Yes that is what it is – a time for celebrating and remembering how our forefathers told the British to stick it up their arse. Oh wait, you aren’t celebrating that today? Oh, that must mean you are celebrating US Nationalism day. You know, where every deed of the American State is wrapped in the red, white, and blue and proclaimed sacred because…well…because we are Americans after all!
Surely our government is right and wouldn’t lie to us or do immoral things at home and abroad unless of course the other party is in office. Then and only then, all bets are off. Otherwise, we are the land of the free and the home of the brave.
The civilization of the Roman Empire was bloodthirsty, militaristic, scientifically backward, and philosophically stunted. They had an inferiority complex about not being Greek for good reason. Politically, the Romans took war and terror everywhere they went. I’m amazed when people speak of the Roman for spreading “civilization.” The Pax Romana was the worst kind of international oppression and intimidation.
An avaricious kleptocracy that built cities upon the backs of slaves, the Romans deified their rulers and slaughtered those who would not bow to the decadent parasites of the imperial palaces. Warmongers and statists of every age speak well of the Romans, from Hamilton to Napoleon to the Straussian neoconservatives of today.
Pontius Pilate, a first-century bureaucrat, soldier, and politician, condemned Jesus of Nazareth to death for reasons of political expediency, and then proceeded to use the Roman torture-execution method of crucifixion. If only that had been the only time Rome had tortured and murdered an innocent person. Killing Jews was pretty much a hobby for the Romans, as was defiling Jewish holy places.
Later, the Christians were treated to the same sort of Pax Romana that the Jews had endured. Here’s a dramatization of Roman justice in AD 69:
When I was an atheist, I used to hear my co-religionists extol the many virtues of the Romans since we perceived them as the victims of those nasty Christians. “If only Roman civilization had not fallen” we used to say, “then there would never have been a dark age, and we’d all be living in a technological utopia today.” (This was a favorite claim of Madalyn Murray O’Hair)
Yeah, right. Beyond roads and aqueducts, the Romans had no aptitude for science at all, and advancements in agricultural production and manufacturing were non-existent for centuries under the Romans. The far more scientifically-adept Europeans of the Middle Ages would have seemed magical to the witch doctors who passed for scientists in ancient Rome.
The primary legacy of the Romans is death. What few contributions they did make—such as that of legal codes—were accidental, and even then just part of the machinery they employed to murder Gauls and Celts and Germans and Jews and Christians.
Ryan W. McMaken on April 2, 2010 at the LRC Blog.
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Note: One thing that should be noted, despite conventional historiographies of this period, the capital of the Roman Empire didn’t fall in the 5th century as the modern Edward Gibbonish view of history would have us believe (the City of Rome fell, but not the Roman Empire or its capital), but moved in its entirety over a century earlier to Constantinople in 330 A.D., to better defend against the invasions from the Germanic tribes.
This was the second time in Roman history the seat of the empire (including all its legislative apparatus) had moved, so it was nothing new. The Roman Empire did not collapse in the 8th century either since its seat was no longer in the west, but rather remained until the middle of the 15 century (1000 years!). There was no true “dark ages” as modern historians are finally acknowledging.
The western provinces were vanquished and you had the Pope fleeing to Charlemagne (with all kinds of implications that are very active to this day) for protection, but the empire was where the emperor was, and he was in Constantinople, despite the actions of the Pope in crowning Charlemagne emperor (where he ruled over Franks, not Romans).
That is not your standard view of the Roman Empire, but it is the more historically accurate one.
The thought of actually being raped brings chills to any normal woman. It is an egregious and devastating violation of body, soul and spirit. It is equally so for men, who by some accounts, because of the modern penal system, experience 50,000 more rapes per year than women.
It is serious issue not to be trifled with either by those who make false claims of rape; or those who want to downplay rape when it does occur as somehow being the victim’s fault; or those who want to ignore the gender blind nature of rape because it happens to a politically incorrect class of people. In fact it is so serious that under the ancient Mosaic moral code of the Hebrews it could elicit the death penalty. I imagine that The Biggest Loser reality show trainer Jillian Michaels speaks for many people in the video below when she says,
If somebody drugged and raped my 13-year-old I’d shoot them.
So having said all of that, what should we make of the Roman Polanski case?
It is done. The secular sacrament of voting, the hallmark of the modern day religious orgy known as elections, has come and gone through its cyclical four-year presidential cycle. The nearly insatiable gorging at the trough of Leviathan by true political believers and neophytes alike has temporarily run its course.
Hanging in the balance is the quality of life (and possibly lives) not only of millions of Americans but of many citizens around the world, most notably those in Iraq.
What is interesting is that our President actually holds office as the result of the favoritism of only about 20% of the “qualified” voting public. Americans turned out in record numbers to vote, yet when all is said and done only a very small proportion of our citizens is responsible for the occupant of arguably the most powerful political office the world has ever known.
In light of such numbers, clearly most people hate, dislike or are indifferent to George W. Bush. Many people apparently voted for Bush because they feared a Kerry presidency. Others hated Bush and would have voted for anyone but him. Has it escaped notice that upwards of 80% of “qualified” residents didn’t vote for him?
One can hardly blame them. Never in my adulthood have I seen two presidential candidates who at bottom were so startlingly similar as regards the issues. Yes, the packaging, style, and temperament were different, and, no doubt, in some politically correct DC sort of way, that kind of stuff really matters.
But on the issues it seems we were choosing between Bud or Miller, McDonalds or Wendy’s, Delta or American, Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dee. Each side had its staunch adherents, but in the end it came down to a matter of taste not substance.
War has shattered many young men’s dreams/ We’ve got no place for it today/ They say we must fight to keep our freedom but Lord/There’s just got to be a better way. ~ Edwin Starr, 1942-2003
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I can still remember as a kid living in Detroit watching Edwin Starr motor through our neighborhood in his little purple MG. Motown, Starr’s label, was huge back then, but Starr’s soulful style was closer to Motown’s competitive rival, Stax, than it was to the pop/soul sound of the self proclaimed “Hitsville, USA,” (It is now officially known as the Motown Historical Museum, and has no official connection to Motown).
Hitsville USA
It was the hey day of what some would later call “white bread soul,” (a reference to the cross cultural appeal of Motown), and the “Sound of Young America,” of which Berry Gordy and his coterie of stars from the aptly named “Hitsville” was the preeminent example.
It was also the time of the Vietnam War. I was much too young to care about such things. The big dramatic moments of societal intercourse stick out, as they do for most folks, but not much else. I can still remember sitting in my Aunt’s house in North Little Rock, Arkansas, the day Elvis died. It was the first major news story I can recall as a child. I sat with my cousins in front of the boob tube dumbfounded that such a rich and good looking man should die so young or look so bad in the process.
I am a convert. Religiously speaking, while I had the privilege of being reared in a Christian home, I was raised a post Vatican II Catholic, grew bored of that as a teenager, discovered a new experience in evangelical Christianity as a young adult, and then made my way back to historic Christianity, albeit its more ancient pre-schismatic version found in Eastern Orthodoxy.
Samuel the Prophet
I am a cultural convert. In spite of my Catholic upbringing, my near daily exposure from late elementary school afterward to public schooling and the concomitant narcissistic culture led me to embrace some rather libertine ways. Catholic college didn’t solve the problem; on the contrary it unwittingly aided and abetted my waywardness.
The Jesuits as a whole are great educators and often brilliant men, and hands down some of the finest teachers I’ve ever had. Yet having embraced liberal theology in the 1960’s their message was a long way from the call to sacrifice laid down by their founder, Ignatius of Loyola, whose Spiritual Exercises were never required reading in any of my classes.
Loyola was a contemporary and briefly a schoolmate of John Calvin, another dead white man many of my teachers dismissed as “always hated” and no longer relevant, but his Institutes of the Christian Religion would have a profound impact on my later adult life.
Calvin’s staunch adherence to the humanist cry, “to the sources! Ad fonts,” would be instrumental in leading me back to the historic episcopate, which Calvin openly taught in his Institutes, even though he is credited with the founding of Presbyterian Church government.
At any rate the Jesuit message among us young hedonists echoed very little beyond the classroom. Even then it wasn’t hard to make the connection between liberal theology and cultural licentiousness, even though my teachers seemed baffled by such a concept. By the grace of God I rejected the latter as a result of embracing more traditional aspects of the former.
Hanging in the balance is the quality of life (and possibly lives) not only of millions of Americans but of many citizens around the world, most notably those in Iraq.
motor through our neighborhood in his little purple MG. 
were never required reading in any of my classes.
would have a profound impact on my later adult life.