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The Fall Of A Republic: Cicero Warns America

by Ken LaRive

"Rome was a Repbulic based on Constitutional Law.... and it died from the inside out...those reasons should be held in both mind and heart...

 

2000 years before Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, Cicero warned us of “treason from within.” Greg Felton, author of The Host and the Parasite, gives an amazing rendition of this intelligent historian and political theorist, and how it applies to America today.

 

Marcus Tullius Cicero was born January 3, 106 BC and died December 7, 43 BC. in Versatile. He was a well-respected political theorist and Roman orator, and his thoughts were so profound they have traveled 2100 years to us. Being a lawyer, philosopher, and statesman, he was known to be one of Rome’s leading political figures, and prolific writer. It was the era of Julius Caesar, Pompey, Marc Anthony and Octavian, of the late Roman empire. He was betrayed, exiled, and eventually murdered, but his influences have continued unabashed throughout the centuries…

 

His study of language distinguished himself as the originator of Greek and Roman philosophy, creating the innovative vocabulary for that science we still use today. Being born of the equestrian order, his family had both wealth and influence, giving Cicero opportunity to study, observe, and record his times with great accuracy.

 

Lessons of history can give us insight into what we are dealing with in our own times today, as history repeats itself even in the subtle of ways, and Cicero, being a humanist, saw those similarities and compared them to his own history. This is of the greatest value to us…

 

His letter writing to Cornelius Nepos, was remarked by his biographer Atticus in the 1st century BC as being a variable wealth of well-documented and truthful information, and an accurate historical record. He said: “...concerning the inclinations of leading men, the faults of the generals, and the revolutions in the government” that their reader had little need for [another] history of the period.

 

Reading the life of Cicero is an eye opening experience, and is amazingly contemporary in scope, as what plagued his society then, also influences our own today. His experiences in a Republic based on Constitutional Law is a virtual reflection of our own, as the lust for power and control still threatens our Liberty today.

 

There are many rich quotes from Cicero, but these three I have chosen seems most applicable to our plight. His words ring true to the heart of the American Patriot, from so long ago:

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, (by the people) and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.” 

 

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”

 

“We are taxed in our bread and our wine, in our incomes and our investments, on our land and on our property not only for base creatures who do not deserve the name of men, but for foreign nations, complaisant nations who will bow to us and accept our largesse and promise us to assist in the keeping of the peace – these mendicant nations who will destroy us when we show a moment of weakness or our treasury is bare, and surely it is becoming bare! We are taxed to maintain legions on their soil, in the name of law and order and the Pax Romana, a document which will fall into dust when it pleases our allies and our vassals. We keep them in precarious balance only with our gold. Is the heart blood of our nation worth these? Were they bound to us with ties of love, they would not ask our gold. They take our very flesh, and they hate and despise us. And who shall say we are worthy of more? … When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself.”

We were given a great gift from our founders. It is something so precious we can scarcely contemplate its value. Our Republic, our Constitution, and the emphatic statement that our civil liberties are not granted, but a gift from God Almighty, is indeed the difference between slavery and Liberty. We must demand this most profound standard be returned, and by any means necessary.  Anyone, or any institution or country who stands in the way of Liberty from tyranny, our true American destiny, is our mortal enemy, and must be crushed.

 

It matters not if it is a brainwashed student or his teacher who promotes Socialism, Communism, or Marxism, in a university, a Media who spreads a false narrative for a power structure who pulls their strings, or an international elitist who works to undermine our Republic in the shadows… a banking system, so above the law, they can double the national debt in just eight years and refuse our inquiry as to where it went, or the profound influence of un-elected men, with dual citizenship, who vie to control our minds and spirit, our national identity, our future… from cradle to grave… are our enemies.  My life spans 68 years, and we have been at war the entire time… something is not right… give me Liberty, or you will pay the consequences. A threat? Damned right. I would rather die, then live under the yoke of tyranny, and that mindset is the only standard that can save us.

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