Mr. Judd;

He certainly does appropriate justice to his case through his use of "Boy Emperor" to describe the President.

Among the many other fundamental errors, he neglects the fact today, empires are a financial drain, not a source of wealth, and that wealthy republics have strong budgetary reasons for disposing of imperial posessions as soon as possible (does anyone seriously believe that we'll get our $87 billion back by looting Iraqi oil?). One need only listen to the current debate to see that this is currently the biggest complaint about the occupation, not to mention the endless carping about an "exit strategy". Why didn't the author address these facts from the real world? But that answers itself…

We're not even in the Social Wars period yet, although Clark is already auditioning for
Sulla

"... a state within a state, not unlike the Pentagon ..."

I served with a bunch of outstanding military people, all of whom took the Consitution completely seriously, and all of whom he just witlessly insulted.

Jerk.

Yes. If you are going to compare the US to Rome, the proper period is that after the destruction of Carthage, when Rome had vanquished it's last competitor in the Mediterranean. The events described in the article were after decades of civil wars, dictatorships, purges and terrors, the growth of an all consuming welfare state and the conquest and occupation of the known world to keep that state and its upper class supplied with wealth to which it had become accustomed. The US has yet to go through that period.

This is just another example of a Leftist who's learned just enough history to expose his vast ignorance.

Jeff:

Ever read Samuel Huntington's book on the role of the military in a democracy?:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/12/kaplan.htm

In the "boy emperor" sentence he also questions the legitimacy of GWB's election. When is that lie going to stop? All of the major press organization counted and re-counted the Florida ballots...no matter how you count (or disallow) the dimpled chads, hanging chads, etc., etc., Bush was found to win Florida.

Don't complain too loudly. As long as liberals keep thinking that "Given the course of the postwar situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, it may not be too hard to defeat George Bush in the election of 2004," they can make all the ridiculously inept historical comparisons they want.

If I'm part of the empire, where's my tribute and why are we in debt??????????????

AOG:

Looting? I suppose not. But the US consumes approximately 500m barrels of oil a day (that sounds high to me, but so I'm told). At that rate, dropping the price of oil from $30 to $20 a barrel would pump $87B back into the US economy in three weeks.

From a cynical standpoint, we hardly need to loot the oil; all we have to do is increase the supply enough to force the (rather inelastic) price down.

Which is not to say I think that'll work out that way, but it's not obviously implausible.

This kind of article is why Santayana should be exhumed, shot, burnt and reburied.

Although, the left could do worse then refer to the President as "W-Rex".

If the model is the Roman Republic, then why don't we just sell the Iraqis into slavery? If we can get $3,500 apiece for them, that's $87B right there.

W-Rex? Well, how about George III?

Going with the Roman theme, "W-Imperator"?

OJ:

I did read that book, although too long ago for me to remember much other than that he seemed to pretty much hit the nail on the head.

That our military is all volunteer, largely from conservative portions of the population, and we maintain a wide variety of officer commissioning sources, are a several reasons our military is an asset to the Republic, not a threat.

Jeff:

Quite. Our generals in particular have been a bulwark of republicanism.

I'd like to quibble on two additional points:

Moron boy forgets that Octavian was not given the title "Augustus" as a sign of authority, but rather Princeps, or, loosely, First Citizen. Augustus carries no mandate of power.

Second, properly, the phrase is Senatus Populusque Romae, the Senate and the People of Rome (because both were of and part of Rome, and Rome was composed of the two, hence the importance of the slogan). Even assuming that I've improperly declined, and therefore mistranslated the whole thing, which I believe I have not, one does not separate que from the antecedent noun, and one certainly does not do so in this phrase. (It's like how Glenn Reynolds keeps attacking the phrase Salus populi suprema lex, and always misrendering it Salus populi est suprema lex, which is incoherent idiomatically.) Romanus is "man who is Roman," if memory and The Life of Bryan serve.

And Raoul is right about the best Roman Republic comparison.

This is the second Roman-themed academic travesty in two days. Yesterday it was Harold Bloom, invoking the ghost of Gibbon no less, in the WSJ Opinion Journal.

This nonsense requires some serious rebuttal, and I nominate someone like Victor Davis Hanson. Does he do cleanup work?

Gibbon began his great study witht the following:

"In the second century of the Christian Era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valor. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and after wards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth."

The apogee of Roman greatness cited by Gibbon occured more than a century after the last chapter in the collapse of the republic. A process that of itself took almost a century. Recall that Sulla named himself dictator in 82 B.C. amidst violence and rapine.

If it is now 27 B.C.E. in the United States then we have more than two centuries before our decline truly begins. More to the point we have not had a Sulla or a Ceasar yet.

I really do think though that the left has become completely unhinged.

Chalmers Johnson was, last time I checked, a professor at Berkeley (obviously) and had been since the 1970s, so describing him as any kind of 'boy' doesn't make sense, although his article is rather jejune and really not at all up to the level of his "Autopsy of People's War," (Am not certain of the exact title.)
In the 1960s Johnson was on NET's "World Press Review" out of San Francisco, and I remember him as being in his thirties or fourties at the time.

John: My apologies. I meant to express contempt, not an accurate rendering of age.

I hereby call him "Moron Geezer." This, in fact, makes him even stupider, as someone of that age should've had some Latin growing up.

Mr. Earl;

That's true, but we could have done the same thing by appeasing the Ba'ath instead of invading and gotten made twice as much money.

The issue is that the American public is obviously not terribly competent to oversee an activist policy that gets us intimately involved with countless overseas cultures speaking countless languages Thus, attempting to rule over people speaking multiple languages encourages rule by mulitlingual elites, as in the European Union and even Canada. It's not the worst form of government, but it doesn't have much to do with the one set up by the Constitution.

That's a new idea to me, Steve. I'm going to have to think about it.

At first glance, how does it fit with the British in India?

America is countless cultures speaking endless languages, but then we teach them English and our own culture's ideas. That's how the Brits ruled India too and why it stayed reasonably Western after they left..