I've written about this project before. But from now, once a week, the essays which are written will be posted here and, as soon as I have a suitable space worked out, I'll be recording the essays.
Anyone who has any input on the essays, either corrections or additional information, add a note and I'll look to include it.
Please, enjoy.
Most of us wont know much, or anything, about Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, and little will be added to that here, except that he was the final king of Rome. From the uprising which overthrew Superbus in 509 BCE through its collapse into autocratic imperialism in 27 BCE, Rome was a Republic.
During these four-hundred-and-eighty-two years the Republic had an unwritten, though evolving, constitution which catered for the changing needs of the nation and its residents.
The final decades of the republic saw power and influence aggregating into fewer and larger blocks until, finally, one man, Julius Caesar, seized control.
Some hoped this would be temporary and tried to work with Caesar
Others, acting out of fear, jealousy, or hatred of tyrants, decided to remove the threat of tyranny Caesar presented. However, by the time of Caesar’s assassination, the Republic itself was already fatally injured and its collapse into despotism not to be avoided.
There were staunch defenders of the Republic, who desperately wanted to avoid autocracy. One such was renowned statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero. Following the death of Caesar he wrote and spoke with passion and eloquence about the need for the Republic, of how dangerous it was to succumb to the false allure of a supreme leader. He saw the danger which ones like Mark Anthony presented. Anthony was Caesar’s cousin, had fought alongside him, and was to be flamen, the official priest, of the cult dedicated to the would-be dictator-for-life.
Despite the efforts of Cicero and others Anthony did ascend to power, though as part of a triumvirate, not solely. Still, he had sufficient power to have Cicero proscribed, identified publicly as an enemy of the state, to be killed on sight. Traditionally, the head of the proscribed one was removed and returned to Rome. In Cicero’s case there was instruction that his hands also be removed, for the crime of holding the quills which wrote so vociferously against Mark Anthony.
Sixteen years after Cicero’s execution the Republic ended and Caesar’s heir, great-nephew Gaius Octavius, had fought - including against Mark Anthony - and manoeuvred his way to sole power. Using the name Caesar Augustus, he was the first emperor of the Roman Empire.
Despite nearly five-hundred years of history - it will be the year twenty-two-fifty-eight before the USA reaches the same anniversary - despite the many powerful institutions which were part of the fabric of Roman life, despite the impassioned writings and speeches of ones like Cicero, the greed of entitled men led Rome on a path to nepotism and tyranny.
Thoughts of the rise and fall of the Roman Republic were unlikely to be at the forefront of Benjamin Franklin’s mind in the fall of seventeen-eighty-seven, as the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was drawing to a close. Yet, when Elizabeth Willing Powel asked him, ‘Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?’ Franklin’s response certainly showed an awareness of how fragile is the idea of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. He said, ‘A Republic, if you can keep it.’ Powel, a noted salonniere with keen wits, and happy devotee to her new country then asked, ‘And why not keep it?’ Franklin’s response is obtuse, ‘Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.’
But if we look at the speech he penned for the Constitutional Convention’s closing we get a clearer idea, and an inkling that while he may not have been thinking specifically about Rome, he was certainly aware of where a republic has weaknesses.
He wrote, ‘…I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.’
Yes, founding father Benjamin Franklin foresaw despotism could descend upon these new United States. The trigger for such? The corruption of the populace so they seek such rule, craving a ‘strong man’ to lead and protect them, surrendering the authority held in common for and by all, to a single tyrant.
What could lead to such corruption? How could the will of people born in liberty be bent to a desire for subservience?
Benjamin Franklin had thought of this some years previously when he wrote and, anonymously, submitted an extensive essay to The Pennsylvania Gazette. It opened, ‘Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.’ The essay enumerates various Roman emperors and the abuses of their subjects. The first one mentioned is Caesar Augustus.
While Mark Anthony took retribution against Cicero for speech he did not like, Augustus lifted the crime of libel against the emperor to the level of treason against the state, quashing any who would speak ill of him before they had chance to start.
When freedom of speech, and more than speech, when what is to be thought is regulated, then corruption has set into the polity of a nation and the descent to autocracy has not only started, but the lip of a precipitous fall is being teetered against.
Is there some warning to be had when such a time is approaching?
In nineteen-ninety-five Toni Morrison gave a speech enumerating ten steps towards fascism. While the rise of insular nationalism with its perverse obsession about acceptable lineage, rejection of science, and malign views on masculinity and femininity, is as much a worry today as it was nearly thirty years ago, we can switch out fascism with any person or organization displaying the intent to rule permanently.
While it does us well to consider, and recognize, Morrison’s ten different canaries in the coal-mine of liberty let’s examine the fourth. It reads, ‘Palisade all art forms; monitor, discredit or expel those that challenge or destabilize processes of demonization and deification.’
I love the word palisade; it feels so pleasant in the mouth. At its simplest the word evokes the traditional white picket fence which is almost as much part of European-American consciousness as apple pie. And such a palisade is benign, a polite informer that says ‘here is something that is not yours, please do not trespass’. Other palisades are more robust, but still defensive in nature. We may think of enclosed palisades in old cowboy films, or stockades as they are known.
A palisade can also be an offensive position, designed to contain those inside, not protect. This is how Morrison uses the word here.
Where those who produce art are hedged about and monitored for orthodoxy there is danger. Where ones who disagree with proclamations of what art is good and acceptable, or bad and contemptible, are hounded and harassed into exile or acquiescence, then that palisade is having the desired malign effect, it is limiting free speech.
Such processes do not start by chance, nor are they limited to a certain group being in power. No the suppression of free speech begins at the fringes, where there are always groups seeking to control their adherents, The worry begins where fringe ideas are popularized and brought into more open view by unscrupulous people entranced by the idea of controlling obedient acolytes.
Soon ideas of what books may or may not be read, what music listened to, what facts taught, are being propounded to schools and public libraries.
To be clear, the exercise of such is itself an exercise in free speech, and while it may be decried, it is also protected. But when government, be they local or national, begin to enact laws which follow through on these cries and mandate the removal of books, excoriate certain music or musicians, and believe facts can have alternative counterparts, then freedom of speech is being violated. Palisades are being built and only those who fall into line will be accepted.
Parents worried about the minds of their children being corrupted by a book, song, or historical fact, would be better placed educating their children as to how and why the principles and beliefs they espouse are to be trusted, and why differing ideas or subjects perceived as sensitive are so dangerous, and to remember that on the internet, copies of every book, every song, every fact are freely available.
But that is to digress.
Once issues are decided to be an ‘us or them’ matter it is time to whip up a media storm which drags in more and more people, teaching them to identify for or against whichever issue has been chosen as a front line in the culture war.
In all history groups and parties seek to create a base of followers, and then to extend it by appealing, in part, to aspects of culture. But would be oligarchs, autocrats, or self-appointed arbiters of right and wrong for all, worry little about what is banned, or who is silenced, so long as it inflames the passions of those who follow them. They will happily generate a frenzy of fear about something, even while they hypocritically enjoy its benefits themselves.
Where do we look for warnings, in which direction do we tilt our head to hear this canary’s song?
It is easy to see when those we disagree with are engaged in such tactics, easy to list the faults of our philosophical opposites. It can be harder to identify when we’re heading down the same slippery slope ourselves, when the freedoms we demand are actually impositions on everyone else.
With freedom of speech, come other freedoms. We are free not to listen, we are free to absent ourselves from places where speech we object to is expounded.
Ourselves having freedom of speech, even if it is in the majority – and very often it isn’t – does not grant us freedom to demand others be silent, that their free expressions be blocked for all, on account of our tastes.
A clever and insidious way we are tricked into ‘choosing sides’ is by attacking the actions of ones who we tend to agree with. When the bad actions of our favored people are pointed at in response to our decrying horrendous actions by those we disagree with, it is easy to be drawn into defending or downplaying that which we know is wrong.
Having our own principles, and refusing to surrender them in protecting the wrongdoings of ones we prefer (whether deliberate deeds, or missteps) is a great way to ensure we are not dragged into the silencing which is the end aim of those who would minimize their own criminality, even as they attempt to excuse it, normalize it, and make it acceptable in a leader.
Some listeners may feel that I’ve scattered nouns like despot, tyrant, oligarch, and autocrat around like confetti, and be aggrieved for they mean very specific things. I would contend it matters little what title such ones should rightly have if they will look to punish you for using it against them.
As stated earlier, calls for unpopular views to be silenced occur on both sides of every argument. However, throughout history, the side which uses campaigns of book removals, even burnings, which imprisons or threatens to imprison those who dare investigate or even criticize the new autocracy are always remembered as the bad guys.
But, when such people achieve the power they crave, when dissenters have been cowed, criminalized, even killed and they decide the way you do things is wrong, remember it began with a demand that you silence others, because, as Toni Morrison’s 10th canary worriedly trills, they must ‘Maintain, at all costs, silence.’
words by stuartcturnbull. Picture licenced from Kirsten Alana and worked in Canva