There’s a story about three outstanding figures from the past, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon, visiting Russia. Putin’s crowd is obviously delighted to receive such distinguished guests and lays on a phenomenal visit to all that Russia offers. In the evening, Putin asks all three what they thought.
‘With such an army,’ says Alexander, ‘I would indeed have conquered the world.’
‘With such logistics,’ says Caesar, ‘I could have ensured the Roman Empire lasted a thousand years.’
‘With such media,’ says Napoleon, ‘nobody would ever have heard of Waterloo.’
Originally, that story was told about the Soviet Union. But, hey, apart from the army being a lot less effective, not much has changed in Russia between Soviet times and Putin’s. And certainly, Napoleon would have had the same reaction today.
As it happens, it isn’t Napoleon or Alexander I want to focus on today, but Julius Caesar. Why? Because he was the bugbear of America’s founding fathers.
There’s another story, this one more closely based on fact (note that I’m not admitting that my first story was fiction) about a dinner hosted by Thomas Jefferson and with his great rival, Alexander Hamilton, among the guests. Hamilton saw three portraits on Jefferson’s wall and asked who they were.
“They are my trinity of the three greatest men the world has ever produced,” replied Jefferson, “Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Locke.”
That’s two scientists and one of the great exponents of Enlightenment philosophy.
Hamilton supposedly retorted, “The greatest man that ever lived was Julius Casar.”
That sounds clever and there are those who feel that it sums up the different attitudes of the two men. That, though, isn’t the view of the historian Jeffrey Rosen. It was listening to him in an interview on the New Yorker podcast The Political Scene that got me thinking about all this. Rosen quoted fellow historian Ron Chernow who reckons that Hamilton was joking.
I think that’s right.
Like most of the leaders of the early American republic, Hamilton was extremely concerned about the possibility of a wealthy man backed by the people setting himself up as a dictator, as Caesar did in Rome. For instance, John Adams writing to Thomas Jefferson in November 1813, disagrees on the virtues of an ‘artificial’ aristocracy – that is to say, one that wasn’t born into that station, but made itself wealthy and powerful by its own endeavours. He says:
this artificial Aristocracy can never last. The everlasting Envys, Jealousies, Rivalries and quarrells among them, their cruel rapacities upon the poor ignorant People their followers, compell these to sett up Caesar, a Demagogue to be a Monarch and Master, pour mettre chacun a sa place [to put everyone in their place]
As for Hamilton, the reality is that he was just as concerned about the rise of a strong man to power, in effect overthrowing the republican form of government to return to what would be, in all but name at least, another monarchy. He wrote as much to George Washington, in August 1792:
the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.
Why was the New Yorker talking to Jeffrey Rosen about these exchanges of views from 250 years ago? Well, I think the answer is obvious. ‘Flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion’. Isn’t that exactly what Donald Trump has been doing?
 |
| History repeating itself? As Karl Marx said, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce |
He makes them jealous of others they see gaining more success, and convinces them it’s simply the injustice of a broken system that denies them the pleasures those others enjoy.
He makes them afraid of what ill-defined enemies may to do them, so that they turn to him to protect them from those threats.
And the aim of all this is to have them carry him to unfettered power, just as the man he apparently admires so sincerely, Vladimir Putin, did in Russia.
Jeffrey Rosen argued that it was precisely to guard against this kind of usurpation of power that the founding fathers adopted a constitution that provided checks and balances on the executive branch. But those checks and balances only work if the counterbalancing powers exert their authority. Congress, however, now has a spineless majority in both houses that, by conviction or intimidation, will never challenge Trump. And the Supreme Court has yet to show whether it will stand up for its prerogatives – and Trump has still to demonstrate whether he’ll recognise their authority if they do.
The checks and balances are at best fragile now. The Caesar is there. All that remains to be decided is whether he’ll get away with making the final push that gives him the power he craves.
Why am I writing about this now?
Because today is the 15th of March. The Ides of March. So 2068 years ago today, the original Caesar was murdered in the forum of Rome.
Now don't think I’m advocating the same approach to solving the Trump problem. I’m absolutely not. Even setting ethical considerations aside, it worked out extremely badly for the people who tried that way of defending the republic back then. They found themselves in a civil war with Caesar’s supporters, who built a cult around the death of a man presented as a martyr. It was the followers of Caesar, enemies of the republic, who went on to win that war.
So assassination is no answer to the present problems in the US, in spite of Jefferson’s famous – or infamous – comment that ‘the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants’. There are at least three excellent reasons why this would be a lousy way to go:
1. Assassination is the tool of autocrats, as Putin has shown. We don’t defend democracy by adopting autocratic means
2. We’d be turning the would-be Caesar into a martyr and the retaliation from his followers would be appalling
3. In the specific case of Trump, one of the best arguments for hoping against hope that he lives through his time in office (and let’s not rule out a third term yet) can be summed up in two initials and one name: J. D. Vance.
As a French senator, Claude Malhuret, rightly pointed out in a recent speech, the fate of the American people has to be decided by the concerted political action of the American people. If Americans want to avoid falling under the brutal power of a new Caesar, they must organise to prevent that fate. And that simple truth really shouldn’t come as a surprise.
After all, isn’t that exactly what the founding fathers had to do?
2 comments:
I am not against assassination under singular circumstances.
San
Well, in a state of war I'd agree: I've never understood why it's OK to kill hundreds of thousands on battlefields but not the leader that made that happen. That I suppose would extend to internal combat such as an uprising against a violent regime. Outside those circumstances, I'd have to say that I'd find it difficult to justify ethically and rather suspect it wouldn't be particularly effective anyway
Post a Comment