adams said, the "natural aristocracy" and it is because of your virtue and talents that nature calls upon you to serve your fellow men and women. Strength is not there for its own use, but there to offset the frailty of the weak. Deliver a deathblow at the ballot box before the mob tries to accomplish the same in the halls of Congress with daggers. If ever there was a time, it would be now.
WHERE ARE SUCH MEN TODAY?!?!?!
Surely such men do not plan our Republic's foreign policy in the Oval Office. Nor are they debating the necessity (let alone the constitutionality) of pending legislation on the floor of the Senate. And when the members of the House of Representatives have prepared budgets over the past 40 years, words like "responsible" and "austere" are hardly synonymous. If men of the same ilk as Cincinnatus walked the halls of our capital city, we most certainly would not find ourselves in this situation.
There is no doubt that our fathers who endured real economic depressions or fought in World Wars were virtuous, some even being numbered among the "Greatest Generation". But in their wake the torch has been passed to a most decrepit and undeserving generation who have governed quite simply in a tyrannical fashion. They've vowed their children to indentured servitude to ensure their own comfort, ransomed personal liberty to assuage their fears, and have torn the fabric of this nation apart over petty and insignificant disputes in order to subvert our Republic to accumulate power.
Now, the intent of this post is not to indict or dwell on the short comings of that overwhelmingly rancid cabal of despots. Whether they realize it or not, if these little Caesars persist in their course of action they will not only inspire men like Cincinnatus to challenge them. Rather they will find themselves face to face with men like Brutus, who will no doubt bear a violent and swift fate for them in the palm of their hands. But regardless of what happens, I need not focus on them as history will more accurately measure out and dispense the meager respect (and abundant contempt) that they have earned.
The focus of this essay is to call upon the children of my generation, to step forward and assume the torch of liberty and justice that has been so carelessly flung about over the past decades, lest our own children find it extinguished. I know many of us are profoundly apathetic. We sit at home and roll our eyes at the empty rhetoric and platitudes that enthral so many into a mindless stupor. Fuck Bush, Obama, Gingrich, Pelosi, Guliani, Limbaugh, Carville, Coulter, and the Clintons. They are civil whores that should be cast away and acknowledged as the pariahs that they truly are.
Step forward Cincinnati and offer a legitimate remedy to this inept regime before before even lesser men and women seize power. You are, as John Adams said, the "natural aristocracy" and it is because of your virtue and talents that nature calls upon you to serve your fellow men and women. Strength is not there for its own use, but there to offset the frailty of the weak. Deliver a deathblow at the ballot box before the mob tries to accomplish the same in the halls of Congress with daggers. If ever there was a time, it would be now.
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