AR&IO: On Cicero's "Democracy".

so in reading Cicero today were reading
the words of someone who is frantically trying to convince his audience and trying to convince himself that the glory of Rome still lies in the future when tragically he already knows within his own lifetime the glory of Rome already lies in us it's very poorly written the author works very very hard to make his ideas in order all of the moments when Cicero's an author is trying to do the most earnest and the most awe-inspiring to summon up this great sense of religiosity and of historical depth of importance is when today it is it is just laughable he's not offering it democracy he's offering in the name of democracy rubber stamped on - that's really absolutely for a lot of you this may sound like comes out of left field there's a there's a politically loaded phrase right of the left field if we're gonna have a sincere discussion about the legacy and influence of Cicero I think we have to start by asking what is the value of an aristocracy what is the role of aristocracy in our society supposed to be and then what did it ever mean to these historical authors so to give you guys a quick recap Cicero is one of the most influential political philosophers in the history of the world and today nobody reads him it's kind of mind-blowing we had real difficulty finding a copy at the library we went to the library you will have difficulty even finding a consistent title for this book it's normally titled something like on the Republic on the Roman Republic it could be on the state or on the nature of government but there are a few different kind of titles circulating and you know like that was true in the Middle Ages for major works by like Plato and Aristotle there'd be more than one title but then at some point in the scholarship we settled on a standard modern a title but you're not not just standard in English but normally the same title be used in all European languages so I think everyone knows this is what's the most important work by Cicero it's one of the most important works in history of Western civilization would it be too much to say there's a kind of embarrassment about it I had the very strange experience that I was starting to read Cicero at the time when I had just been studying the history of the English Civil War and it was astonishing to read Cicero Cicero's rationale Cicero's philosophy of government being used word for word perfectly in justifying basically what we would call the Divine Right of Kings in British history the debate between the British King and Parliament ultimately about whether or not the king should be decapitated although in principle I think at that stage of the trial it hadn't quite come to that point yes it was more of a broad debate about what should be the role of King with what should be the Royal Society and what should be the limited role of democracy and role in the British people so at that time just to stick with this with this example the King of England employed the arguments treated of Cicero that what his government represented his form of ruling England what he represented was not monarchy it was a balance of the three essential aspects of government monarchy aristocracy and democracy now I really feel that Cicero is the first great example we have of a completely insincere demagogue writing propaganda that quite intentionally abuses the name of democracy or gives you a sham democracy with absolutely no sincere interest in the people having any say in in government put it that way now in our own times I remember this with one of my ex-girlfriends especially she'd always be confused and she would think North Korea was South Korea because you know the communist countries always have democracy in their names you know People's Democratic Republic of Korea chuckle well that must mean South Korea cuz that's the that's the Democratic no no no no no no Laos still communist to this day still with guys were the Lao People's Democratic Republic right and back in the day this was no joke back in the 1980s you know communists and and fellow travelers and Fabian socialist did all say like well how do you define democracy anyway yeah right so there was a lot of really insincere propagandistic one-sided selective definitions of democracy during my youth in the the era of the kind of fever pitch contest between capitalism and communism and very very little of that discussion was sincere to give to give a contrasting example by the way in the autobiography of Richard Nixon Presidents Day it's an autobiography hilariously titled no more Viet Nam's meaning no more wars like the Vietnam War you know he he remarks well a lot of people said that when we had this colony when we occupied when we dominated part of Vietnam it also wasn't a legitimate democracy and he responds to this criticism and paraphrasing of course he said well when we controlled Vietnam there was some democracy and there were some elections you know maybe they were badly flawed maybe they were legitimate so but after the Communists took over there there were none that's about as honest as Richard Nixon gets that's about that particular historical figure that's Donnison is gonna get with you so my point being on both sides the Cold War there was a lot of very insincere manipulation of the constant democracy now I disagree with Aristotle about the nature of democracy I disagree with Plato about the nature democracy I probably disagree with Socrates about didn't truth be told we don't have that much to deal with definitely lucidity I have more respect for the acidities than maybe any other single author from from ancient Athens I totally disagree with him about the core issue democracy but I think all of those guys were being completely sincere and what Cicero is engaging in is a fabrication so of those three elements monarchy inter-service it's a monarchy anarchy and that would be a different a different philosophy government for a monarchy anarchy and democracy hmm monarchy aristocracy and democracy right so I opened this by saying if we're going to take Cicero's contribution to history seriously what we really have to ask is what is the positive contribution of the aristocrats to society now today in the United States of America there are there were no aristocrats in the formal sense but there is a millionaire class there was a billionaire class and I think everyone left or right really assumes that those people are basically social parasites that the majority of their wealth is just devoted to their own entertainment and their own self-indulgence they don't have any particular commitment to national well-being that they're not they are not the leaders of society put it that way that it's extraordinary and exceptional and to be celebrated if any of them as a spirit of public service and self-sacrifice we expect millionaires to live the way Donald Trump lived in the 1980s which again I can remember very well he was on the cover of Playboy magazine he utterly flagrantly represented himself to the public as a reckless thick less self-indulgent millionaire who cheated on his wife while going skiing and was photographed you know cheating on his wife this is a famous event at the time um you know there was absolutely no pretense of him having shall we say any Spartan values let alone any Athenian values this is the assumption we have of them the 21st century equivalent to the aristocratic class and now I think if you go to a country where technically aristocrats still exist the Netherlands England and you ask people what do you think about aristocrats and what is their positive role in society you're gonna get a lot of confused silence you know what so what people who just happen to own land because their ancestors were wealthy why would I expect anything positive oh well in England they still fill the House of Lords like you know they have two chambers of government they're the equipment of the Congress and the Senate their upper house the equivalent of the Senate the House of Lords those are all people who were in there because of who their ancestors were because they were born rich you know so if you don't believe they have a special role to play as leaders society you have a very strange artifact of exactly that was that king of England's theory that his model of government reconciled democracy aristocracy and monarchy that it was all three in balance that it was a hybrid government which is what Cicero promises now however if we go back to that era of the English Civil War if we I think this is one of the distinctive elements of modernity in contrast to pre modernity Middle Ages Renaissance etc is very clear that the rule of the aristocrat in pre-modern Europe was at all times to prepare for war they would breed horses they'd raise horses they'd you know be stockpiling the munitions of war they would be training in sword and lance and they would be training the peasants to fight with bow and arrow all throughout England this is a standard thing for centuries and centuries all of the tallest men even from the small towns and villages the peasants would be recruited to be trained with the longbow you had to be tall she's a home poet you know all the tall men of England became one woman why even when there was no war well sooner or later they'd be a war there'd be a war with France there be war with Spain to be a civil war then anyway constant military preparatory Onis that was the role of the aristocratic class historically in in Europe so humble history of China or history of Japan maybe there are some other concepts there so in that sense it's very clear he in the long centuries of cicero's influence which were exactly the centuries after the collapse of the Roman Empire when people tried to look back at Rome and say hey what was the ideal of government what was the mode organisation of government that made the Roman Empire so successful including obviously the thing just about the material quality of life but also military success you know managed to unify such a huge area politically and so on administrative success bureaucratic success success in every kind during the dark ages in English and even into the Renaissance looking back at what ancient Rome accomplished and thinking how was it they did did this and we're incapable of it we're this bunch of tiny fragmentary Christian states that all hate each other that can barely scramble together to get organized to fight off invasions from the Mongols for example or what have you you know why is it that we were just so barely able to organize lunch now and they looked to Cicero for that inspiration that guidance now what did Cicero think was the positive role of aristocrats in society I'll give you my original thesis here which is completely based on silence I think an honest reading of Cicero in the context of Aristotle because in many ways it's building on and respond you are so I think that Cicero's real implicit thesis is if you do not have a system of government that is pleasing to the aristocrats they will just take it over anyway I think that's the real honest truth is that he lived at a time when the aristocrats in reality padel of the power they had all the wealth they had the means to it anytime to pose even the emperor the emperor of Rome and replace him with someone of their choosing so you needed at all times within Rome the reality of what Rome was during his lifetime you needed a system of government that was at all times pandering to for lack of a better word the aristocratic class and it was basically out of fear that at ristic rats would take away democracy or even just take away shall we say professional government and replace it with dictatorship take away you know the the trappings of you know a properly organized constitutional republic there's there's a late loaded term in 2019 did they take away your constitutional republic and rule by by other means because the aristocrats at all times had the power to do that and throughout Italy not necessarily just within Rome they had lots of examples of that all the time of where Stoke rats directly taking over power now that is an incredibly bleak view of democracy that democracy is in a sense always held hostage by the elite class of the society you're living in and you're in the position of like a hostage negotiator trying to bargain barter for trying to bargain for whatever the conditions of the other classes will be and that ultimately even the monarch who is just one man or in Rome you know we have titles like Emperor's and so on is someone who is quite powerless compared to the people who ultimately owned the horses and organize and educate and raise up the peasants and train them with with bow and arrow okay so conclusions on Cicero's Republic it's a very poorly written work the author works very very hard to make his ideas immortal by throwing in a lot of religious material that today is incomprehensible and impossible to sympathize with indeed it is tragicomic to read the text today because all of the moments when Cicero's an author is trying to be the most earnest and the most awe-inspiring to summon up this great sense of religiosity and of historical depth of importance is when today it is it is just laughable and then on the other hand when he is dealing with politics the real questions of politics political organization democracy so on and so forth he is being evasive he is being dishonest he is trying to manipulate the audience in a manner where if you're just kind of taking notes on a sheet of graph paper if you're even just like trying to draw a diagram on graph paper of what this system of government is like when he promises you a balance of monarchy aristocracy and democracy wait wait wait so we're we're in the system is the democracy can it's that easy to refute I mean it's that obvious the nature of the deception the fabric of lies that he's not offering you democracy he's offering you the name of democracy rubber stamped on to what's really an absolutely horrible system of government it's very hard for anyone to accept was hard for Cicero in his own life to accept and I just mentioned we can't get into this his own life was tragic the political circumstances he was writing that book in are tragic he was trying to be optimistic about a Roman Empire that was getting more and more dictatorial let's put it that way less and less democratic less and less of a real Constitution vote even during his lifetime and after he dies and only gets worse that already when he's alive it seems like Rome's glory days are behind them or at least I've began to use a totally alien concept in terms of like rule of law and human rights and things like that that Rome is getting worse and worse the small role for democracy is disappearing so in reading sister today were reading the words of someone who is frantically trying to convince his audience and trying to convince himself that the glory of Rome still lies in the future when tragically he already knows within his own lifetime the glory of Rome already lies in the past it is certainly mysterious it's not that it's mysterious it is hard for people to deal with today the idea that Rome was quote-unquote great just due to material circumstances that the fact that the Roman Empire was as successful as it was is just as arbitrary and meaningless and brutal and uninspiring as the fact that one dynasty after another happened to win during a certain period of the history of China it's very difficult for Europeans to study the history of Europe with that level of detachment where they're even willing to look at Rome as a phenomenon as something immoral if not immoral as a disaster rather than a triumph but to really examine Cicero and the legacy of his influence on Western European civilization it is every bit as sickening as studying Communist Party documents that completely insincerely try to convince you that the reason why they're torturing people to death and throwing them in prison for asking for elections the reason why nobody can ever have elections even though the Constitution of China promises you elections promises that everyone can vote same with even Russia after Lenin's Revolution 1917 the reason why they were hunting down and murdering everyone who participated in the elections that the reason for that is democracy it's just as sickening to to study the it the original text and the influence of the sham democracy that Cicero propounded as it is to study the sham democracy of historical communism