The US Federal Government Shutdown

“The Republic is finished”

In a letter to his lifelong friend Atticus in July of 59 BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero stated, with a definite lack of scope for an alternative theory, that “the Republic [was] finished”. But what was it that had made this happen? It had been only 3 years since Cicero had triumphantly declared that he had “saved [his] country and maintained her supremacy” by uncovering and crushing the Catilinarian Conspiracy of the late 60s. Catiline, its leader, had been a violent revolutionary who sought to replace the venerable institutions of the Republic with a dictatorial system in which he alone would command the government and the means of production (although his rhetoric provided a less radical vision of the future, his true intentions could not be mistaken). The Roman people declared Cicero “Pater patriae”—The Father of his Country—as they rejoiced at his successful uncovering of the plot.

But the celebration of republican traditions could not last; for that ideology of which Catline was the epitome was not the unusual cult bound helplessly to the periphery of Roman society which Cicero had portrayed in his orations. Far from being a defeated military coup which was a representation of unpopular beliefs, the Catilinarian Conspiracy was merely the threatening face of a deep political crisis which had beset Rome: the Roman people, in seeing the great abundance with which their civilisation had been endowed, and in simultaneously seeing the great plights in which some of the plebeian (working) class found themselves, had begun to feel that society’s wealth had become unfairly distributed, and this gave rise to a sense of injustice in Rome. This sense of injustice being further increased by the rigid class systems of Rome, in which those from the lower orders were generally prevented from ascending the economic and political hierarchy, a more perfect hotbed for demagogues could not have been created.

And so it was that Julius Caesar was allowed by the Roman people to become sole consul of Rome, and to undermine all which the Republic had stood for. Passing his Lex Vatinia—which distributed land to the poor—, and restricting the powers of the governors—which made the Roman government more centralised—, Caesar convinced the public that the rule of law and the Roman Constitution were inadequate, and that in order to ensure fairness and equality, a large, strong and authoritative central government was indispensable. In truth, Caesar was merely using the lack of social mobility in Rome—which could only have been truly addressed by reforming the Roman class system—as a means to gain power, which was always his ultimate ambition. However, in their desperation to find an instant solution to their woes, many Romans came to trust Caesar more than the Republic itself. They were not liable to complain when the man who gave them land and grain began to systematically imprison those who stood against him or to threaten his opponents with military violence. The era of statesmanship had waned; the era of leadership had dawned.

Over the coming years, numerous civil-wars and power-struggles would ultimately bring to an end the age of the Republic, and under an oligarchic system the Romans would experience yet more success and prosperity as a people, but never would they forget the stability and the liberty which they had enjoyed in days gone by.
In spite of the successes achieved by Rome during the time of the Empire, Cicero was right to fear the end of the Republic. In the long-term, Roman society was no more equal, fair or prosperous for its constitutional shift, and the plebeian class would ultimately come to remember Julius Caesar not for what he gave to them, but for what he took from them. In due course it became apparent that freedom and democracy under law had done more for the welfare of the Roman people than state legislation and centralised power could ever hope to do, and the solemn consequences of the overbearing Roman state included but were not exclusive to assassinations, continuous war, neglect of justice, poverty and the harsh reality that ordinary Roman citizens could do nothing about it.
Centralisation, corruption and a loss of civic engagement would continue to plague the Roman Empire until they ultimately crippled it and brought what was the known-world’s only superpower to its knees. Shunned by some in his time as a conservative supporting the aristocracy, Cicero was remembered by the Roman people after his assassination at the hands of Mark Antony as a wise champion of freedom who had tried to defend his country’s honourable and necessary tradition of localism and limited government.

A lack of social mobility is often the root cause of public discontentment; the belief that one has the freedom and the opportunity to improve their situation if they so desire is essential to any free society. As Oscar Wilde put it, “we’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”. In Rome, the rigid class system stood in the way of those stars for the poorest in society; in America today, it’s the federal reserve. On both occasions the initial reaction from the people to the lack of social mobility was not to call for reform of that institution which was broken, but rather to impatiently surrender their freedom to the government in the naive hope that it might solve the problem. In Rome, this led to oligarchy, less freedom, less prosperity and the ultimate collapse of the civilisation. It needn’t happen in America.

In 1787 AD, determined to lay the foundations of a nation which would forever guarantee liberty and justice for all, and which would not falter like all the other great civilisations of the past, the founders of the United States created a constitution of checks and balances, which would guarantee that no branch of the government could ever grow too large or too powerful. Should the executive branch put forward a budget which was deemed by the representatives of the American people to be excessive and therefore detrimental to the principles on which America was founded, Congress would have the power to block the passage of the budget, and until the matter was resolved the Federal Government would cease to perform all but its most essential duties. President Obama is presently criticising those in the House of Representatives who prevented the passage of his budget and consequently shut down his government; he claims that they are damaging the American nation in the name of their ideological politics. This is true. The ideology which they represent is called America, and it holds that unrestrained government is always the enemy of liberty.

One only needs to admire the architecture of Washington, D.C. to see that the founding fathers of the United States studied Rome carefully; that they resolved to build their nation in Rome’s image, and to learn from Rome’s mistakes. They knew that the duty of upholding the English-speaking world’s peculiar commitment to freedom had fallen upon them, and the constitution which they created has served to transform a fledgling republic into the world’s only superpower. In order to ensure that America’s commitment to liberty could stand the test of time, the founders carved out a system which enabled the legislative branch of government to shut down the executive when it overstepped its boundaries. The shutdown of 2013 is a warning to the American people which comes directly from the founders. It is their last attempt to remind the American people of how civic complacency allowed the Roman Republic to turn to tyranny, and allowed continuous war and poverty to distract the Roman people from the erosion of their freedoms.

The Roman people came to know only too well what Benjamin Franklin put into words almost two-thousand years later: That “those who give up essential liberty in order to gain temporary security deserve neither and shall lose both”. They didn’t have a warning: there was no safeguard in place to remind the Roman people that liberty is a better long-term prospect for everyone than tyranny. America’s reminder—its opportunity to put right what is wrong and return to limited government—is unique in human history.

“The evil in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding”

Let it be remembered that whilst malevolent, self-serving politicians and corporations destroy the freedom and prosperity of ordinary people, it is often the well-meaning intentions of genuinely compassionate men and women which empower evil people. History is relentless in this message: That concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it. Although America’s government has grown largely out of a genuine desire to help people, it is no less dangerous to the freedom and prosperity of the masses in the long-term than Caesar’s intentionally oligarchic system. To deny this is to be ignorant of history.

The excessive, bureaucratic, centrally-planned government in Washington, D.C. is inherently un-American. Nothing has ever safeguarded freedom, peace, prosperity and equality with so much success as the English-speaking world’s commitment to personal responsibility, free-markets and local democracy. Defending these values as Cicero did when demagogues threaten them is a proud tradition of the conservative movement in America, for they know that no nation has ever been better placed to ensure that these values endure successfully and fairly: America, unlike Europe, is classless; it defends civil liberties and social freedoms with more vehemence than Rome; unlike Britain’s, its constitution is codified and clear, and its people ruggedly individualistic.

So the Republic is not finished, and there is hope that the United States may heed the warning which it has been given and reverse its dangerous trend. Let us hope for the sake of humankind that the US Government shutdown acts as a catalyst for change; but if America should choose to ignore the lessons of history and suffer the same fate as Rome, then in the words of Ron Paul, let it not be said that we did nothing.