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Monday, October 02, 2006

Those called the Romans, they go the house?

I'm always a little leery of the "US is just like ancient Rome" arguments but I still found this one pretty interesting. Read the whole thing as they say.

IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.
The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty.
...
An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.

1 Comments:

I read this yesterday, too. It is interesting and one hopes that the author is not prescient.
History sometimes has a way of repeating itself, probably because we humans aren't as smart and perceptive as we wish ourselves to be. Thus, we tend to repeat our mistakes rather than learning from them.
Barbara Tuchman wrote a book about 30 years ago titled "March of Folly." In it she detailed historical instances where the leader of the country took an action that was directly opposite the country's and leader's self interest with disasterous results. Two of the instances (there were 4, I recall, but I only remember the 2 - I still have the book and maybe I'll read it again) were George III's actions in letting the American Colonies slip away, and the other was Richard Nixon's debacle called Viet Nam.
Barbara would, in the fullness of time, have a field day with Herr Bush and his minions.

By Anonymous, at 9:14 AM