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Chris Hayden
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 03:03 pm: | 
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Me and Yukio talking about Republics got me to thinking. I have been doing a lot of reading lately on the last days of the Roman Republic. After vanquishing Carthage Rome embarked on a period of conquest that left it master of much of the Mediterranean world. The aristocratic Senate, having amassed much power began to abuse it.
The Gracchi brothers attempted reforms that would, to their minds, have strengthened the Republic, land reform, etc.
They were assasinated for their efforts. Nikki Giovanni once referred to the assasinations of the Kennedys as the killings of our Gracchi brothers.
Afterward Rome endured plot and counterplot, civil war until they wound up with an Emperor and the Republic was for all practical purposes, dead.
It was said that the Republican form of government was unequal or unsuitable to the maintanance and running of an Empire.
I hear neocon commentators talking about "The Empire" which I assume they are referring to the current system of American Hegemony (and though not strictly an Empire in the Roman sense it is similar to the Athenian Empire of the 4th Century BC--a powerful hegemon controlling a network of nominally independent vassal states, with some others--Sparta, the Persians, Syracuse,) opposed.
Is America the heart of an Empire? Has America come to the period in which the days of it's own Republic, flawed though it is, are numbered? |
Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 06:23 pm: |
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In answer to your question, Chris the answer is yes, if you believe a fascinating new book out called "The American Dynasty" by Kevin Phillips, a stalwart Republican who while researching and documenting this book, admits to being stunned when he discovered the little-known history of the Bushes, a family of wealth and privilege who, along with the network of right-wing Republican Yale alumni that comprise the military-industrial corporate world, and other like-minded groups, including the CIA, have been working behind the scenes for the past 100 years laying the groundwork for controlling the presidency and supreme court in order to create a goverment within a government which will ruthessly turn America into an empire that will control oil and other valuable resources around the globe. The author also notes that empire building is to be expected when countries accumulate power, but that that history is not kind to empires. They usually collapse under their own weight of corruption and complacency. |
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