11 Comments
User's avatar
Cary Fulbright's avatar

Deb,

Both of our sons were History majors and took a course on Rome. One of them said to me last night:

Liberals think about the Roman Empire. Conservatives think about the Roman Republic.

Cary

Expand full comment
Debra J. Saunders's avatar

You raised your sons right.

Expand full comment
Cary Fulbright's avatar

That's an incredibly difficult thing to do in San Francisco, as I know you know.

Expand full comment
Pete Farris's avatar

I don't know if it would be the solution or merely a detour on the road, but term limits for Congress are worth a try. It's up to the states.

Expand full comment
Debra J. Saunders's avatar

Did term limits improve California?

Expand full comment
Pete Farris's avatar

I'm not sure what Maggie's means by the word "inhuman." On the contrary, we are organically nasty. Politics, which surprisingly means "compromise", has always been blood sport. George Washington warned against political parties. Too many elected people favor parties over the nation today.

Expand full comment
Debra J. Saunders's avatar

Rome was very tribal. Like the US.

Expand full comment
Maggie's Coffee Notes's avatar

Perhaps "inhumane" is a better word. Although I observe that if people are treated humanely they become the best of being human. I don't think we are organically nasty. Natural law demands survival , death, birth, and evolution. Being nasty means destruction and "fall." Fall of Empire appears to follow nastiness. Patterns of behavior can be changed, although what I saw is we are on a rat wheel of destructive behavior and blindly following ancestral battles, not evolving.

Expand full comment
Maggie's Coffee Notes's avatar

Read "American Aurora" Richard N. Rosenfeld. I found this book of news articles and political letters from a Philadelphia newspaper printed during the American Revolution years, soon after I moved to Philadelphia from California in 1999. At first, I could not believe that the character of politics was so vicious and tried to find out if this book was real or fiction. However by the time, I was directly confronted by the criminality of Philadelphia politics in 2006, I started to believe the political blood sport circus was true. Hilary vs Bernie's Philadelphia convention 2016 soured me completely to any trust in government. Now Trump vs Everyone battle barely phases me. The antics in both Rome and "American Aurora" and, now are the same. Bad human behavior. Dysfunctional, insane, cruel & inhuman on all sides. History repeats and humanity needs to evolve.

Expand full comment
Debra J. Saunders's avatar

We can think on the Roman Empire without endorsing its dark side. Indeed, the comparisons of hyper-partisanship bordering on civil war - and becoming civil war - are an important reminder. But also, the Roman prevailed because they were organized, they were engineers, they built roads that connected territories and they believed in good hygiene.

Expand full comment
Patricia Paulson's avatar

You may want to read "First Principles" - What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How that Shaped our Country - by Thomas E. Ricks. Have fun on your dig.

Expand full comment