First Posted 21-Feb-2015

I was in a café here in Richmond, VA among some of my anarcho-socialist friends. They were debating how best to run things once the revolution succeeded and Washington D.C. was ash. Most of the ideas focused on a strong central government headed by a single leader and a weak, almost titular parliament. The courts would be under the leader’s control. I’m listening to this and I can’t escape hearing Ancient Rome. It’s as if the better answer would be to restore Rome to power with an appointed Caesar and an almost useless Senate. That’s their better plan.

It takes a while to dig through the rhetoric of ISIS and their friends. But, at bottom, what they seek is the Eastern Empire—they too seek to restore Caesar (خليفة) to power. Maybe this time, after a couple thousand years, we’ll get an emperor who is benevolent and won’t kill too many of us. Right.

The American Revolution was fought to establish a more perfect union of, by and for the people. The very thing our forefathers feared most was a populace who hungered for Imperialism. An Uncle Sam who would fix everything to our desire and hug it out with us. We don’t learn, do we? Plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes. 226 years later and the protestors in the streets, the Occupy Wall Street bunch, have the same goal as Muslim Fundamentalists in the Middle East–the Roman Empire restored to power.

I’m not sure all if the Occupy Her Pants movement is as willing to make mud out of the blood of their enemies as the Funny-Mental Mush-Limes who ride in High-Luxes with AK-47s pointed to the sky. But they seem to have shared the same pitcher of stupid flavored Kool-Aid. Every time we try the high body count tactic we get a similar result. The body count climbs until the threat of more bodies stops being a threat because the survivors don’t care anymore. They figure they are already dead so if a few more corpses are what it’ll take to stop the climbing body count, then so be it. That’s when, if you are a smart genocidal emperor, you know it’s time to get out of town. Smarts, though, seem to be in short supply.

America has issues. No doubt. We’ve done stuff we should probably apologize for. But we’ve done some incredibly good stuff also. Our revolution has lasted over two hundred years. We must be doing something right. The good old days of Caesar were not so good, trust me. This may be bad here in the USofA of 2015. Compared to elsewhere in place and time, it’s damned good.