But the fact was that it eventually devolved into a series of internal conflicts and became an empire ruled by dictators, essentially a monarchy in all but name. When you’re trying to break away from a monarchy and create a democratic republic, it’s wise to heed the warning of history and try to avoid falling into the same problem that led to the failure of Rome’s more democratic system.
It would be one thing if the Roman Republic ended after being conquered by a stronger power, or after suffering an epidemic or natural disaster, or some other external force. But it ended up destroying itself. That might lead future governments to be wary of following its example despite its longevity.
Think of Rome like a building. The building is constructed using a rare structural style and is a huge, impressive structure that stands for a long time, much longer than surrounding buildings. But it eventually collapses due to a flaw in its internal structure. You might be tempted to make a new building modeled after it, because it was clearly a success in many ways, but you’d be smart to try to avoid the flaw that led to its collapse.
Sure. But based on timelines, the US is still on its trial period compared to the Roman republic. The US has to survive for another 250 years before one can say that the Founders avoided the flaws of the Roman republic.
That’s a meaningless gibe. It’s not like kings, aristocracies and oligarchic republics shared the wealth. Rather, they tried to accumulate as much of the public wealth in their own hands, or in their families, to concentrate wealth in the upper 1%, as a god-given right, tossing table scraps to the other 99%.
In addition, I’ve started a thread on the Dope about examples of this and no one could find out any. The closest we got was the Weimar Republic which caused hyperinflation by voting subsidies to businesses affected by French reparations from WW1, but it actually survived the hyperinflation by a decade or so.
It is possible that it weakened peoples confidence in Weimar democracy, but mind you that is the best example of a democracy dying by the people voting themselves goodies.
It seems to me that if one is saying that democracies are prone to failure, one must mean by comparison with some other governmental system. How many monarchies lasted as long as the Roman Republic?
Winston Churchill famously made just such a comparison. He concluded that democracy is the worst form of government that’s ever been tried—except for all the others.
I don’t know the details of this quote, but the concept seems fair. The difference is that the one ruler in an autocracy typically recognizes that bankrupting all his rich subjects is not the ideal path to ongoing wealth; whereas the fear is that the great unwashed masses will be far greedier, less restrained and less enlightened about financial policies which take from those that have.
The closest example I can think of is Britain before Thatcher. The marginal tax rate was 83%. In the days before benefits were taxable, it was cheaper to give a senior engineer a car and driver than for the company to give him an cash raise. Most of the stately homes became public Heritage Trust properties due to inheritance taxes.
But certainly we see echoes of this in the massive subsidies paid to American farmers. Trump (and to be fair, previous administrations) complained about Canadian marketing boards - i.e. milk farmers could only produce if they had a quota, no imports - while Americans did it the opposite way, they subsidized selected farmers and if necessary, dump the excess in foreign markets. Essentially though, both approaches exploit the taxpaying public to pay selected lucky recipients, bypassing a volatile free market and taking from the more successful entrepreneurs. Social Security would fall into the same hole if/when it did not take in enough to finance the payout.
This is distinct from the ruler enriching himself - this is large scale income redistribution. It works until it reaches the point where it is no longer sustainable.
It wasn’t the unwashed masses who were intent on redistributing wealth. It was a small number of hardline ideologues in the Labour Party and the Unions, who were intent on implementing Marxist doctrine.
In addition to the OP’s Adams quotation, consider what Lincoln said in his Lyceum Address in 1838: “At what point then is the approach of danger [to the U.S.] to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Adams and the other Framers were very well-read and knew their history quite well. In addition to the early republics mentioned above, the Dutch example was before them, too: Dutch Republic - Wikipedia
Miracle at Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen and Joseph Ellis’s The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 both have good discussions of the intellectual and historical underpinnings of the drafting of the Constitution.
Also occurs to me, depending on definition of democracy, that Juan and Isobel Peron tried using the proceeds of taxes to buy the national votes. Economic chaos then political chaos ensued. Recent Venezuela politics indicates something similar has happened.
But to return to OP - I will agree that the primary source were the Roman and to some extent Greek republics. The other examples are all well and good, but remember as I said earlier this was the days before extensive reference libraries and Snopes.com fact checking. Rumors and third-hand reports of other democracies may have been known, but the handiest written sources would be histories for Rome and Greece. If anything, their failures would be cautionary tales of what problems to avoid.
Didn’t the original constitution try to limit the standing army for this reason? (Or presume no permanent army?)
**GreenWyvern **has it in one. The education in those days was very Classics-heavy, including Greek and Latin language instruction, so Adams would presumably be very familiar with the democratic Greek city states and the Roman Republic.
Yeah, but that’s more of a historical accident than anything else, with the UK having had multiple ruling houses (Normandy, Blois, Anjou, Plantagenet, Tudor, Stuart, Orange-Nassau, Hanover, Windsor), and ol’ Liz just happens to be descended from him, just like millions of other people.
No. There was a proposal to limit the size of the U.S. Army to 5,000 men, but Washington, in one of the few times he participated in the debates of the Constitutional Convention, dryly said if that were passed, there should also be a provision that no invading army be permitted to have more than 3,000 men. The proposal was not adopted.
