[Peace-discuss] has Congress become Useless?

[John W.]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 12:30 PM, Ron Szoke <r-szoke at illinois.edu> wrote:



> The book referred to is _The Coming Caesars_, by Amaury de Riencourt
> (Coward-McCann, 1957, 384 pages)
>
> "It is the contention of this book that expanding democracy leads
> unintentionally to imperialism and that imperialism inevitably ends in
> destroying the republican institutions of earlier days;  further, that the
> greater the social equality, the dimmer the prospects of liberty, and that
> as society becomes more equalitarian, it tends increasingly to
> concentrate absolute power in the hands of one single man"  (p. 5).
>

That's absolutely fascinating.  I don't know if the thesis is always correct
(it seems counterintuitive on its face), but the writer must have been
brilliant to come up with a theory like that, and argue it cogently.




> This might be compared with
> Cullen Murphy, _Are We Rome?_:  The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of
> America (2007).
>
> -- Ron
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