{"id":25517,"date":"2016-12-19T12:27:56","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T20:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=25517"},"modified":"2016-12-19T12:27:56","modified_gmt":"2016-12-19T20:27:56","slug":"the-fuhrer-the-reich-and-the-fall-of-the-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/19\/the-fuhrer-the-reich-and-the-fall-of-the-republic\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fuhrer, the Reich and the Fall of the Republic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like many others, I have been comparing the beliefs, methods and policies of Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten and his Republican Reich to Hitler’s third Reich.  Famous writer Paul Krugman validated the comparison and added that we should also find lessons in the decline and fall of the Roman Republic.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"Trump-Nazi1\"<\/p>\n

Many people are reacting to the rise of Trumpism and nativist movements in Europe by reading history \u2014 specifically, the history of the 1930s. And they are right to do so. It takes willful blindness not to see the parallels between the rise of fascism and our current political nightmare.<\/p>\n

But the \u201930s isn\u2019t the only era with lessons to teach us. Lately I\u2019ve been reading a lot about the ancient world. Initially, I have to admit, I was doing it for entertainment and as a refuge from news that gets worse with each passing day. But I couldn\u2019t help noticing the contemporary resonances of some Roman history \u2014 specifically, the tale of how the Roman Republic fell.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I learned: Republican institutions don\u2019t protect against tyranny when powerful people start defying political norms. And tyranny, when it comes, can flourish even while maintaining a republican facade<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

On the first point: Roman politics involved fierce competition among ambitious men. But for centuries that competition was constrained by some seemingly unbreakable rules. Here\u2019s what Adrian Goldsworthy\u2019s \u201cIn the Name of Rome\u201d says<\/a>: \u201cHowever important it was for an individual to win fame and add to his and his family\u2019s reputation, this should always be subordinated to the good of the Republic \u2026 no disappointed Roman politician sought the aid of a foreign power.\u201d… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From <NY Times<\/a>><\/font><\/p>\n

Krugman has much more to say, and I strongly encourage you to click through to read it all.  Krugman concludes that we need to recognizes how bad thing are: that Democracy is on the edge.<\/font><\/p>\n

Resist!!<\/font><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like many others, I have been comparing the beliefs, methods and policies of Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten and his Republican Reich to Hitler’s third Reich.  Famous writer Paul Krugman validated the comparison and added that we should also find lessons in the decline and fall of the Roman Republic. Many people are reacting to the rise of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}