[Peace-discuss] has Congress become Useless?

[David Green]

James Madison, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, as quoted in William Appleman 
Williams' Empire as a Way of Life:

"It may be said that the new Constitution is founded on different principles, 
and will have a different operation. This form of government, in order to effect 
its purpose, must operate not within a small but an extensive sphere. ...Extend 
the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make 
it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to 
invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will 
be more difficult for all to feel it .... to act in unison with each other."


________________________________
From: John W. <jbw292002 at gmail.com>
To: Ron Szoke <r-szoke at illinois.edu>
Cc: E.Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag>; peace discuss 
<peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Mon, August 9, 2010 6:04:09 PM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] has Congress become Useless?



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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