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Oct. 14, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
10:26
The Parallels between Rome and the United States
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So let's take a look at the nature of republics, because I think they follow a certain pattern, and in this case, I think America is directly comparable to the Roman Republic, and I think it's worth really laying this out in detail, to show people just how similar the histories of America and Rome actually are.
The Roman Republic and the United States were both founded in a similar way.
The founding populations of each of these states were a mixture of different types of people, all with one thing in common.
They had been somehow outcast or dispossessed from their home countries.
They spend several generations under the yoke of foreign kings before initiating a war of independence, which they win.
Both established a republic with a deep ingrained hatred of monarchy, and it was not lost at all on the founding fathers of the United States that they were directly imitating the founding fathers of the Roman Republic.
The new republic establishes its power by conquering and colonizing its neighbours.
Where the Romans conquered and colonized the native peoples of Italy like the Etruscans and the Samnites, the Americans did so with the various Native American tribes.
They then both become embroiled in wars they can't finish and they both have their capitals sacked.
But both go on to recover and change direction, to fulfil their manifest destinies of expanding to the limits of what geography will permit.
Then both republics become embroiled in a series of foreign wars.
These foreign wars greatly expand the power and the wealth of the Republic, and by the end of them, it's the only power left standing.
It's not the only power in existence, but it has become the world hegemon.
And yes, for the Romans, the world was the Mediterranean.
The massive influx of wealth caused by the rapid rise of the Republic was not fairly distributed across the population, creating remarkable poverty in addition to remarkable wealth.
This exacerbated class conflict and both the American and Roman Republics were forced to give state welfare which, for the Romans, came in the form of a graindole to the poorest families.
The political landscape became split between two parties.
In Rome this was between the optimates, meaning the best, and the popularis meaning the demagogues.
The abundance of poor creates a political vacuum for a populist as a people's representative with a package of economic reforms.
This person is inevitably killed by the very interests he is threatening.
In Rome, this was Tiberius Gracchus.
In the United States, this was JFK.
However, the figurehead is the symptom and not the cause of the problem, and new figureheads arise, in the form of Gaius Gracchus in Rome and Donald J. Trump in the United States.
Welcome to the stage for your civil war, America.
I wonder who your Marius and Sulla will be.
This is all the product of political forces, which in themselves are a product of people's interests.
Power politics does not change, only the pieces on the board change.
There is a real need for what Trump is offering, and there is real resistance to this from the powers that be.
Your republic is unstable because it has become an oligarchy, just as had the Roman Republic.
The system has been perverted and it is not working as intended.
It needs reform and that need for reform is not going to go away.
Trump is offering reforms because they will prevent this problem from getting further out of control.
I want to see a strong liberal English-speaking democracy holding the reins of world power.
I think it is best for everyone that America stay in control and ensures that countries with a history of autocracy and tyranny do not get to call the shots.
But now the United States is on that very path.
This concerns me greatly, and the best way to prevent this from happening is to allow the populist reformer to do their work.
Dangers to liberal democracy will always be waiting in the wings, and it's important that liberal democracies preserve their social cohesion, and this isn't happening for many reasons.
And I think one of the main causes for all of this is the economic status of the haves versus the have-nots.
I've provided further reading for all of this in the sources in the description.
I've included links to several podcasts and books that are worth reading.
Here's a clip from a popular podcast called The History of Rome by Mike Duncan.
When talking about the Gracchi's reforms, tell me if this doesn't sound familiar.
The Romans, in addition to the entire peninsula of Italy, now controlled Sicily, Sardinia, North Africa, Greece, Macedon, and Spain.
All those subject lands provided the Romans with wealth never before imagined, slaves in the hundreds of thousands, and endless opportunities for personal enrichment.
One might imagine that with such an abundance flooding into Rome, that there would be far less internal conflict, not more.
There would be more than enough to go around, what would be the point of squabbling?
The problem, though, was that all the new wealth was winding up in the hands of the already wealthy elites, and some became so rich that in effect they considered the cohesion of the state less important than they had in the past.
When you are completely self-financed, there is a tendency to follow your own whims and everyone else be damned.
And this, to put it mildly, is no way to keep a free republic running smoothly.
The ruling class, which had for all these centuries understood that patrician solidarity kept them firmly in charge, started to see men break off to make their own way in the world, forcing the others to compete or lose what status they had.
Things quickly spiraled out of control.
The backbone of the Republic had always been the free citizen farmer soldier, the man who owned enough land to meet the property requirements for service in the legion, who would fight or farm depending on what his country asked him to do.
But after conquering half the known world, these citizen soldiers came home to find that Italy had been transformed and they were left out in the economic cold.
In the years after the conquest of Greece, the large landowners began to buy up neighboring farms.
Sometimes the smallholders sold willingly, sometimes they had to be persuaded, but the upshot was that more and more land was owned by fewer and fewer families.
Of course, large estates were nothing new to Rome, but even if the title was held by some patrician, he needed free men to till the earth, and if it wasn't quite as satisfying a life, at least a poor farmer could get along.
But that was all about to change.
After sweeping through Spain, Africa, and Greece, the legions brought home with them slaves, slaves by the thousands, then the tens of thousands, then the hundreds of thousands.
Suddenly, the largest state owners did not need free Roman citizens for the planting or for the harvest or really for anything.
Now slaves ran the farms and tilled the soil and carried the bushels.
The profit margins were outrageous.
How could a savvy patrician pass up the opportunity to reduce his labor costs to zero?
Besides, his rival in the Senate was doing the same thing, so Senator Smith just had to keep up with the Senator Jones.
It was not outsourcing so much as insourcing.
The jobs stayed right where they were.
It was the people who were forced to leave.
Suddenly, once fine upstanding members of the community were landless, homeless, and growing desperate.
Isn't that eerie?
The working class of Rome have their labor devalued by foreign labor, which is exactly what's happening to the working class in the United States.
And it's being done to line the pockets of the richest people in the country.
And it ends up with them being impoverished and having their avenues for wealth cut off.
The Grako were promising land reform because that's how people made money in ancient Rome.
Trump is offering jobs because that is how people, the average regular person, makes money in modern America.
There is no difference between them.
You have to let them do their jobs.
We show the full crowd.
So I know that you've talked about that.
Right.
It's always nice to show the crowd.
We have a great crowd.
This is beautiful.
And you know, Sean, right outside, like about a mile down the road, we have another crowd right after 12,000 people.
12, 13, 14,000 people.
Who's going there?
Is anybody going there?
Now it's time to go more.
Well, thanks for being.
We have 95 million Americans out of the labor force, 50 million in poverty, 46 million on food stamps.
All these young people, we have stolen from all our young children.
We've doubled the debt.
This president will accumulate more debt than every other president before him combined.
Walk us through the details.
How do you fix it?
Okay.
So what's happened to the country is trade deals done by incompetent people.
We had incompetent people.
So we will bring our jobs back, Sean.
We're going to bring our jobs back.
As sure as you're sitting there, we are going to bring our jobs back into this country for the first time.
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