Transcript of #353 Dr. Thomas Madden - Rome Historian Reveals the 7 Warning Signs of a Dying Republic

Dr. Thomas Madden, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. My pleasure. Fellow St. Louis boy. Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, so I have— I've been wanting to talk about kind of the fall of empires, some ancient empires, and then I want to work my way through kind of as modern as we can get, you know, I'd like to cover the UK, but I think there's a lot of— seems like maybe the past decade people have been feeling like the US may be trending towards a fall. And so I want to talk about kind of how this happens and the different falls. And then what does it look like potentially if we were to fall or lose the superpower ship? Or is it the same if both happens? So you're an expert on Rome and a historian. And so I've been looking forward to this. So you're kind of the first one of the series here.

Thanks so much.

But if you don't mind, let me start you off with an introduction. Dr. Thomas Madden, You're a historian, author, and professor at St. Louis University. Your work explores the ancient and medieval worlds, including why republics from Carthage and Rome to Venice and the United States rise, endure, and fall. In your latest book, The Fall of Republics, you examine what America's founders learned from failed republics and how they designed the Constitution to avoid the same fate. Your work has earned some of the highest honors in your field, including the Medieval Academy of America's Hoskins Medal, the Otto Grundler Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and recognition from the National Endowment for Humanities. Today, we're going back to see how Carthage fell, how Rome went from the most powerful republic on earth to a dictatorship, what America's founders learned from it, And whether we're showing the same warning signs today. Once again, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

So I want to kind of kick it off. There's some little, little rabbit hole here. So on October 2nd, a 28-year-old technician at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute in Siberia died. She reportedly broke a test tube of the plague pathogen on September 25th. Russia officially says she died of pneumonia of an unknown etiology. About 200 people who had contact with her are under medical observation. The White House is monitoring it, and Marco Rubio warned that if something like this gets out, it could quickly spread. A few months ago, Annie Jacobson sat in the chair and walked through a scenario that starts with the plague escaping a Russian lab in Siberia. When you see a headline like this coming out of Siberia, what does history tell you to watch for?

Well, the plague is certainly very historical. It has made a visit to Western history and affected Western history quite a lot. So that's what they're currently talking about. They're talking about the pneumonic variation of the bubonic plague. And that's the same plague that hit in the 6th century under Justinian, known as the Justinianic Plague, which affected Constantinople, all of the Middle East, and then Western Europe. But it's also the same disease that came again in the 14th century with what we commonly call the Black Death, which wiped out half of the population of Western Europe. So it's certainly something that has a major effect on civilizations when it hits. If that's what this is, and it, and it hasn't been somehow modified, then it would not be something to worry about because the bubonic plague, uh, the disease is easily dealt with with basic antibiotics. The bubonic plague never went away. It's just that the main vectors don't exist anymore. The, the primary way in Western Europe that people would get The bubonic plague would be from fleas that would jump off of rats. But in the modern era, because of cleanliness and sanitation, there aren't a lot of rats, and most people don't have fleas.

So they're not getting bit all the time. But I know where I grew up in New Mexico, Every year they put out advisories about, you know, if your dog comes with you when you're hiking in the mountains, make sure it's not messing around with dead animals because it can get the fleas and then bring them back. And so you can, you can still get it. So it's not— it's by no means an extinct disease. So if that's what this is, it should be okay. Now, the pneumonic variant is the same disease, but the vector is just air. So you don't have to do fleas. And if that's the case, you're, you're expelling it into the air and then the other person breathes it in. That has a much shorter incubation period and people can die very quickly, as is what happened in this case. Again, if it's treated early with antibiotics, then you'll be all right. But, um, but it's— but it is a deadly disease. I mean, it's— it wiped out, as I said, half the population.

How does that reshape society when 50% of the population is wiped out?

Pretty, uh, pretty massive.

I mean, look at what COVID did.

Yeah.

And that was nothing.

No, no, it's— you got— you had as many people dying from mitigation as you do from the disease. But In the 14th century, it had a major effect in all aspects of Western European life. The economy of Europe obviously changed dramatically. You would think it would be really bad for European economy, but actually what you ended up with is fewer people consuming more things. Labor became much more expensive because there were fewer people. And that meant what had been serfs on the land could now be free peasants who could get a fairly good life for themselves because the labor was so costly. You also have the changes in the technology for ships, because to move goods from one place to another, you can't fill up a ship with 50 men anymore.

I got a question. I mean, why would labor be so costly after that? Because did it wipe out a certain class more than another? Did it wipe out the poorer class more than the wealthier classes? Because if it wiped out everybody evenly, then there would be— do you see what I'm saying? If you just ratioed it down, it should be the same supply and demand, correct?

Yeah. I mean, it is true that the the wealthy generally would die because they'd be in the towns, which was the main spot that the plague would hit. But if you were really wealthy, you could get out of town. And in fact, when the plague became a regular occurrence, because it comes about every generation or 2 after the 14th century, it never goes out of Western Europe. So the towns in Western Europe are getting plague with some regularity. And when it starts to rear its head again, then the wealthy people will know to get out of town, to go out into the countryside, and to let it pass. The reason this was happening, they did not know why it was happening. But the reason is because when the plague would come, it would kill roughly half the population. But those who survived, were immune. So therefore, there was no place for the disease to get a foothold any longer. There was immunity. But then when another generation is born and then grows up, or more people move into that area, that gives it enough of a foothold so it can hit the city again. But yeah, you have, you have a situation that lasts for centuries in Western Europe where the towns regularly get this, maybe 20 years, 30 years.

If you think of a town like Venice, Venice built an entire system. In fact, the word quarantine comes from the Venetian word quaranta for 40, because you were— you could not— as soon as you were shown to be sick, you were taken to one of the islands and you were— you had to stay there for 40 days to watch and see whether you were going to die or not. Also, new ships that came in, they had their own other separate island. Everything had to be quarantined there before it could be brought into the city, so that they could make sure that the disease wasn't being brought in. Also, when the disease would hit, because they didn't know really why it was hitting or what it was caused by, they would do all kinds of of pious devotions to make the disease go away. They would offer things to God. In fact, in Venice, it's very interesting because they're businessmen, so they'll make contracts with God. If you make this plague go away, we will give you a church. Or in one case, they prayed to the Blessed Virgin and You know, if you make the plague go away, we will create a great, beautiful church for you.

And in fact, probably the most iconic church in Venice is the Church of Santa Maria della Salute, Holy Mary of Health. And it's a beautiful domed church. It's in almost every picture of Venice that you see. And they built it because they made a contract and the plague went away. So

interesting. Interesting. I got something for you here.

Let's see, uh, in 542, plague hit Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire. Justinian had spent years trying to win back the old Roman West. At its peak, historians estimate that it was killing around 5,000 people a day, and the emperor himself caught it and survived. Taping back there, what did the plague do to Rome? Yeah, this is the Justinianic Plague. Again, very, very damaging, very devastating. Justinian did get it. He was one of the 50% that survived. His wife Theodora did not survive, and that broke him. He was— he had really relied on her. They had a— she was a very interesting character, too. She had been a prostitute before she became the empress. She had been at the lowest levels of society, and she ended up becoming the empress. But he was just devastated when she died. He had spent, as you said, he had spent much of his reign trying to reconquer the West. which had fallen to the Germanic barbarians during the conquest of the Western Roman Empire. And so he launched a major reconquest effort under his general Belisarius, where they reconquered all of northern Italy— excuse me, all of northern Africa, the Balearics, Corsica, Sardinia, parts of Spain they reconquered.

But then they went into Italy, and there the Goths, the Gothic kingdom that was set up on the ruins of the Roman Empire, was stronger. And so for the next more than 2 decades, they would be fighting a war against the Goths that would rage all across Italy. Very destructive war. Rome itself was— the city of Rome was badly damaged because they kept changing hands. And so each side had an incentive just to pick it clean while they had it. So the city of Rome was very badly damaged. By 565, Justinian has control over Italy. And so Italy is once back part of the Roman Empire. It's still— it's going to be ruled from Constantinople because Rome is not in a position to do that. But it's now a province of the empire. again. It's right then that this plague is hitting. And it comes from— it goes to Constantinople, and then it makes its way on these Byzantine vessels to Italy and then spreads all across Italy, causing a massive depopulation in those cities, which then left Italy ripe For conquest from a new Germanic group, the Lombards, who now invade and take not all of Justinian's reconquest, but take a lot of the central areas from him.

And the Lombards are going to end up being a problem in Italy for the Byzantine forces, Roman forces, for centuries after this. So had that plague not come, it's very likely that Justinian's successors would have followed up his conquests, perhaps even conquering, reconquering all of the West. Because the hardest part was Italy. The other areas were much more lightly civilized. So it would have been easier to retake those areas. But because of the devastation in the West, that wasn't possible. Constantinople, which was a big city, the largest city in the Western world, by far. Population within the walls, probably about 500,000 people, probably a million in the metropolitan area. Good God. And well over half of those people are going to die. We have accounts from Procopius and others who talk about just piles of bodies on the streets. They would do their best to clean them up and bring them out of the city. But they were running out of places to pile up bodies. It was becoming—

Wow.

Really just terrible. So this happening right at that time where people were feeling pretty positive, then suddenly this hits, and it just completely wipes things out. The interesting thing is that The plague coming— so here, coming in the Justinianic Plague, and the same thing is true for the 14th century Black Death. The fact that those plagues arrived is actually evidence of a stronger economy in those. It's evidence of a time of plenty. Because the reason that it's arriving, in both cases, it's coming from China. So the bubonic plague is making its way along trade routes that previously had been closed and are making their way to Constantinople. In the case of the Justinianic plague, it arrives first in Egypt and then makes its way to Constantinople. In the case of the Black Death, it arrives first in the Crimea and the Black Sea. And then it jumps aboard Venetian and Genoese ships that then bring it right to Western Europe, and it spreads from there. But the reason that it happened was because you have the Silk Road, because you're doing all this business now with very faraway areas where they have diseases there that are not— that have not been in the West for a very long time.

And so you have centuries of generations of people who, without any immunities, Um, to the disease.

It's interesting how, you know, I mean, hopefully this doesn't spread, but

yeah,

another one out of a lab.

Yeah, and that's the concerning part because I have no information whatsoever. But if it's from a lab, I don't know, unless you just like a library, you keep test tubes with diseases in them, okay. But if you're actually modifying this to give it gain of function of some sort, That's what I would be worried about because it's a very deadly disease.

Yeah, numbers are probably underreported right now.

Yeah, I know. And you can't— I mean, you can't really trust the Russians to tell you what's going on, so it's, it's difficult to know.

I don't think you can really trust anybody to tell you what's going on anymore, to be honest with you. But

yeah,

man.

Well, let's get into— so I want to open this first with who was Tiberius Gracchus?

Gracchus. Tiberius Gracchus is a Roman politician. He is from a very good patrician family. He's kind of an up-and-comer in the 140s in Rome. He's important because, and as I argue in my book, it's really in the period after 146 BC that partisanship in Rome, within the Roman Republic, becomes so fierce. And he's one of the first people to really grab hold of that and use it as a way to elevate himself. to a much higher position. It starts off fairly simple. He's looking at a basic problem that Rome has at this time, which is that a lot of their veterans, the people, the men who have worked, who have served in their wars, don't have family farms anymore. Many of them have been off fighting for several years because Rome's wars are far away. And if they had farms, they had to sell them. They also have a problem that a lot of the government land that was leased out to people for farms was increasingly being gathered together by wealthy Romans. And they wanted it because Rome is becoming massively wealthy. And they want it because they want to giant, beautiful estate. They don't want to use it to make food.

They just want to have a beautiful area they can look out at. I mean, they might have a shepherd or two with some sheep, but that's just so they can look at them. They don't want them to do anything. The food that feeds Rome is mostly coming from the empire. So they don't need to produce food in Italy anymore. That means in the city of Rome, you have a much larger population now of poor who were working day labor in the city. They're citizens, but they're working there. So

this created a wealth gap.

Yeah, a big wealth gap. The other problem too was the Romans at this point still rely on the citizen soldier. So if you are a citizen of Rome, you're you are required to serve in the military, and you serve at your own expense for the most part. And therefore, that's part of your, your job. But if those people who previously, in an earlier age, had their own little small family farms, and then they spent part of the year serving in the military, if they don't have family farms anymore and they're just working and living hand to mouth, in Rome, then they're not available to serve in the military. And that's not going to work for Rome. They need to have a strong military. So what Tiberius does is he comes up with a bill that would take all of the government lands that were— that had been bought and sold in the private markets. They would take everything away from the elites, from the wealthy, And then chop it up into small areas, about 2 to 3 acres of land, and then hand that out to the poor citizens in the city with the idea being that they would be able to go back, have these family farms and the rest.

Most—

I mean, I got a question. So what did the population think?

Back then, if they, if they saw the government confiscate land from one man, divide it up and give it to another, why would they trust the government that they wouldn't come and take their land immediately?

Right. Well, this land that they're taking was actually government land.

Okay.

It was land that the Romans had conquered from others and had leased it out. But, but these wealthy landowners, what they had done was they had bought up these leases. And stitched them all together. So, and in fact, there were laws on the books that said that you weren't allowed to have more than a certain amount of government land. But it's just that those laws were commonly ignored. And from the elite's point of view, many of them had, you know, they bought these leases fair and square. Many of them had spent a lot of money, you know, developing these lands. Many of them had built houses, they had family graveyards, things of that sort. And so they were upset with the idea that this would just be taken from them. So there was a lot of things on both sides. Tiberius, he realized this was very popular among the people, and he saw his political stock rise. He's kind of the original populist in Rome. His political stock went up and up the more he talked about this. He would frequently give speeches in the forum in which he would speak to the crowds and talk about how the senators, the rich senators, they say that you're the masters of the world, and yet you don't have a place to call your own.

You don't have a place to lay your head. They'll never allow me to get this bill through because they don't want to give up their land. So he stoked this kind of class envy, kind of thing. It works well. You say, those guys have a bunch of stuff, I'll take it from them, give me power. And so it worked. He kept rising in power. Finally, he puts the— the idea was that he wants to put the bill forward into the main assembly, democratic assembly in Rome that would deal with this issue. It's called the Council of the Plebs. And he introduces the legislation there. The problem is that in the Roman Republican system, these kinds of measures were always sent to the Senate first, because the Senate was the place of wisdom. It was where the best and brightest of Rome were all in the Senate, the men who had served their country, who knew what worked and what didn't. But Tiberius didn't think that the Senate would give it a fair hearing. He thought they would just say no. So he just didn't take it, and he just took it right to the popular assemblies.

And that was a kind of a cutting of a corner of the constitution. Rome has an unwritten constitution. So it's essentially everything the way we have always done it. And so for him to not take it to the Senate was pretty dramatic. What got worse is that one of the other tribunes— these are the guys who run the council— vetoed it because it hadn't been to the Senate. And so ultimately, Tiberius had him removed. He just had him— he had the council vote this tribune out, which had never happened before, and had his own men put in so that he could get this through the council. So the land bill, as it was called, was passed. And the Senate was very upset. He followed this up by also seizing an inheritance that was coming from a kingdom of Pergamum so that he had his own funding that he didn't need the Senate to give him funding for. And so increasingly, he was looking to the senators like the one thing the Romans hated the most, and that is a king. The Republic, the Roman Republic, was based on the embers of a monarchy. They had overthrown the kings.

Mm-hmm. They did not want kings. And so he looked like he was stoking the populist fires to make himself a king. And there was a lot of worry and concern in the Senate about this. There were lots of speeches against him, many he was there for. Finally, you get to the end of his term as tribune, and he was concerned. you can't succeed yourself. It's a 1-year term. You can't be— you can't succeed yourself. He was concerned that as soon as he wasn't Tribune anymore, he wouldn't have immunity and they would immediately bring him forward on charges for— so he would be in the courts quite a bit. So he told the people that he had to run for Tribune again, and that's what he wanted. And so it was during a raucous meeting of the council, and no one could hear what was going on, he made a sign of some sort where he brought his hand up to his head. And a number of people concluded that he was saying that he wanted to be given a crown to be king. And when word arrived in the Senate, some of the senators not all of them, but some of the senators said, this is an occasion where regular rule of law isn't going to work.

The republic is in danger. We have to stop this. And so they came out of the Senate and they were so well respected, everyone got out of their way. And they're in their togas. And these guys are— they know how to fight. They're all strong veterans.

Senators?

Yeah. Yeah. You didn't get to be a senator unless you had seen a lot of warfare.

Wow.

Because you'd have to work your way up.

Wish it was still like that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because you don't get— yeah, you don't get elected to the Senate directly. You're there because you were an ex-consul. Well,

this seems almost a little maybe, I don't know, not contradictory, but I mean, We talked about— it sounded like the veteran, the military veteran class was now poor. And so how are they rising up through the ranks to become senators?

Well, these guys are— they're from well-established families, but they have to serve in the military, usually as officers. So they serve in the military and then they have to work their way up. the offices that you run for. And then when you become at the top level, you're basically a general, the consul. So they're at the upper levels. They're not the grunts fighting. Okay. They're at the upper command levels of the legions. In any case, they storm this. Tiberius realizes he's in trouble and runs and Some of them grab him and club him to death. And their point of view was they were just— they were killing a tyrant. But the people saw this as their champion being killed by these elites. And, and so there was a massive popular reaction to this. And at that point, the Senate realized we got to give them whatever they want. And so they just agreed to everything. He was the sainted martyr now. And so they just agreed to everything. The reason he's important is because he's this— Rome, in 146 BC, Rome ends its last existential enemy. Carthage is destroyed. That was the enemy that Rome had had for centuries.

So before we get into Carthage, Gracchus was the first kind of political violence that we've seen.

Yeah, that's the first time where you have political violence, where you have officeholders, people who are part of the government, who are not deciding their issues through the rule of law or any other way. They're doing it by killing each other. So blood was shed for the first time in the political process. And even the Romans later on realized that that was a major milestone, that that had not happened before, and that things were going— and it would only continue. It would only get worse and worse. Tiberius's brother, Gaius Gracchus, took over for him afterwards. But within 2 years, he was in much the same situation. And he would also be killed.

Are there any similarities that you see with, I mean, some of the political violence that we've seen in recent history versus back then?

Yeah, I mean, I think political violence is certainly worrisome in the United States, particularly most recently. There's been a spate of political violence. We haven't reached the point yet where it's being used as a political tool by political actors. So in other words, there hasn't been someone on one party going out and killing a member of the other party. There hasn't been someone from the Senate, for example, going and killing a Supreme Court justice or something of that sort. So we haven't reached that level. But anytime violence is introduced into a republic, it's going to be corrosive.

I mean, I don't think we would ever actually see A senator or a congressman or a political figure acting— I mean, I feel like it's different nowadays. It would be—

Yeah, I think that's true.

Under the table dealings.

And I think a lot of people would say, I'm not picking sides here, but we've got The latest attempts on Trump, Charlie Kirk, January 6th. I mean, people could make arguments for all these different, you know, events that have happened and, and, and, well, they'll probably never be proven. Um, I think, do you see what I'm saying here?

Yeah. I mean, there's, there in a republic, there's always going to be some level of of violence that has to do with politics, just because the passions become high. And when humans have their passions high, they can do violent things. This is not— I mean, even in American history, it's certainly happened during the '60s. You had the assassination of a president, assassination of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. So it certainly happened in the past, particularly when passions are running high. What I worry more about with the health of the republic would be if violence is being used as a political tool. And in other words, things are changing because of that violence. And

do you think that's— I mean, what about the riots, the Antifa stuff? I mean, there has been a lot of political violence that nobody seems to be able to get to the bottom of, like, where did this come from?

Yeah, I mean, and riots and demonstrations, again, are a long— the Romans had the exact same thing. They would have massive riots, political riots.

Did they think it was orchestrated?

Some, oh yeah, absolutely. They thought that they— and in many cases, it was orchestrated. The Populares Party that By the 120s or so in BC in Rome, they're dividing up into kind of 2 parties, the Populares and the Optimates. And frequently people would— in fact, what they would do, and this is what I would really worry about, is political figures would get together these bodyguards, which would really be little paramilitary forces, and they would bring those into the city and use those to then gin up giant— Riots. protests that could become quite violent. And they would do this for political purposes to either, say, suspend an election or to stop a decision that was going to be made by the Senate. So those are the kinds of things that I would be very concerned about if those things were happening.

We'll get more into that. One more question before we move into Carthage. Now, I wasn't planning on going here, but you brought up the, the veteran, the warfighting class, and it sounds like maybe Rome was not really taking care of that class of people. I don't think America does a good job of taking care of its veterans.

I am one.

Right.

And the care is horrific. And, and, and another thing that I've noticed is that it's the same families who generationally who are serving the country, you know, World War II, Vietnam. I mean, it's, it's time and time again I, I have former colleagues, military veterans come in, and it's like, it's, it's like a warrior's class.

Is it— was that happening? Back then? I mean, I know you said it sounded like there was mandatory service, but—

Yeah, eventually it did. In this earlier period, it was a volunteer army. And it was pretty much everyone had to join. If you had the means, then you were expected to do it. But because they were never able to deal with this problem of many of the people that were given those plots of land, they would go out and try. But they didn't really know how to do it. And so frequently they would just end up abandoning the land and go back to Rome, where at least they knew where they could make some money. Because of that failure, and also I should say Gaius Gracchus, he also introduced for the first time the dole, which was subsidized food prices. So that meant that if you were in the city of Rome, you could get artificially low food prices. Ultimately, it became so artificially low that it was free, where through most of Roman history, food was— the bread was free. You just went to a government place and picked it up. So if you have to work hard on a family farm, or you could live in Rome with all the fun of being in a big city, plus free food, then a lot of people will go there.

So because of that, one of the leaders, Marius, what he did was he reformed the military and he turned it into no longer a citizen mandatory service, but turned it instead into a paid professional force. So that would be closer to what the United States went with, the idea of a federal force being a paid professional class that are trained to do that. And so his reforms allowed for the legions to expand because they're paying now. It's a career job. And then when the veterans were finished, they would settle them in various colonies or places where they could live a good life. They didn't have the kinds of institutions that we have today. But they would provide veteran colonies in different parts of the empire where they could live a good life. So that changed things a lot because it meant, as you say, there would be certain families, often from lower-class families, who would be drawn to that, while the upper-class families, of course, would only serve at the highest levels of the military. Uh-huh. They would run for the offices as part of the cursus honorum that would lead them to those military positions, but they would not be in the ranks of the legions the way they might have been before, because the military is professional.

It meant that they were much better fighting forces. But because you would have lifetime— you'd have people who did this their whole lives, they weren't doing it part-time. But it also meant that— and this is a problem that Rome had, that the founding fathers, our founding fathers made sure that we didn't have. And that is that the men who led the legions were themselves politicians. They were given that power to lead that, that proconsular power. from the Senate or from the consuls. And that meant that because this was a professional army, and because the generals of these legions were themselves politicians, it meant that the military became closer and closer to the politics. And the average military man in a legion increasingly saw his fortune being directly tied to how good of a politician my general is. What can he— what kind of pay increases can he get for us? What kind of assignments can he get for us? I mean, you don't want to be heading off to Britain. Britain hasn't got anything. A bunch of people painting themselves blue. What you want to do is you want to go to Asia Minor. That's where all the rich cities are.

That's where the plunder is going to be great, because they do get a cut of whatever they're taking too. So it means the loyalty between the military, average military fighter, is increasingly more towards their generals than it is to the Constitution of Rome. Oh my God. And when that happens, it's a downhill slide for them.

So there really wasn't much patriotism.

There was.

There wasn't. It wasn't serving the country.

No, it was. They, they did. There was pride in that. They did. They had great pride in it. Um, in fact, the whole history of the fall of the Roman Republic is all people who say they're saving the Republic. Now, some of them said it cynically, but many of the people who did it really saw themselves as trying to fix the problem. It's just that the things they were doing were destroying the republic even more. Usually the way that these would happen would be that the way to save the republic is to get rid of my political enemies. If we didn't have them, we would be okay. But that's not how republics work. Republics rely on there being interest and being against interest, being different groups pushing against each other. That's what keeps them free. You're never going to get rid of your political opponents. But that frequently is the case. Many of the generals, even those that would end up marching on Rome itself, said that they were saving the Constitution. from our enemies who have taken over, and we have to get rid of them. But again, that's not how a republic is supposed to work.

I mean, you're not— once the military becomes involved, it's— you're done.

And so I just— another— so another question is, I mean, did— was there a point— I mean, the Roman Empire was huge. Was there a point where the military, the, the military members, the soldiers, did they believe in what they were fighting for? Because we're at a point here where a lot of people— I think it started— well, I don't know where it started, but my generation, uh, the Global War on Terror, a lot of these, a lot of, a lot of my peers wonder what the hell were we doing there, you know, all these years later. Especially after Bin Laden was killed. Why did we spend so much time there? And was it for nothing? And well, I don't really believe in what I was doing there after that. And looking back, that's dangerous. A lot of active members today are wondering, what the hell are we doing? This isn't for us. And so With the Romans, did their military start to feel that?

Yeah, eventually. Certainly by the time you are into the 1st century BC, there had been so many cases in which— by the time you have, let's say, the First Triumvirate, you have generals essentially amassing legions that are going to ultimately fight against each other. So if you're in the legion and you're fighting other Romans, then it does— it's going to— You can tell yourself that they're trying to destroy the Republic. And many of them did tell themselves that. But it does mean that increasingly you realize that what you're really fighting for is that your general is in charge of Rome. And it takes over a century for it to happen. But ultimately, that's what brings the Roman Republic down, is that the real source of power is no longer the law and the governments. and the constitution. Instead, the real source of power becomes your control over a certain number of legions. And so you get a situation like with Pompey, for example, who he'll come to Rome and he'll get triumph and he will be feted and everything else for his victories, but he won't disband his legions. They'll be outside the city. And because he knows that's his biggest political argument here.

And the same thing with Crassus, who Pompey and Crassus go against each other. They both have legions camped outside the city of Rome under their command. So, you know, at that stage, the men who are in those legions realize that they're patriotic Romans. I think Romans were patriotic right till the end. They just didn't believe that the Republic could continue to work anymore. When it keeps caught— because the military had become part of the politics, the civil war is almost always what you're going to end up with. And so after a number of destructive civil wars, Pompey and Caesar, Octavian and Mark Antony, after decades after decades of destructive wars fought with massive legions fighting against each other, eventually people just say, I give up. I mean, what's going to bring peace? And you can have people say, well, let's restore the Republic. But someone's always— because the system is broken, someone's always going to be able to use those levers of power to get hold of the military, and then they'll overturn everything. Okay. So knowing that, um, but I, I think the Roman Republic was done by, say, 80 BC. That's when Sulla marches his legions on Rome.

And, and At that point, I think it's clear where the power now lies. Most— there were still lots to go, lots to happen before it would finally finish. But most historians would say that, say, by 31 BC at the Battle of Actium or 27 BC with the final victory of Octavian Augustus, that the Republic was done. But what Octavian does is he's smart enough to know that Romans are still patriotic, and they love the Republic. It just doesn't work. So what he does is he has all of the power. He has complete control over all the legions by 27 BC. But he does not set himself up as a king. He's not even He doesn't even act the way Caesar did. He just acts like one of the guys. He goes into the Senate, he sits in the back, he's fine. He talks to people just the way they would normally talk to. He keeps all of the Republican system in place so that people can feel good about it. And it functions. It's fine. But everyone knows that he gets what he wants. I mean, if there's something he wants, he will have it because he has the means.

He has all the power, really. So he ends the republic, but he keeps all of the window dressing of it so that everyone can feel good about it. And that ushers in really That's the end of the Roman Republic. The Roman Empire still has another 15 centuries to survive as an autocracy, but ruled by emperors. And really, the Republic is gone, which is what the founding fathers of the United States were trying to avoid. But as far as the life of the Romans went, they were going on to greatness. I mean, the golden age of Rome would be under the empire, under the emperors, 1st century, 2nd century AD. I mean, there had never been an empire that large or that wealthy before. So not many people— there were mourners for the Roman Republic, but not many. Most people by that point were just glad to have peace, even if they were ruled by one man.

Let's, let's go back to Carthage and Hannibal.

Okay. Carthage is itself a republic. There are not a lot of republics in, in history, at least in pre-modern history. It's a, it's a complex government. This simple governments would be the— and the ancient Greeks would talk about that a simple government is either rule by one, rule by a few, or rule by many. So in other words, it would be a monarchy ruled by one, an oligarchy ruled by a few, or a democracy ruled by many. But they would be a simple government. You would have a king and then he would rule. Or you'd have a democratic assembly like in Athens, and it would rule. What a republic did was, in the ancient world, was it took all 3 of those and mixed them up. That's why it's frequently called a mixed government. It took the monarchy, it took the oligarchy, and it took the democracy, and it had them check each other because each had a constituency. The the executive, which was the monarch, um, what— there would be an executive branch which would be in charge of doing the things that needed to be done and would have its own privileges and powers.

Then you would have the oligarchy, which would be some kind of Senate body, um, a council of elders of some kind that would have its own authority to check the other branches. And then you have the democracy, which would be popular assemblies where legislation would usually be done and that type of thing. And each republic was a little bit different. But mixing those 3 together was tricky to make it work. So there weren't a lot of these. But it was considered by— like Polybius writes about this, that the mixed government republic was by far the best form of government for stability and to preserve individual liberty of the citizens. He argued that every one of the simple governments ultimately, as it ages, becomes more and more corrupt, and then it has a revolution, and then it becomes another form of simple government. In fact, he said it was a constant circle. of going from monarchy to oligarchy to democracy, then back to monarchy. And it would just go in this perpetual cycle. The republic, he said, short-circuits that, and it creates a stable system that will not be subject to those revolutions and will preserve the, the individual liberty of the people.

And in the ancient world, there were only a few of those, and Carthage was one. It had those 3 elements of its government. It had an executive, it had a council of elders, and it had a popular assembly. Carthage also was, and I think this is the reason why it became a republic, was it was a commercial empire. These were businessmen. They did business all over the Mediterranean. They didn't actually control that much land in North Africa. They controlled the city and some of the land around them. But they built an empire largely based on ports, where they could do business. So they were very interested in Sicily and Sardinia and southern Spain, particularly Spain, because there was a lot of raw materials there. So businessmen— and you see the same thing thousands of years later in Venice— when you're talking about a capitalist system, businessmen do not like kings generally. They don't want someone to be able to just change the law at a whim. They want stable systems, stable currencies, stable laws, so they know how to plan for their business. They don't want anyone to get too much power because they could seize their wealth, and they're all about wealth.

They also don't want traditional nobility because in a capitalist system, the wealth level of families is always going to fluctuate based on how well they do. And so you don't want some family having power just because they're that family. You want a system that will allow for that churn, and so that the people who have the wealth can get their hands on that power too, but that no one person can get enough power to control the whole system. Venice develops a republic for the same reasons. So they build this republic. It becomes very powerful, very wealthy. Uh, and it butts heads with Rome while Rome is growing its own republic in Italy. But Rome's republic is, is based more on class struggles within the Roman system. They weren't a big merchant empire, but they had, they had very strong class ideas. And the, the young, the the plebeians in the Roman system, those who were not in any of the high families, who did not have a lot of wealth, they would regularly agitate for more power. And so it was through that struggle that the Roman Republic ultimately was created. In neither case was there some lawgiver where they wrote down a constitution.

The republic developed organically. So Hannibal, of course, was the great warrior who attacked Rome because the two had reached a stage where it was likely there was going to be war between them to decide control over the western Mediterranean. And so Hannibal attacked Italy. He famously took the elephants across the Alps coming from Spain, and at At Cannae, he crushed the Roman forces. He was an amazing general and then pretty much had free rein in Italy after that. The Romans, however, had built their system in Italy on a system of alliances. Rome itself controlled only certain parts of Italy. But it had alliance— they turned alliances into a science. They had alliances with all of the cities in Italy. And so when Hannibal is coming in, he is basically— he thinks that the Romans have conquered all these cities and that they are subjects because that's the norm. Mm-hmm. But in fact, they're free allies. They have access to Rome. Some of them even get voting rights in Rome. Not many, mostly just Latin ones, but they also have access to the Roman system, Roman economy. They get a lot out of alliances with Rome.

Also, they know that Hannibal's an invader, and if they go with him, and he leaves, Rome will not take kindly to an ally that does not keep faith. That had happened previously with Pyrrhus. So they know that if you're not going to destroy Rome, then I'm not signing on. So the alliance, for the most part, held firm. And so Hannibal was able to take whole sections of Italy, But he was not able to take the city of Rome, and a lot of the Roman alliances held firm. But he was there for year after year after year in Italy. And ultimately, this caused— within the Roman Republic, this caused a big political fight between the old guard, which was led by this guy named Fabius. Um, uh, Fabius, his argument was that Hannibal was just too good to fight, that the best thing to do was to get out of his way and limit where he could go, and then wait until the perfect moment before you launched a counterstrike. But it never happened. Um, finally, some of the young Romans rebelled against this. Scipio was the— Publius Scipio was this young man who had had successes in Spain and who now came to the Romans and said, look, if you don't want to fight Hannibal here, the way to get rid of him is not to fight him in Italy, which is our home, but fight him in Carthage.

Carthage is waging war in Italy without any consequences on it. fight him there. And so what he said was he wanted to take legions and lead them to Carthage and to attack the city. And that— and there was a big fight in the Senate about this. Ultimately, he won, and he led his forces. He was a very popular general. He led his forces down to Carthage, and the Carthaginian government, faced with conquest had to recall Hannibal, um, back, back to Carthage. And so the 2 of them met in 202 BC, uh, and, um, Scipio defeated Hannibal, and that ended the war.

So the Romans wouldn't have— would not have won had they not had alliances?

No.

Do you worry that we're destroying our alliances? Definitely.

I don't— I mean, alliances are always going to come and go, but it does— there hasn't been a test, a real test of America's alliances, I think, since 9/11. That was the case, and that's when Article 5 was actually invoked, and the Allies did join in. Um, the other thing with America's alliances too is that we are by far the largest member of those alliances. Um, and I wrote about this in another—

Wouldn't Rome have been the largest member of them?

Not in this early period. In this early— yes, it would have been the largest, but, but it relied heavily on what the Italians were giving to them. So in that early period, they really needed those alliances. In later periods, Rome is by far the major member. In fact, you have kingdoms that are just asking to get into the Roman system. They want to be allied with them because they're so powerful. Mm-hmm. The same way you have people wanting to get into NATO. You have, after the invasion of Ukraine, people wanting to get in. Because they know they will be under— it's not like they're thinking, wow, France is going to defend us. They're thinking the United States is going to defend us as part of the NATO alliance. So I don't— I'm not— of course, I'm always worried about those things, especially when you're abusing an alliance too. Then I think that can be a problem. But at least my read of it for— again, I'm an historian, but But it seems like most of our allies get, because they're under American protection, are getting much more from it than, say, we would from that.

So it's a very good situation for them to be in it. So I'm not very worried about that. I do worry when we do something like, you know, if like President Trump decides to— attack Iran. I'm not saying anything about whether that's a good idea or not, but the allies in NATO, it's not their job just to agree with whatever the president of the United States wants to do. That's not part of that alliance system. And I think it's a mistake to pretend like that is the case. You can be upset and say, well, you should have helped us out more. But many of them brought up the point that, you know, they weren't asked. Um, no one asked them about it ahead of time. They, you know, at least, at least consult with us about whether it was a good idea or not to do it. Um, so I, I think America's alliances are, uh, are still in pretty good shape. And I think as long as the United States is the dominant superpower, then that will always be the case because there's so much more to be gained by being in alliance with the United States than not being in alliance with the United States?

Well, I mean, things are shaking up right now, you know. I mean, this is affecting everybody's energy prices.

Yeah.

And, um, 2 wars, you know.

Yep.

That are affecting Russia.

Russia

and Iran is affecting energy prices a lot.

Yep. But you're absolutely right.

Let's take a quick break.

Okay.

Yeah, I think this is one of the most important arguments that I make in the book is that without an existential enemy. I mean, a real enemy. The Republican system, in the case of Rome, was severely strained. Carthage had always been this existential enemy that wanted to destroy Rome. And when that was gone in 146 BC, Carthage is destroyed. The Romans defeat Carthage and destroy the city. It's also the same year that they destroy Corinth in Greece because they had rebelled against and killed some senators. And so at that point, Rome's power is unquestioned in the Mediterranean. They don't control the entire Mediterranean yet. Egypt is still independent. But everyone has to play Rome's game. All the real power now is in the Roman Forum. It's in the political system in the city of Rome. And because there's no military way to defeat the Romans, that means that for Romans, they no longer have that external fear anymore. And what I argue is that for republics especially, republics are based on competition. It's based on different groups checking the power of other groups, institutions checking that power. And it's always going to be political struggles within a republic.

There's always going to be different groups seeking power, for themselves and other groups seeking power for themselves within that system. But what— there are really 2 things that preserve a republic, and one of those is this fear of external enemies. Because if you— you can fight as much as you want against your political opponent, But if it means that your enemy is going to get the upper hand and conquer you, then you're both going to lose. And because humans are tribal with an existential enemy that clearly wants to do bad things to the people in a republic, it binds people

Did they know this at the time?

No. Well, yes, they did. Sallust writes about this, that the fear of enemies is what kept the Republic strong.

So would they manufacture their own enemies?

You can try that.

Or use propaganda?

Yeah, they would try that.

To instill fear of enemies into the people?

Yeah, they would try that. But it's difficult when you don't actually see the evidence for it. You can say this person's an enemy, or this person wants— and the Romans always had someone to fight. There was always the Germans. You could fight them up on the Danube or the Parthians in the east. I mean, there's always someone to fight on the frontiers, but none of them were existential enemies. So you can talk that up. But people know also they're living in a time of unprecedented prosperity. The wealth that pours into Rome is just unprecedented from all over the empire. And that means that without that fear that binds people together, it means that they begin to break apart. And again, because of the kind of tribal nature of humans, without that external enemy outside, the enemy becomes instead your opponent across the forum, that other Roman whose ideas are just crazy and are destroying our republic. And so the hyper-partisanship all begins right after 146 with the fall of Carthage. I mean, Tiberius Gracchus is the first one right after that. And so that hyper-partisanship, it creates a system in which the drive to win and to defeat your political enemies is the only thing that matters.

This sounds like today.

Yeah, it's very much like today. And because you know that your enemy, if he gets power, will do big things to you, If you get power, you do those big things to him as fast as you can because the whole thing is so fluid. So the system begins to pull itself apart because of that hyper-partisanship.

When you're talking about— I'm just going to try to— I'm going to ask a couple of questions about then versus now. But when you're talking about the massive influx of wealth and the comfortability and Hyper-partisanship.

With that wealth that came in, was there a class that was able to control the political system? So an example today, we see— An example today would be the tech giants. We saw the tech giants in the previous administration, actually, I guess 2 administrations ago, deplatform a sitting president from his media outlets. Then you fast forward and now they are sitting behind him at inauguration in support. And so we all, I mean, we know donate all donations and the money. And I mean, it's inserted in our into our political system now, whether it's from a PAC or a foreign government or from tech giants or big oil, media, whatever it is. There's multiple avenues. And did the Romans see that? Did they, with the influx of wealth, did they see external people from the government kind of

pulling strings and controlling the government? Did they have PACs? Were they able to control senators? And—

Yes. And in fact, Jugurtha was a classic example. He was a Nubian prince who wanted his— but he was raised in Rome. He knew how the system worked, and he knew the political partisanship too, that he could play the parties off each other. And he essentially got himself a kingdom by playing the political parties off each other because he knew that one party would either take his side, but they would take it just purely because the other side hated him. And so he had become kind of a focal point of a lot of the political fights at this time. And he knew how to work the system. He had a fair amount of money. He also knew that even when Rome declared war on him, he knew that he could, when the generals arrived, he would just say, okay, I give up. Hey, you want some dinner.

So he would use bribery?

Bribery, absolutely. And then, of course, he would use bribery. And then when the war dragged on year after year, because he figures the way to win— his strategy is— I wrote a piece about this. His strategy is exactly the same as Iranians' strategy to win, which is the empire will get bored. It'll go on to something else. They're not going to stay here forever. Eventually they'll turn on to something else, and then we'll be— we'll get— we can do what we want. So that was his thing, that eventually the Romans will get bored of this little fight, the political parties will turn their attention to something else. And so he would pay off generals. Then of course the other party will then say, oh well, that general was paid off. And, and so they're calling for hearings. And everything else to find out who's he paid off. So it's— it was a similar kind of thing. You put enough money around into the system and— or play the parties against each other. But of course, because it's a dual-party system, if one party is starting to benefit, then the other party is going to react to that, to try to stop that and try to showcase it.

Was

there ever any justice for the wealth that controlled the political system? Did the population ever see any justice?

No, not in that—

When you're talking about calling for hearings, whether it's the guy holding the strings or if it's the politicians who are succumbing to the bribes.

I mean, occasionally, in those particular Jagurtha hearings, the whole thing was vetoed. by the tribune. And so they never even got to them. But ultimately, I mean, Jugurtha did pay. He ultimately lost. Marius defeated him and then brought him back to Rome in chains. So he played the system pretty well until the end, and then finally lost. But those that were as they say, selling out the Republic. They said this. In fact, Jugurtha said this, that the Republic was essentially for sale. He said, if it ever finds a good buyer. So he was very cynical about the way that the system worked. So it was as the wealth came in, and the Romans wrote about this, that all of this wealth that was coming in was people didn't care about the things that they used to care about. They used to care about what their enemies were and what the health of the republic. Now they're concerned about, as Polybius says, how much they're paying for caviar or how much land they can get out of the countryside. It's all luxury items that are that are pouring into the city of Rome and other areas as well.

And the bad part about this, of course, for the Republic, is that because there's no external enemies, the Republic isn't seen anymore as defending you and your family, because there isn't anyone to defend. It's been so successful, there isn't anyone to fear. And so that means that the citizens tend to look at the republic as something that should be giving them things. It's what can I get out of this relationship? It's not what I can do for the republic. It's what can I get out of this? And if I'm not getting enough, I'm going to be angry.

Also sounds like today.

Yeah. And so you get politicians who play to this. Also, they had their own problems too with illegal immigration too. I mean, it was essentially the— there was the— some of the populares started a whole thing to bring in illegal immigrants so that they could be enrolled in the election rolls. And the idea—

That was happening back then? Holy shit.

Yeah. And much the same thing Much the same political thing happened, too. Because Saturninus was a politician who worked out this whole thing to bring in lots of the non-citizens and enroll them in the voting rolls, so that it would swamp the vote and his party would win always. But the Senate made it illegal for them to come in. But they would come in anyway and then eventually be enrolled. But the idea was to bring them in. But politically, that meant that the working-class Romans started to move against the Populares factions. Because they said, well, you're bringing all these people in to take our jobs and to get all our privileges that we have as Romans.

Also happening.

Yeah. And so they moved, they rejected the party that they had originally created and started spending, even though they were the working class, they started moving more towards the optimates, which was the wealthier party, because they were trying to defend what it meant to be a Roman. citizens. So it's very similar to working-class Americans moving more towards the Republicans, and their big issue being illegal immigration. The Romans had much of the same kind of thing, and it was for those same kinds of reasons that, what can I do to make sure I'm going to win more elections? And how can I change the system so that I can win more elections? And you're doing that because ultimately, you know that if you cut some corners or you do a few things that maybe nobody's done before, maybe there was a good reason why they didn't do it, that it's not like Rome's falling. We're doing great. We're wealthy, powerful. We're the most powerful state ever. It's not going to collapse if I get a little more powerful, a little richer. And so everything becomes focused on that. The only way that that's going to change, of course, is if there was an external enemy.

And that would bind them together. But Romans are never going to be in that situation. I was, you know, it was really formative for me in coming up with these kinds of things. I mean, the Romans talk about it, but just experiencing what happened in the United States after 9/11, If you look at in 2000, the 2000 election was massively divisive. It had to be decided in the Supreme Court. George Bush, who won the election, lost the popular vote. Half the country swore they would never accept him as president. It was, you know, Jesse Jackson was saying that he wasn't elected, he was anointed. It was, it was an enormous amount of anger. And, and then, and then, uh, the 9/11 happened, and it was like none of that had ever happened because we were afraid. People were really genuinely afraid, and, and they all bound together. Suddenly you're— suddenly, you know, people stopped honking the horns at each other because, you know, that's my fellow American over there. We're all part of the same we're all part of the same team. We all have the same common enemy. And it lasted as long as people were still afraid.

I mean, there were flags flying from every porch.

I think that lasted for about 3 years.

Yeah.

Once the invasion of Iraq happened, it's like—

Yeah, I think you're right.

Kind of unraveled again.

And also once people no longer felt afraid, once they pretty much figured that we had it under control, But you look at George Bush, who, he goes out and throws the first pitch in Yankee Stadium. And the whole crowd is on their feet with tears streaming down their face, cheering. Most of them voted against him. But his popularity went to founding father levels in the public opinion polls because everyone, because that fear brought the people together. And as soon as that fear dissipated, then you're going to get the— because the thing with republics, and this is throughout history, fear is important. But for most republics, that's no problem because the world is very dangerous and there's always someone out there who is a real threat. So for most republics throughout history, That's not really an issue. The only republic that ever had that problem was Rome, because it's the only one that ever reached that pinnacle of power. And I would argue that the United States, particularly since the fall of the Soviet Union, has basically come to that same position. And that's why we're seeing a lot of those same kinds of dynamics at work.

in the American system that happened in the Roman system, um, after 146 BC.

Do they use distractions to, you know, to distract the public of what, what's really going on? So, you know, couple potential distractions maybe today: aliens and UFOs.

Yeah,

probably a big distraction. Um, you know, a lot of people say a little The UFC event, probably a lot of people related that to the Colosseum.

Yeah.

Did the Romans use that as a distraction?

Oh, yeah. I mean, the classic phrase bread and circuses comes from the Romans. The idea was that to keep the people happy, you give them their daily free bread and the circuses The Colosseum is one. That's the main amphitheater, although that wasn't usually free for people. But there were others, the Circus Maximus, and the Vatican Circus, and the other circuses. Those were where you could go and see the chariot races, which was kind of like, people, they went crazy for the chariot races. It's kind of like NASCAR, except it was also kind of like NASCAR, I guess, a lot of people would come to see the wrecks. And it was just very popular, but those were free. And so you could go in there and watch the chariot races. They'd always have some pregame shows. They might bring a few gladiators or do some crucifixions or something like that before they started, and then you would have the show. Now, the Colosseum was— that was a whole nother level. That was not just the gladiators, but you could have You could have naval battles there. So that you had to pay for, but it was the same kind of thing.

But the idea was, give the people something to do, because the unemployment rates, particularly as Rome's wealth went up, the amount of unemployed poor in the city grew. And because, I mean, if you're giving away free housing and free food, then you're going to get a lot of people who are going to move there. Because it's better than whatever they currently have. And so they, the Romans realized that this was a problem. And they tried to figure out ways to fix it, but they never were able to find anything, largely because, you know, those people coming in, they're voting. And that means those are votes to be had for a politician who can find a way to get them. So it was, there just never was that political will to be able to fix the system. The free bread was handed out until the day Rome fell. I mean, you basically had to have the city fall, had the empire fall to stop the dole.

Wow. What kind of laws were being broken by the government itself?

Yeah, I mean, Tiberius Gracchus, he argued that he had not broken the law, but clearly he had. He deposed a— basically had a sitting tribune Thrown out because he disagreed with him. Now, he argued that, well, the purpose of a tribune is to be the advocate of the people, and this person is acting against the interests of the people, so I have to remove him. Well, that just means you disagree with him. You're saying that I have the best interests of the people, and therefore, if you disagree with me, I get to throw you out. That had never been done before. It was clearly illegal. But it was accepted. And in these cases, when you do these things, so like, for example, when Sulla marches on Rome, he legally had the authority to command those troops. He was a consul. He had the power to command that legion. That legion had been given orders to go to fight Antiochus in the East. So everything was legal at that point. But then the popular assembly, because he was in the opposite party, they passed legislation that said that he couldn't lead the army and that instead Marius was to lead it.

And he refused to accept that. He said that that was contrary to the constitution. And then he appeals to his troops. And he says, look at this, we're about to go to the east where there's all kinds of riches, and we're going to be victorious. And the other political party, because they hate me, they are taking this command away from me, and they're going to disband all of you and get more soldiers. So he said he cast it as the Republic is being destroyed by these people. Now, that's his argument, but he's still doing something that's as illegal as you can get. He's commanding the forces to march on Rome to depose these people. And that's the first time that Roman legions march on the city. Once you reach that point, it doesn't matter what the what the laws are anymore. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's the law of violence that's going to make the decision here. And so Marius flees, of course, and others are either caught or killed. And Sulla has complete free rein in Rome for a short time. And he, in fact, issues proscription lists, which are basically lists of people who can be killed at any time.

If you see them— Wow. Yeah, if you see them, they're enemies of the Republic, you may kill them. In fact, you can even get some of their property if you kill them. So these lists go out, lots of the Senate flee because they're on the lists. So once you reach to that point, now he argued that he was restoring the Republic, and he did put through legislation that he thought would fix the problems. with the Republic. And at the end of his life, he did resign and said, if anyone has anything to say that I did wrong, let them say it. Well, of course, nobody had anything to say. And then he just retired because he figured that he had fixed the Republic. But as one of the great Roman historians, Ronald Syme, once said, The problem was, is that, you know, he couldn't— he could abolish the, the excesses, but he couldn't abolish his own example. And what he had done, others would be able to do, which is take the military power and re— reform the government according to your liking. And in that case, really, you can make as many speeches as you want, but if The legions come in, then whoever commands the legions are going to get what they want.

Fortunately, we're not at that stage.

That's, that's great to hear.

Let's move to Venice.

Okay.

As the Roman Empire collapsed, refugees fled into a swampy lagoon and built Venice, which became Europe's richest trading power and longest-lasting republic in history. 1,100 years.

Yeah, it's a long republic. I think it's a classic example of what James Harrington would later argue, that if a republic is properly formed and it doesn't have this problem of no external enemies, that it can last virtually forever. Harrington, in fact, said that for all practical purposes, he didn't see how a republic that was properly formed would ever stop being new. And Venice certainly had that. It was a republic, again, a merchant republic. It's the birthplace of modern capitalism. But it was a place where the system, once it was established, the system ran very well. There were a few coup attempts here and there, various uprisings and things of that sort, but they always dealt with it very quickly. They did not have, unlike the rest of Western Europe, they did not have landed aristocracy because they didn't have land. It's Venice. They got a bunch of sand out in the lagoon. Their wealth is liquid wealth. They buy low and sell high. Their ships are doing business all over the Mediterranean. They have Venetian quarters in all the major cities. in the east where they have whole Venetian communities of merchants who live there and do business.

So they're all about doing business, and the republic is, is good for business. I always tell, like, students that if you compare— if you look at the other, the other Italian towns, the other Italian cities in the north, many of whom tried to create republics, and all of them would sputter a bit and then collapse. In those other Italian towns, what really mattered was the factional power, mostly around families that would get power. And for that reason, if you look at the palazzi in Florence or in Verona or wherever you look, Siena, these palazzi are like fortresses. because they know they're going to have to fight in the streets at some point during, during unrest. And so super thick walls, iron bars on the, on the windows, big towers, giant towers, so that you can rain down destruction on your foes in the city. But then you go to Venice and you look at the palazzi, and they're all have giant beautiful windows facing the canal. There are no towers at all except for on the churches. So, and it was a— it's a clear indication even today when you look at Venice that the republic worked really well.

There, there was lots of disputes, but they took place in the great council chambers, and, and the people had direct access to representatives, the patricians who were in the Great Council. Everyone knew somebody who was in the Great Council. And so even if you were a poor shipbuilder, you knew somebody who you had a lifetime relationship with, who you could explain your problems to, and then he could take that to the Great Council. So it was a system that worked century after century, and, um, and which they modified when it was necessary based on, on problems in the world. But the basic idea that they did not— because they're businessmen, they want stability and they don't want kings. Uh, the, the executive, the Doge, uh, he was heavily hemmed in by— in fact, the The oath that the Doge would take when he took office, we have them from beginning about 1198. And they always keep getting bigger. So they start, and they're all a list of things he won't do. So, I do not have the power to do this. I will not do this. I will not meet with foreign emissaries without the Small Council.

I will not— it's all things that he won't do. And as time goes on, it gets longer and longer and longer because they keep coming up with more things they don't want him to do. So he's very, very hemmed in. The real power is in the Great Council, and then later the Senate for Foreign Affairs gets very powerful too.

So how did— I mean, went on for 1,100 years. How did it end?

It was killed. And that's the way most republics die. As I say, Rome is the exception, but most republics— Sparta was a republic too— most of the time what happens is they just keep going until someone comes around, an enemy, a powerful enemy, and just destroys them. They're not immune from being conquered. So if another empire comes by and just conquers them, then that's what happened. In Venice's case, It was Napoleon. So Napoleon showed up with giant guns and cannons, pointed them to Venice and said, surrender or else I destroy Venice. Okay. And so, but the Republic was so strong even at that last point in 1797 that it literally went through its regular procedures, the Great Council met, and they literally voted themselves out of existence, as they said, to save the lives and the faith of the people.

How did they vote themselves out of existence?

They just voted to invite the French troops in to dissolve the Roman Republic and to usher in the new Venetian municipal government. And that's what they voted on in the Great Council. So, and that was the end. The Doge took off his cap, and he was, he was the, uh, the last, the last Doge. And the, the, uh, the French moved in. Um, they garrisoned the city. They, in the middle of Piazza San Marco, they planted a little liberty tree. which was the symbol of the French Revolution, and they told everyone to dance around it, uh, to celebrate their liberation. Napoleon had this idea that Venice was this dark medieval, um, uh, oppressive government that was strangling people in their beds and, and didn't allow free speech. All of it was false. None of that was true. Napoleon had a lot of political prisoners, but Venice didn't. They weren't— they had an entire system of law that they had had for centuries. So his view of Venice was— and this was what historians call the anti-myth of Venice, which is that it was this place of dark intrigue. Some of this is just because people didn't trust businessmen, particularly on the mainland throughout most of its centuries.

The people who are dealing with Venetians, they're not, you know, they're feudal lords or something. They don't understand. Most of them consider business of any kind to be shady. And here's an entire republic made up of nothing but businessmen. who are all doing business. So some of it is that it's kind of like in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, you have the Shylock character who is the Jew who demands his pound of flesh for his payment, has no mercy whatsoever. And that's kind of the caricature that gets put onto Venice. And that's very much what Napoleon So he just decided to— he also suspected that Venice was working against him in his war against the Austrians. But in general, Napoleon was all about— he wanted to wipe away the medieval world. And so anything that seemed medieval, he wanted to get rid of it.

So Venice voted itself out of existence. Rome died of violence.

The Roman Republic. The Roman Republic died. Yeah. Through civil war. So it's through the civil war until the point where it was just not possible to have the Republic survive anymore.

Would we be close to either one of these ways?

No, I would— well, there is no one who can conquer the United States currently. I mean, so I'm not too worried about us being conquered like Napoleon. I do think that we're showing that the American Constitution is showing strains that affected ancient Rome as well. But remember, and this is one thing I try to bring up in the book, is that the Founding Fathers, the people that wrote the Constitution, all of these people were very well educated in the classics and in the history of ancient Greece and Rome. That's what education was back then. So they read Pliny and Polybius and the rest. They read them in the original Latin and Greek. So they knew what had caused the fall of these. And so when they came together to put the Constitution together and debate this, they had that historical knowledge and they used it. And they also used the people who had written about that over the last several centuries. So people like Montesquieu or John Locke, the political theorists that had been around for— in the previous centuries, they were able to take all of that. And in their deliberations of the Constitution, they can say, well, look, this is what happened in Venice.

This is what happened in Rome. This is what happened with various Greek confederations. We don't want that to happen here.

Who was Polybius?

Polybius was a Greek scholar. I mean, he was very well educated in Greece. He was part of the Achaean League, and then ultimately he ended up going to Rome. So he's Greek. He ended up going to Rome as part of a kind of a hostage deal because the Romans had defeated the Achaean League. And so But he was very learned. And so he ended up becoming a tutor to some of the big families in Rome. And Scipio Aemilianus is one of the people he spent a lot of time with. But he wrote an entire history, because it's in his lifetime that Rome reaches this pinnacle of power where it has no external enemies anymore, and where the wealth levels increase. And so he writes this history. about how did this happen? How did this state become so powerful so quickly? And he also does— and he talks about the government, but he also does talk about how he noticed a change in the Romans that, like he says, in his younger days, back before the destruction of Carthage, the Romans were— a Roman would never take a bribe. He says their administration, no matter where in the world you were, the Romans were always very upright, very good, strong moral character.

And he says nowadays, though, I would not venture to say that at all. So he saw a kind of a debasing of the moral character Rome just in his lifespan.

So we built the same ideas under the Constitution.

Yeah. Or the idea of having, um, of having a republic in which branches check each other, where interests pit against interests. All of the, all of the founders were unanimous in that idea that a republican form of government was the only kind that was suitable for the United States. Because remember, the attempt before the Constitution was drafted, they had the Articles of Confederation, and that failed spectacularly because it— Because with the Articles of Confederation, it wasn't a republic. It was just a confederation. The idea was that each state would have its own republic and that the confederation would just be a way of kind of organizing the states for a common defense.

Okay.

But there wouldn't— but the actual government would all happen in the states. But that failed because the states, they built beautiful republics, but they all fell apart right away. largely because legislatures would just vote themselves all the power. And also, there was a great deal of thing in the American character that we fought, we spent all this time fighting to get away from a king. We're not going to be told what to do now by this upstart government in our state. So there was a lot of lawlessness, and none of the state republics really worked. They all kind of fell into their own kind of form of tyranny. And then various rebellions, like Shays' Rebellion and others that took off. So what the framers of the Constitution wanted to do was to take the best of the ancient world, bring it together, but then put in mechanisms to assure that the United States would not go the way of Rome. And so in the book, what I really wanted to look at is, what were those things? What lessons did they draw? How do they manifest themselves in the Constitution? And how well have those safeguards that they put in held up?

What were some of those key lessons?

I mean, the big thing was they were most concerned as they looked at Rome and other republics, but they were worried about 2 main things: that the republic would at some point get out of balance, that the 3 branches needed to be balanced, and that it would become out of balance and one would take over. and create a tyranny. And so they were primarily worried about the tyranny of the executive. In other words, having an executive who got— who was able to amass all power, um, or, uh, the tyranny of the people. In other words, the people would do what they did in these, in these state governments, where they would come together into popular assemblies, vote themselves all power, and then do things like, you know, cancel all debt, um, or, uh, you know, things which— where society would just start to collapse because, because the people just— if, if everyone gets a vote and there's no check on them, they'll just vote that I, you know, everyone send me money, uh, and, and whatever I say is the law. So they needed something that put all of these constituencies together so they could, they could check each other.

So the tyranny of the people there, uh, that they, they, uh, fixed it by— they created the House of Representatives, which is representative of the people, so that everyone has their representative there. And that's a basis of legislation, but it's checked by the Senate. Which was meant to be a repository of wisdom of people, men who were well-educated, who knew history and other things of this sort, and who could then, unless they agreed with what the House of Representatives did, it couldn't become law. So the Senate would check them. The question, the problem that they had was that, you know, where do you get a Senate? Because in past republics, you either had, as in Rome, you had senators who generally tended to be patricians who were part of certain family groups or a native aristocracy, like you have with the House of Lords in England, a native aristocracy. Well, America had no aristocracy like that. There was no— none of those things existed. So ultimately they decided that the senators would be chosen 2 per state, and they would represent therefore the state governments in the Congress. And so that Senate would check the excesses of a House of Representatives that was very close to the people.

So there was that. And then finally, you put above that the president who can veto legislation in the final analysis, although his veto can be overridden. So those were the kinds of things they put in because to to stop that. And as Madison said frequently, the people— he looked at like Athens. It happened all the time in Athens because it was a simple democracy where the people would become excited about something, either a new fad or just something that they were all upset about, and then pass legislation that, as Madison said, that given the opportunity later on, they would be sorry they did that. They wish it would have been much better if there had been someone there to say, no, let's settle, let's calm down, let's not do that right now. And so that was the original idea behind the Senate. And then the original— I wrote, in fact, I had a piece in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago about why we should not abolish the Senate. And precisely making these arguments that without the Senate, you get the tyranny of the people. Because without that, the people can— will legislate whatever they want, whether it's wise or not.

And the thing that they were most worried about is throughout history, when the people seize control without a check, what ends up happening is, because the people can only do so much, they need a demagogue, they need a tyrant, they need someone who will— and usually the tyrant will say, I'll take all the money from the rich people and give it to you, something along those lines usually. Or I'll go and catch this person or do this particular thing, whatever you want. But they're still a tyrant. So it was known really since ancient Greece that if you put the charismatic leader and the people together, you're going to get a tyranny. And so slotting the Senate in between is a way of avoiding that, of ensuring that they're not going to be able to do that. So the tyranny of the people was that. The tyranny of the executive they worried a lot about because the president has a lot of power. And he has military— he's commander-in-chief of the armed forces. So they worry that here you're literally giving a guy the power that Caesar had. Why would he not just overthrow the whole government and take control?

So they worried a lot about that. One suggestion was to make the presidency either 2 people or 3 people who would share power, with the idea being that they could veto each other, and that way they wouldn't be able to do that. But Wilson especially was very strongly opposed to that. And his argument was that the problem with having 2 or 3 people is that no one's to blame then. So no matter what, if something bad happens, they all will just point at each other and say that it wasn't me, it was him. But if you have one person, then he is responsible for everything. And if he doesn't do the job properly, he's the one that's to blame. And Congress will have the ability to impeach him and remove him if he is guilty of grievous crimes. So he would be placed in that position. He would have to run for reelection every 4 years. He could be impeached by Congress if, if, if necessary. The other thing, the other thing they wanted for the commander in chief, though, was they still hemmed it in. And the way to do that was the military would only be able to be funded by Congress.

The money, in other words, the purse strings power. The president doesn't fund the military. He commands it, but he doesn't fund it. And Congress, therefore, if they're not happy with what's going on, or if a president were to try something against the republic, they could cut off all of the funding. They also, just to make extra sure, because there was some question in this early part of the republic about whether the United States would have a standing army, a regular standing army at all times or not. It was generally thought that if you're not at war with an outside power, you know, did you need a standing army? The state militias could provide for basic defense. So it wasn't— they weren't sure. So what they did in the Constitution, and it's still in the Constitution, is that Congress could not fund the army for more than 2 years at a time. with the idea being that if a president went rogue somehow, eventually the money would dry up for the Army before he'd be able to do it. That doesn't pertain to the Navy. The Navy can be funded much longer, but the Army can only be funded at 2-year intervals in the Constitution.

So all of these were ways— the thing that they they wanted to get away from was in most historical republics, you had dictators, an office of the dictator. And this would be— and Romans had this, for example— this would be an office whereby if an emergency happened and everything had to be focused on that emergency, you know, somebody attacks, and you have to focus on that emergency, then because the republican system is cumbersome, you could in that case elect a dictator who would then have, for a limited period of time, virtually unlimited power in the state and could do whatever he needed to fix the problem. And then his term would end, and then the problem would be fixed. The Founding Fathers didn't want a dictator. They didn't trust it. And so what they did was they made the president one man, and they gave him command over the armed forces so that he could react to emergencies without having to go to Congress or get any other kind of— so that he would have that ability. And they argued about this the question of the ability to declare war against someone. And some people wanted that in the executive, some others wanted it only in Congress.

But what they ultimately did was they separated out the idea of declaring war and making war. So they said that Congress has the sole ability to declare war, which would mean a major national enterprise of defeating an enemy. But the president would still have the ability not only to prosecute the war that Congress declared, but also would have the ability to make war when problems arose. So if something came that was a threat to the nation, then he could command those troops. And that's the way when you think of the expansion westward where they're fighting Indian tribes and those types of things as well, then there has to be some kind of chain of command. Mm-hmm. So that's how they separated that out. The idea being that a president would never be able to order his troops. And the other thing they did too was they made sure that the military would be beholden to the Constitution. and not to the president. Because— and that's why they wanted the— for the federal force, they wanted it to be a professional army, one that would be paid, you know, by the government. American servicemen do not get spoils.

You know, if you conquer Iraq, you don't get to plunder the place for 3 days the way they did in the ancient world. Mm-hmm. So those— so what they wanted to do was they wanted to break that bond that the Romans created between the politician and the military. They wanted the military to be completely apolitical. And I think that has largely been done. There's always going to be problems, but I think overall the military has The American military has remained, um, apolitical. And it—

Until recently.

It, and it, honestly, that is one of— if the military ever becomes involved in politics, then that's, that's the death knell of the republic.

Well, didn't it just become involved in politics in Kentucky?

Did it? What was it?

Didn't Sec War go and campaign?

Who?

Didn't Secretary of War go and campaign in Kentucky?

Oh. Yeah, well, you can argue that Secretary of War is— I mean, I'm opposed to that, but you can argue Secretary of War is a political appointee, but he's not ordering the troops to take over the elections or something like that. Yeah. And I think servicemen can certainly be as political as they want, but I mean, the military must not take a political side on anything. The military has to serve the American people, but it has to be, you know, serve whatever president is in office, whether, you know, no matter what the party is.

What do you think that the founding fathers, what did they get wrong?

I mean, we don't know yet because we don't know, you know, what the future will hold for the republic. Clearly, slavery was one of them, and slavery is built into the Constitution. Some of them did try to deal with it, but there was just— that would require a civil war to deal with. So there's that. I think overall, you have to— I mean, it's been more than 200 years since the Constitution. And every republic throughout history, in fact, in this book, what I do is I'm looking at what I call the great republics, which are republics that last more than their first century. For a republic to survive over the long term, it really needs to get over that hump of that first century. Because unlike like a monarchy. Like, if you looked at every human government that's ever existed, the large majority of them would be some kind of theocratic monarchy. With those, it's pretty simple. I mean, one guy's got all the power and God gave it to him. So if you disagree with me, you're disagreeing with God. The law is, is a divine law. But in a republic, it's just a bunch of rules.

that some guys made up. And in those first years after those rules are made up, people are going to have naturally less reverence for them because they'll know the guys who made up those rules, and maybe they think they made a mistake, or why should I follow those rules? So what the republic needs is it needs time for the rules to be custom, marry, but also for them to become ingrained into the society to the point where by the 2nd or 3rd generation, people revere the rules in the way that we revere the Constitution. The 1st century of the American Republic was very tumultuous. There was a lot of problems, and there were people— I mean, there were congressmen attacking each other. trying to kill each other on the floor. So there was a lot of tumult. But once you get past that first century, then republics can last for a very long time. So I think that those were problems. I mean, obviously, some are little things, like they wanted the state legislatures to choose the senators. because they saw them as the representatives of those governments. Eventually, they got rid of that in the 19th Amendment because— but that was just because it was impractical because the state legislatures did nothing else but think about who the senators were going to be because the position was so powerful.

Where do you think we are in the lifespan?

On the—

In the lifespan of a republic?

I mean, I'm a naturally optimistic person, I think. But I think that in the book, I actually look at— if we looked at like 146 BC for Rome, let's say we were tracking the Roman case. 146 BC is where the end of really existential enemies in Rome. And And then if you say that with the United States, let's say 1990, the fall of the Soviet Union was the end of major existential enemies for the United States. Well, if we were tracking it like Rome, we would have already had Tiberius Gracchus killed by the Senate. We would already have had somebody like Gaius Gracchus who militarily seized part of the the Capitol and had to be destroyed by the legions within the Capitol. We haven't had anything approaching those things. So there's no way we're going to be exactly like Rome. I think where we're at is I think the Constitution has held up pretty well, given that the founders identified some of the core things that caused the Roman Republic to fall and remove them, like the politicization of the military. But I do think that because we are in that, which I don't think the founders ever imagined, that the United States would end up becoming the preeminent power in the world, and would not have existential enemies, that we are, because we are in that situation, we're seeing those same dynamics.

Now, they're definitely causing a strain on the American Republic. I haven't seen, and I put a— I have this thing I call the scorecard for a broken republic. And basically the things that you would expect to see in basically increasing severity for a broken republic. And I don't see that we've had any of those yet. So the republic, I think, is still healthy.

Good standing.

But there are things to worry about. The other thing that I very much worry about is I mentioned that fear is crucial. But let's face it, nobody wants to be in fear. I'd rather not have an existential enemy, even if it makes us a tighter republic. Nobody wants that. But the other thing is reverence, reverence for the Constitution, and for the history of— and for what the country has done that's good and bad. That reverence where you are part of a history, a long chain of people who have sacrificed for this Constitution and for this country, to be part of that and recognize that that in the past Americans have done wonderful things and have done bad, horrible, horrible things. The Romans were the exact same way. They, they did— they told their history, good and bad. You learn from the bad, that you don't want to do those things again. But you have to have that— the reverence is built by being taught the government. I mean, if you disagree with the government, that's fine, but at least you should know something about it. 1/3 of Americans cannot name— only, excuse me, only 1/3 of Americans can name the 3 branches of the US government today.

I mean, how is it that you're going to understand anything about the American system if you don't even know the branches of the government at the most basic level? In fact, 15% can't even name one branch. Wow. So I think that one thing we could do is— I think the education system in the United States has dropped the ball or punted it away. And we're now— we have a situation, and this is all again post-fall of the Soviet Union. We have a situation now where people in secondary schools in primary schools, secondary schools, post-secondary schools, they're not being taught the history of the United States anymore. Or if they are, it's just a litany of sins that— so why America sucks. It's not really the history of the good things that the United States did. So there's no need to feel like you're part of something greater than yourself. You can just feel that that this thing is a mess and everyone who came before me is an idiot. And so I'll come up with something new. So learning civics, learning the history of the country, I would argue also learning the history of the West, all of that is what makes all of this part of you.

And it means that you have a stake in it. So in other words, you don't view the United States anymore as just this thing that's supposed to take care of me or give me something, but rather something that you owe to it and to all of the people who have made it and made the life that you lead.

I mean, we had talked about comfortability and wealth and all of that stuff that can You know, gets internalized, then people start looking at each other and battling each other. Polymarket.com says Democrats are at 66% to take both chambers next month. In Rome, when power swung hard from one faction to the other, did it calm things down or make things worse?

Usually it made things worse because particularly when the Republic was was sick, as soon as you got into power, you did everything you could to make sure that your enemy can't get power again. So you tried to change the system as fast as you can to keep your enemy out. So when Sulla marched on Rome, he immediately did massive reforms to the councils so that the Populares Party couldn't come into power again. when the popularies finally did come back into power, they did the exact same thing. They would try to change the system because you know that once you get into power, you need to— now, in the American system, we have something that the Romans didn't have, and that is the courts. And this is the brilliance of Montesquieu. Is that it was Montesquieu who was— he's a French thinker, lived before the United States, but all of the founders love— they called him the Great Montesquieu. And he argued that the way to create a republic wasn't to have, you know, monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, but rather to have an executive a legislative body, and then to have the judiciary as a separate branch, which he saw it as a way of checking the other branches to ensure that they were keeping to the Constitution, that they were not violating the higher law of the Constitution, and that Mm-hmm.

Montesquieu liked the Roman office of censor, which was an office which would periodically come in and kind of clean house for the republic. And he saw the judiciary as being something akin to that, that it would be in a position that it would be independent. Judiciaries in ancient republics were never independent. They were under the executives. So the judiciary would become independent, which would allow it to protect the republic from overreach by any of the other branches. And that, I think, has worked pretty well, that idea. And that was implemented for the first time in the United States, the idea that there should be an independent judiciary. So that way, even when something is very popular and may even be able to make it through Congress, the question is, is it legal? And the judiciary would make— makes that decision as to whether it's— whether that what they just did is legal. So when we talk about, let's say, if Democrats sweep in, you know, to Congress, they can't make— unless they'll have to get rid of the filibuster. But they can't— if they get rid of the filibuster and make laws, those laws will be vetoed by the Republican president.

And they don't have enough for an override of the veto. Now, if they were to do something and just declare that they had an authority, then the courts would strike that down. I think what's more likely is what we'll see is this, what I call in the book, the prosecutorial politics, where you just prosecute your political enemies all the time. And that happens in most republics. No republic ever fell from it. It's kind of a seedy side of republics. But, um, they all have it, um, where they're prosecuting each other. And, and that's what you'll get with the Democrats. They'll have— they'll do nothing but do wall-to-wall hearings, um, of Trump and his family and his friends and, and everything else.

I mean, you have a scorecard that you go off of on, on kind of the health of a republic.

Yeah.

Do you want to go down that scorecard?

Do you have it?

I do.

Yeah.

We have— this is in order of severity—

officials defying Supreme Court orders, elections suspended in violation of law, real violence between officials for political ends, party-run paramilitary forces, prosecution lists, traitors who can be seized or killed without trial, military endorsing candidates, and the military occupying the capital and expelling the elected government. How many of these are America showing right now?

I don't think any of them are showing yet. I think the first one I was worried about— I'm always worried about the first one, that the Supreme Court would be ignored, that the decisions of the Supreme Court— Supreme Court is in the Constitution. And if if the Supreme Court has a— makes a decision that something that Congress, maybe Congress and the president did, is illegal, and if the president or either were to ignore that, I would— that would be a definite— like, you know, it's not the fall of the republic, but it would be a major— something that's illegal that's being done, and people are just— and that's what you get is, you know, if something's very popular, it's illegal, but everyone wants it, and so let's just do it. And, you know, the Romans had this, you know, Marius was a consul for 6 times in a row. He was only allowed to be it once, but everyone wanted him, and it was kind of an emergency. So So they went with it. The same kind of thing with this. If the Supreme Court made a decision that was highly unpopular and people just refused to accept it, then that would be a major, a major problem because you don't want to lose that arbiter of the Constitution.

Once that happens, you will go down that path of just pure power. And republics don't want to go down that path. It never ends very well. But the others, the suspension of elections, the paramilitary forces, being garnered by political parties. I mean, you could argue, as you were saying before, that there are political entities that are oftentimes behind things like Antifa and others. We're still not at the level of like brownshirts or something like that where you have paramilitary political action political groups. But were you to see that, that would be concerning too.

Did we see that in California with the National Guard?

Legally speaking, the, the, which is what the republic is, is a bunch of laws. I mean, deploying the National Guard to California, they, they stated that they were there to defend federal property. So if that's the case, then they're within their rights to defend federal buildings. But if it were to be extended beyond that, there are laws that would allow them to do that.

Okay.

But so it's within legal framework that you could do it. But so again, I haven't seen anything where someone is clearly doing something that is illegal. When Trump was sending out, sending the illegal aliens, deporting them, and was told by the judge in D.C. to stop, there were some who were saying that he had refused to do what the judge had decided. Now, there was a couple of things where there was a plane in the air or something like that as to whether it had stopped or not. But, and if you're getting to that kind of hairsplitting, I'm fine. The real problem is if he just says, well, that's your decision, I don't care, I'm going to—

I got

you. As Jefferson is supposed to have said, how many legions do they have? I mean, as soon as you just count the courts, you've lost a major safeguard of the Constitution.

So you're saying these are black and white issues, pretty much?

If any of those happened, that would be bad for the Republic. Absolutely.

There is not much new, if it's nuanced.

No, I would say we're going to, it's always going to come in increments. These things never happen right away. It's always just a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. Until you finally discover that you're, well, I'm okay with that, I guess. When in fact you would never have accepted that before. So it's always going to be incremental. And that's why the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. You have to constantly— and that's why republics need informed citizens. Right now, most— I mean, If most of your citizenry just thinks that presidents are 4-year kings, which is why they get— I mean, there's a whole thing of mental health in America where people become depressed if the president isn't in their party. And it's like they just can't be happy anymore. It's just one branch of the government. Mm-hmm. He doesn't live in your house or something. It's because they live on social media, but they're not— and they get tribal in their anger at their political enemies. I've had many people where I've said, ask me questions about the republic, and they'll say, oh, well, the republic is obviously declining. And then they'll tell me the reason.

I'll say, well, why do you think so? And they'll just tell me what the political party that they're opposed to has done recently. And they'll do it from both sides. So, well, that tells me a lot about hyper-partisanship.

Mm-hmm.

But it doesn't really tell me about whether the component, the basic components of the republic are in danger. And I think right now they're holding up, they're under strain, but thus far they're still holding up. And I think I give that credit completely to the genius of the framers of the Constitution. These were men who were there. You can tell just reading their debates, they're very well educated, very wise. And so they tried to foresee, as John Adams wasn't there for it, but as he said, however little he wrote to them and said, however little we think about this, we are setting things for hundreds of millions of people. in a future that we cannot see. And, and I think all in all, they did a, they did a pretty good job.

Well, that's great to hear because there is a lot of, a lot of talk going on right now.

Yeah, but that's, and that's always going to be the case. I, you know, I wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal in 2008 about how much talk there was about how the United States was collapsing and that the whole thing was done and that the American century was last century. This century, America will be completely subsumed by the EU or whatever. And I argued then that I didn't see any evidence for anything except for growth of American power. in the future. But that one of the things of when you have an extremely powerful, wealthy society, one of the things that they like to hear about is their own demise. It's just, you know, it's great fun. I mean, it's like the Romans loved that stuff. They would love to read all about— they'd read prophecies of how they were all going to collapse. But Wealthy, stable societies like that stuff. Collapsing societies do not. They'll— they stop you from saying it because it's a danger. So it's— I think it's just a kind of a— it's kind of a byproduct of the fact that we are in such a wealthy, stable civilization that we can— you know, the favorite genre of many TV shows is like post-apocalyptic, you know, types of stories, because it's fun.

I mean, hey, what would happen if everything fell apart?

Yeah.

So,

well, Dr. Madden, I'm glad. I'm glad you have a positive outlook on everything, because I need to hear it. And I know a lot of other people do. And thank you for the conversation today. Thank you for coming out. I'd love to have you back and talk about the Crusades.

I'd love to. Perfect.

Best of luck to you.

Thank

you. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.