Lawrence Reed on modern parallels to the fall of Rome

well good afternoon welcome to the Acton Institute and thank you for coming to today's Acton lecture series event my name is Stephen barrows and I'm the managing director of programs here at Acton although many of you if not most of you already are familiar with what we do here at Act and I think it's always helpful to underscore our mission statement so the mission of the Acton Institute is to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles now if you go to our website you will also see that our mission statement is accompanied by a set of ten core principles when reflecting on those core principles it strikes me how important they are to building and sustaining a flourishing civilization and this is why I'm particularly excited about the topic today in today's lecture so our format for today is a 30 minute lecture followed by a 30 minute session for questions and answers so without further ado let me introduce to you our distinguished speaker Lawrence wre became the president of the foundation for economic education in 2008 prior to that he was founder and president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland Michigan he chaired the Department of Economics and taught economics courses at Northwood University in Michigan from 1977 to 1984 he holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Grove City College and a Master of Arts in history from Slippery Rock State University he also holds two honorary doctorates one from Central Michigan University and the other from Northwood University a champion for liberty Reed has authored over 1,000 newspaper columns and articles and dozens of articles in magazines and journals in the United States and abroad he has authored or co-authored eight books the most recent being real heroes inspiring true stories of courage character and conviction Larry has delivered at least 75 speeches annually in the past 30 years in virtually every state and in dozens of countries from Bulgaria to China to Bolivia he is a member of the prestigious Mont Pelerin Society and serves as an advisor to numerous organizations around the world his numerous recognitions include the champion of freedom award from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Grove City College a native of Pennsylvania and a 30-year resident of Michigan Larry now resides in Newnan Georgia so please join me in offering a warm welcome to Larry Reed thank you very much Stephen thank you ladies and gentlemen I appreciate once again the opportunity to be at an acting event I was here just two months ago for act and University again which is always an annual delight to be a part of and thanks especially for having me here in Michigan in August what a great time to get out of Atlanta our founder at the foundation for economic education Leonard Reed no relation had a great line years ago that he used to often spark a conversation to get people interested in his vocation namely ideas of liberty and whatever the weather was particularly bad in the midst of a snowstorm or whatever people would be saying Oh have you seen what the weather is doing or it's terrible outside and he would immediately say no it's a great day every day is a great day and people would look at him rather quizzical II wonder why he would say that and then he would say that's my way of showing appreciation for the fact that at least when it comes to the weather God and not the government is in charge and so I'm grateful like he was for whatever the day brings and glad that as bad as the weather might be on any given day that it's still not something that government is in charge of well why study or talk about ancient Rome it's been gone for more than 16 centuries but I think all of you know instinctively that you don't have a society that lasts as long as this one did it's one of the longest lasting jurisdictions in the history of the world and not have abundant lessons that can pour forth from that story and inform us even sixteen centuries later you know the words of the philosopher George Santayana who said if you those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it so there is an instinctive desire I think on a part of most people to learn what those lessons may be even if it turns out that not many people ultimately do learn or pay attention to them maybe we should talk about them all the more keep in mind that ancient Rome my topic today lasted at least in the western portion a thousand years the eastern Roman Empire lasted another thousand years on top of that but it's the western part centered in Rome that I want to focus my remarks on today that's that's the portion of Roman society that most people seem to be especially interested in and the one I think has the most lessons to teach us I've often been asked no matter what my topic may be at a speech what I think the most important issue is in America today or sometimes I talk about British history and they say what do you think the most important issue in Britain is I always say the same answer in whatever the context the most important issue today in this country is the same as it was in Rome 2,000 years ago it's the same ultimately in all times and in all places the number one issue from which everything flows and so much can be explained is in a word character character is the one thing that universally plays a major role in explaining the rise of civilizations and also a major role in the decline in the fall of one civilization after another so I think you know today you if you were asked what is the most important issue you might be tempted to say oh well it's the national debt or its government spending or it's the opioid crisis or a few months ago there were people who thought collusion with Russia was the number one issue you get a lot of different answers to that but ultimately I think it all comes down all of those things are manifestations in one way or another of the character of the people you're talking about so character is going to play a major role in what I have to say about the rise and fall of ancient Rome here a lot of interesting parallels to America like America Rome rose as a republic after a revolt against monarchy in 509 BC the Romans overthrew their King and his Etruscan allies from North Italy overthrew them and at that point the Romans basically said we're tired of one-man rule we don't like the concentration of power so what we're going to set up is something that proved to be rather unique in the history of the world to that date a republic the Romans said we're going to make sure that power is not concentrated any longer in the hands of a single person we're going to disperse it and we're going to do that by creating two positions at the top called consul and they will share the power that that top position will bestow upon them and we're going to limit them to one year terms and the decisions of one the Romans established will be veto abel by the other so they had to come to some consensus in order to get anything done but this was the romans way in the early republic of saying no one person is gonna have the kind of power that we finally got rid of in 509 BC at the same time they created the dispersion of power at the very top they limited what those consoles could do as well as the time in which they could do it to one year but they also created a Senate admittedly not the most representative body in the history of the world it was pretty much wealthy families in that body who had a long history of service in one form or another to Rome or in in business but they at the same time created popularly elected assemblies and shared some of the political power with the Senate they created things that we know of today even by their ancient Latin terms habeas corpus being a leading example term limits as I mentioned in the case of the consul and other positions as well they had a constitution although like that of Great Britain it was not a written one it was an unwritten Constitution but it was powerful it was powerful because there was consensus on it it became rooted in custom and it became something that you violated or attempted to violate at your peril Romans had separation of powers across various branches of the government in those early days the establishment of a republic did that there was something that Romans themselves called most my Oram they talked about it a lot they taught it they regarded it as as the glue that held them together most morrow my arm was the legal principles rooted in moral principles that they shared this is the origin of such terms as gravitas very much a part of us most my orem mentality okay which meant dignified self-control Fidesz from which we derive the word fidelity it meant trustworthiness keeping your word being honest in your dealings these and other character traits were very much a part of what Romans thought define them as Romans and held them together these shared values in the early years early centuries in fact of the ancient Republic there was a widespread respect as part of most my Orem for the individual and for his property and for his rights this would not always be the case but it certainly was in the early stages of the Roman Republic and in this relative this climate of relative freedom and the free enterprise in the economic sphere that flowed from it Rome rose to greatness and a level of production and wealth that the world had not seen before in 70 AD this is well into the empire after the Republic fell but it's nonetheless about the peak in terms of Roman influence there were a million people living in Rome in the city of Rome not until London in the nineteenth century would any city in the world approach that size again well to give you an idea one measure of Rome's decline guess how low the population of Rome got to during the Middle Ages long after its decline had had begun it went from a million to seventeen thousand you know we talked about in this state you know Detroit from two million to six hundred and fifty thousand you think that's big how about going from 1 million to a mere 17,000 took a few centuries but that's exactly what happened when Emperor Vespasian's started building the Colosseum in 70 AD also Rome was 10 times the size that it was when Napoleon invaded the city 18 centuries later by the way that Coliseum which many of you have probably visited ceded some 40 45 thousand people with another 20,000 for standing room a monumental achievement for 2,000 years ago in 100 AD you could travel from Egypt to France on paved roads Roman roads with only one currency in one passport in your pocket aqueducts reached 60 and 70 miles from the countryside into the cities Rome in particular more fresh water per person arrived in Rome by aqueducts at that time than would be the case at any time in Rome later until the 1950s it's incredible Roman Road building of course is legendary with portions of the old Appian Way still visible and travel able to this day which reminds me the only time I've ever been heckled on a campus during a speech I trust that's not likely to happen here but it did happen two years ago in April I was at the University of Denver giving a talk on ancient Rome there was only five minutes into it I'd said nothing incendiary that I could think of but I got to this mention of road-building and I mentioned how vast it was that in ancient Rome the road building campaign would not be eclipsed by anything of its kind until the interstate road building campaign in the United States of the 1950s and it was at that point literally less than ten minutes into my talk when a student shouted from the audience that's not true and I said excuse me and he said no that's not true the Mayans built more roads and I wasn't sure that he said Mayans and I said you mean Mayans like down in Mexico he said yeah yeah our professors have researched this they built more roads than the Romans well I told him that that could not possibly true I researched it later and discovered that the Incas were the big road builders in South America not the Mayans and at most they built about 25,000 miles of road but that was 10% of what the Romans built the Mayans were even less than the Incans and I thought about it later I thought why would why would that student insist on this and by the way there were others who piped up saying the same thing and that was when the signs started going up to pre-prepared signs of all kinds of epithets and apparently that was the trigger for it and the best I could figure is that the professor's may have told them that and if so it's probably a sad sign how rotten the political correctness has gotten in some places on American campuses I think what what they were reflecting was the view that Oh Romans there were white Europeans we can't say anything good about them and Mayans they were indigenous people so they were they were victims of white Europeans and they couldn't have done anything wrong in spite of things like decapitations and idol worship and human sacrifice and and internecine warfare and subjugation of enslaved peoples that characterized the old Mayan Empire but nonetheless just an interesting side note there that that was enough to set a number of those students off you may have seen one of the money Python films in which the greatness of Rome is sort of in a backhanded way referenced by John Cleese and this recount this episode but John Cleese is in Palestine around the time of Christ and he's trying to whip up an opposition to the Romans and he's got an audience in his home of a bunch of people and he's trying to get him all fired up to create this liberation movement and at one point he says after all what have the Romans ever done for us how many have heard this or seen this episode okay and you know what happens when he says that there's a voice in the back that says aqueducts and then he said well okay other than aqueducts what have the Romans ever done for us and then somebody else says education and he says okay other than education and aqueducts what have the Romans ever done for us and it just cuts loose people say sanitation recreation the banking erodes peace and then he just lists all those things and said okay other than all those things what have the Romans ever done for us it's kind of a backhanded tribute to the fact that Rome had become the center of the world's wealth and had achieved levels of productivity and production and standards of living that were the envy of the world and would not be equaled in most places for a long time to come I want to share with you before I go into my the details and my thesis I want to share with you some of what some historians have said when assessing why all of that was lost why Rome decline and ultimately fell the first historian is one who lived within the lifetimes of many of us here he only passed away I think 20 or 30 years ago will durant in his 1944 book caesar and christ he summarized what one of the monumental lessons of rome in this single sentence a great civilization he said is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within the essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people her morals her class struggles her failing trade her bureaucratic despotism her stifling taxes her consuming Wars I have three historians I want to quote from you who had the benefit of actually living at that time three of the greatest Roman historians who wrote about the history of the civilization they knew firsthand the first is Gaius Seleucia Scribus who we abbreviate thankfully as simply Seles he was both a provincial governor for Roman North Africa and a prolific writer during the first century BC that's the century the last century of the Roman Republic so it's crumbly all around him on the eve of the arrival of the first emperor and here's what he said ambition prompted many to become deceitful to keep one thing concealed in the breasts and another ready on the tongue to estimate friendship and enmities not by their worth but according to self-interest and to carry a specious countenance rather than an honest heart that's a commentary on character isn't an erosion of character he also wrote this when sloth when sloth has introduced itself in the place of Industry and covetousness and pride in that of moderation and equity the condition of a state is altered together with its morals and thus Authority is always transferred to the less deserving does that ring a bell a century after solaced wrote Gaius Cornelia Cornelius Tacitus who practiced law served in the Roman Senate wrote well enough and so much that he's considered one of the greatest historians of antiquity he lamented the demise of the liberties of the old republic at that point in the rise of the emperors of dubious character and he noted lust of absolute power is more burning than all the passions you know if I had to identify a single character trait responsible for more destruction than perhaps any other I think I'd say power the lust for what is that the lust for power is the desire to rule over others to tell them what to do that push them around to take their stuff to be in charge and to it is incredibly intoxicating so many people who even enter positions of power with the best of intentions so many of them find themselves corrupted in short order this various to institute here is named for of course a man who had a famous observation about power lord acton power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely I always like to add my own little corollary to that and that is that power tends to attract the already corrupted which is really an ever more apparent to me just on the side here I'm very concerned as you might imagine about the growth of government and the flow of responsibility from the individual and the family and the community to the central government well one of the consequences of that is that that bad people tend to rise to the top the more are the larger the government gets this was true in ancient Rome it's just as true around us today the bigger gets the more corrupt it becomes because people are fighting over this increasing mass of largesse and they want to get in charge and pass it out to their friends or at least keep the government at bay and off their backs but the more power they personally accumulate the more attends to corrupt their own character if they're not already corrupted so we end up if we don't reverse this course and we know Rome did not you end up with the worst of both worlds bad people managing big government how many times have you heard good people that you'd love to see in public life say things like I wouldn't try don't ask me to run for anything why would I want my name to be dragged through the you hear that all the time and I lament that because the very kind of people we would most want to have in government increasingly are the ones who flee from it because it's such dirty business it's one of the consequences of the sheer size and scope and intrusiveness and power of government here's another line from Tacitus that i think you'll appreciate it sounds almost like it came from ein rand from Atlas Shrugged perhaps but it comes from Tacitus 2,000 years ago he noted as he looked around him as the Republic had just expired he said when men of talents are punished Authority is strengthened and the list of that again when men of talents are punished Authority or power is strengthened here's another good one from Tacitus he said now bills were passed not only for national objectives but for individual cases and laws were most numerous when the Commonwealth was most corrupt what is he noting that at one time the Republic tended to focus on doing what needed to be done for the good of all but now he notes we're passing laws all the time and so many of them are not for the general welfare as so much as for the benefit of this group that's been pitted against that group we're taking from some giving to others focusing on the here and now on a handful of noisy or powerful groups and giving them something special at the expense of others that rings a bell too doesn't it by this time the first century AD Rome had degenerated from a relatively free Republic to a monstrous dictatorship so as policies at home were increasingly no better than its warfare policies abroad Tacitus noted with regret in here in a place that not so long before had been a bastion of freedoms of speech and press and assembly he said it is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks noting I think one of the consequences of concentrating power in in central authorities your basic freedoms tend to be jeopardized in the course of doing that a third Roman historian levy lived between the periods of Sallust and tests and he authored a sweeping history of ancient Rome from its founding admittedly a lot of this is probably legend at that point but he wrote it up anyway all through the creation of the Republic it's 500 years and through the rule of the first of the Emperor's Augustus and here are some things that he said and I think if you remember the French phrase the more things change the more they stay the same that'll ring true in the words of levy he said men are only too clever at shifting blame from their own shoulders to those of others such as the nature of crowds either they are humble and servile or arrogant and dominating they are incapable of maker making moderate use of freedom which is the middle course or of keeping it and then he said there is nothing that is more often clothed in an attractive garb than a false Creed I thought of that as I watched the democratic debate a couple of weeks ago and I'm thinking 22 and a half trillion dollars in debt so if you expected candidates in that debate to say how they were going to bring that under control and reduce reckless spending you were very dissatisfied weren't you instead we heard an endless litany of promises and proposals to spend trillions more all wrapped in this garb of we're gonna help you we're gonna take care of you're gonna relieve your distress round take care of your college for you we're going to give you free stuff and of course none of it is free never was in ancient Rome nor is it today and finally a great quote from levy is as follows the subjects to which I would ask each of my readers to devote his earnest attention are these the life and morals of the community the men and the qualities by which through domestic policy and foreign war Dominion was won and extended then as the standard of morality gradually lowers let him follow the decay of the national character observing how at first it slowly sinks then slips downward more and more rapidly and finally begins to plunge into headlong ruin until he reaches these days in which we can bear neither our diseases nor our remedies ominous but honest nonetheless Wendy will examine the the last hundred years of the Roman Republic so pivotal in Roman history that five hundred year period of the Republic is about to give way to a five hundred year period of a significant less significantly less freedom and Emperor's and Emperor worship what happens specifically what were the events that were hallmarks of this erosion of character and how did they show up I think there are three ways in which the erosion of character things like respect for life and property and tradition and Roman institutions and had governed and given them considerable freedom before three things took place in that last century that really take them down the tube what are the costly wars and foreign adventure there's a great book I highly recommend it came out maybe ten years ago by historian Thomas Madden ma dden called empires of trust and he draws a lot of parallels between this period and and recent American history and he points out that Romans were rather reluctant inheritors of empire at first there were occasions I'll never forget the story he tells about the time when they came the Romans came to the rescue of the Greeks in one of their wars with the persians and the romans came over to greece I helped expel the Persians and the Greeks at that point figured well you know we're gonna be a conquered people one way or the other now it's just gonna be the Romans instead of the Persians and they were shocked when the Romans said no we're not here to say we were here because we wanted to help you repel the Persians and now you're free we're going home does that ring a bell it's later Rome when they begin to send armies overseas for the purpose of forcibly building an empire but they were at first a reluctant center of empire a second reason that you see really advancing during the last hundred years of the Republic explaining the decline is the rise of the Roman well her state the abandonment of personal responsibility and so many walks of life the acceptance of the notion that government isn't simply a peacekeeper it should be also a provider of more and more things we can get it from the government and maybe maybe not then have to work for we can vote for a living instead of working for one you see that increasingly getting hold in the last century of the Republic and then thirdly you find a willingness to cut corners when it came to their governing institutions you know for the first few hundred years if you were caught even hinting that you'd like to be a king or you'd like to be in charge or that you thought the Constitution was just a dead letter you could do whatever you wanted in government any way that you did that it's a great political peril but somewhere in the mid part of the second century BC you really begin to see people sort of casting their constitution aside you have Marius who you know you were supposed to be a consul for one term one year Marius comes along and convinces the people to let him be consul seven times not all consecutive but within a pretty compressed period of time because each time he said effectively you really need me I'm important I know what's best I know the Constitution says I can't do this but that's you know that's kind of old so let's not worry about that let's do other things and you see that time and time again the respect in reverence for the institutions that had kept the power of government limited and the freedom of the individual solid is increasingly sort of cast aside you see it in the form of the rise of the grain dole which also begins in the 140s BC at first the members of the Senate and consuls thought well we can by the support of the men in the military by giving them grain subsidies and the problem with every welfare state is once you once you abandon the notion that government is to serve all people equally and begin to regard it as a fountain of free goodies for whoever is the noisiest the problem is where do you draw the line because once you say okay this people this group of people they get a lot of goodies then you have other people who say well why should why shouldn't I I'm important why should I pay the bill so they get all the goodies and so increasingly you find the grain dole expanded to where at the time of Julius Caesar about a hundred years later near the end of the Republic he finds when he comes to power that a third of the people of Rome are on the grain dole and he tries to cut it and and briefly is able to do that but within a few years it's back up higher than it than it ever was if I had to be asked well what one event would you say marks the end of the Republic to be followed by that 500 years of increasing tyranny we know as the Empire you know some historians would say well it was when Julius Caesar was named by the Senate Emperor for life I wouldn't agree with that because that only lasted a month until he was assassinated there was a chance because the assassins were friends of the Old Republic and there was a chance maybe some lost freedoms could be restored and power might not be concentrated in one man but of course it wasn't to be Marc Anthony maneuvered to succeed Caesar and to make himself Emperor for life other historians would say well maybe 27 ad 43 I think or 44 was one Caesar was briefly named Emperor for life 27 ad I'm sorry BC is another important year because that's when Augustus becomes the first emperor but I think an event in between is I would say is the the actual death of the Republic and I'm referring to the assassination of the Republic's last great defender Marcus Tullius Cicero cícero great man friend of Liberty enemy of the state he had been a very successful lawyer worked his way up through all the positions of any significance in Rome became consul for one year during that time he snuffed out a conspiracy to overthrow the Republic that Cataline conspiracy saved Rome was named the father of the country given extraordinary powers briefly for that job he could have kept them and said well you really need me like Marius did but one year was up and he walked away he gave up power in defense of the Republican institutions he revered Caesar tried to convince him to join a triumvirate and share power he refused he denounced that kind of thing later Mark Antony entertained briefly the notion maybe he could talks Cicero into joining something similar Cicero not only refused he went to the Senate as a retired politician at that point delivered fourteen speeches you can read to this day called the philippics fourteen speeches in which he denounced Mark Antony as the greatest danger of Roman Republican liberties he was a tyrant in waiting and that's what prompted then Mark Antony to send an assassin for him and it was in December of 43 BC when the assassin found his mark and beheaded Cicero it was all downhill from there with the coming of Augustus you he's the first emperor he kind of retained some of the trappings of the old republic but he really is in charge and in subsequent Emperor's will toss aside most of those pretenses as well and gather ever more power to themselves I want to close with just a few important events in that Empire period that underscore how the problems that led to the Republic's decline only worsened under the Empire immense in the welfare state in 91 AD emperor Domitian in an effort to raise the price of wine orders the destruction of half of the vineyards in various Roman provinces sounds like a triple-a of 1930 three to me you also had a period in that first century AD where there was a financial crisis and the Roman government responded by issuing massive quantities of loans at zero interest and about that time shortly thereafter with the pressure so great from Roman spending and all these loans and so forth the Emperor Nero begins the process of debasing the currency of Rome how do you pay for all this stuff they're going to war for all kinds of reasons they're throwing dole at all kinds of people they're putting people on at the on the public payroll well you can raise taxes which they did but ultimately the pressure to cheat on the currency is so great Nero begins the process the Denarius was 94 percent silver at the start of Nero's reign within 200 years the silver content of the currency had fallen two point zero two percent just a speck of silver the rest was cheap junk metals that they had flooded the country the empire with causing a cyclonic super inflation those are the terms of a historian named max Shapiro he talks about a cyclonic super inflation of the fourth century when prices were soaring at the twinkling of an eye value of Roman currency falling through the floor and guess what they did in response to soaring inflation do you think they said oh well we better balance the budget and quit ripping off people through eroding their currency no the Emperor Diocletian in the year 301 you can see this at the Smithsonian they have an exhibit that reproduces his famous edict he issued a comprehensive wage and price controls under penalty of death in the year 301 the economy what was left of it crumbled fairly quickly in Rome was never but a shadow of its former self after those years and by 476 ad of course Rome fell like a ripe plum that's the year that barbarian invaders entered the city of Rome and self found many of the people actually welcoming them figuring that they what they do is better than the tyranny of our own tax collectors and welcoming foreign barbarians into the city heralding the end of the Western Roman Empire I hope I've said enough to prompt some questions I've kind of summarized a lot of years of history in a 35 minutes but with that I'll close and open it up to some questions yes ma'am let's give a round of applause for mr. Regan thank you thank you all right well now I have about 20 to 25 minutes Q&A so if you'd raise your hand and wait until my colleague or I come and hand the microphone to you because we have people watching on live stream and they will also like to hear your question as well so we can time for questions then good afternoon I'm Joe Langley I'm running for Congress in the third District and I'm just curious about your take on social media and how it's affecting our lack of accountability in our society yeah great question I'm not an expert on this but I'm increasingly worried that especially in the light of these mass shootings and you have to ask yourself what is causing so many young men to do these horrendous things and increasingly it's apparent that there's a common thread they're disconnected they're they're low often loners often very active in social media and you look at social media what's that become for so many people it's a place where you can if naanum ously or at least without immediate and obvious reprisal or having to face somebody eyeball to eyeball you can attack you could condemn you can be viscerally rotten and nasty I see it all the time on social media and get away with it so social media in some ways has been a real boon but there is this downside and that is not helping it's contributing to the disconnectedness the anonymity see they go off on your own and you know and that is contributing to the just disintegration of the bonds that once kept us together what how to deal with it I don't know I might be very skeptical of the government passing laws to try to deal with it I think again these things the answer is more likely to be found right in here in a renaissance of character or revival of respect for the individual one person one parent one child at a time maybe we have to have even more crises before we face that I don't know but it does worry me a lot it may not be a definitive answer but I think it is part of the problem can you speak to the social issues that were occurring during the decline of Rome specifically abortion infanticide euthanasia the use of the IUD the loss of the Hippocratic oath do no harm you speak to what was happening at that time a little bit I tend to concentrate more on the political and economic but I know that infanticide even in the late Republic was an issue whereas it wasn't earlier of course a big social issue is slavery and although Roman Rome always had some slavery that becomes a more acute issue with time in fact in those Wars of the first century BC in the declining decades of the Republic slavery becomes an ever bigger issue because as they start to conquer just for the sake of conquering or for the revenue often the troops would be paid in various gifts including slaves conquered people's they'd bring back and that actually had enormous negative impact on the economy it put a lot of small farmers out of business because they're having to compete with the free labor that now these other guys they get free land for maybe their service general pays them off with some chunk of land keeps there keeps them quiet and gives them a few slaves and now they're competing head-to-head with enterprising small farmers that led to a lot of economic dislocation and class class conflict the other matters of abortion and other things you mentioned I'm not as well-versed on so I can't comment further there's a good book I think does get into that by Jeremiah Johnston with a t-nut like the old movie Jeremiah Johnson Johnston with a T and I forget the title but if you go on Amazon and type in his name it deals with the last hundred years of a republic and a lot of the social decline at some of those things I think in that thank you my name is Mike Faraj I I've been a fan of yours going back to the Mackinac Center I actually to this day I ran for local office I stole a lot of your rhetoric something it's just good question I and it's it's kind of related to what we're talking when to see if Grand Rapids has over a billion dollars in debt when I was addressing this to some of the people when I was running I noticed when you talked about unfunded liabilities that half the audience fell asleep yeah and it's like a huge concern this is debt this is what is it that just I don't know it is it not a political sexy enough is it what is it that doesn't that people won't resonate to debt when you're talking basically it's coming out of your pocket yeah and be alert on it in like you know they'd rather talk about you know carnival or something yeah thank you Mike for what you first said as well I appreciate it lucky for you I don't copyright anything [Laughter] you know maybe before I put much blame on the folks were trying to reach maybe maybe we don't communicate clearly enough in a way that they can relate to just how serious this is me often I see people on our side of the fence who talked about things like debt and the green eyeshades come on you know and they it's all dollars and cents instead of putting it in terms of what is this doing to real people what what are we doing to children and grandchildren maybe we need to borrow something that the other side uses all the time often an unjustified way a little emotion and talk about hey if this doesn't interest you well then you need to shake your conscience up a little bit why doesn't it interest you that your children and grandchildren may find themselves so burdened with the debts of your bills that they may not they may not make it in life they may be saddled with huge burdens because of what we're doing today does it why doesn't that light a fire under you maybe we just need a little me to be a little bit more you know in their face and some of the rhetoric in a polite way to get them to realize how serious this stuff is this is mortgaging that the future of your kids and their kids that should light a fire under you I'm sorry how we decided I guess these guys are picking the hands I have a question for you you sort of started to address it already and that is do you have hope for the future what can we do to build this better character within our culture and those kinds of things you started to address yes oh thank you Anna for asking that because if you hadn't we might have ended on what could have sounded like a pessimistic note and I'm not a pessimist I think you have to be optimistic no first of all nobody knows the future right you know exactly what's going to happen a day from now let alone six years 60 years I mean we don't know the future so I get down on it even before it happens and if you are pessimistic if you think all is lost that we just have to go the way Rome did and there's no turning around well then a couple bad things happen you stop working for what you know to be right or you don't work as hard for it because you're kind of they've given up you know nobody works as hard for something that I think is lost than they do for something they think is winnable so you got to convince yourself that good people can make a difference doesn't matter what the odds and the obstacles are we can change we can change the course of history it's happened before and the other bad thing that happens if you're pessimistic is that other people then don't want to hear your message if you if I came here today and said I want to sign you all up to work for things like Liberty and a revival of character but by the way we're gonna lose this you'd all say well I might as well just go along for the ride you know well I bother get what I can while I can get it so for the sake of the future you need to muster an optimism and whenever I've had occasion to debate and to have interaction on public forums with people of a very different persuasion and I love using this tool if you can't get say a socialist to actually turn around and realize no that's a bankrupting philosophy doesn't go anywhere it's never worked and I kind of if you can't quite get them to acknowledge any of that well just smile and say well it's only a matter of time you're a smart person at some point you'll see this a lot of socialists do I know a lot more former socialists than I know former free market people I really do is you ever run into anybody who said you know I used to think that individual responsibility and freedom was the way to go but no I think we need to empower government bureaucracies I think politicians should run our lives nobody nobody goes in that direction so I think Karl Marx you know kind of understood this I have a feeling nobody knows this for sure but he's known for coming up with his doctrine of inevitability nowhere he said all doesn't matter if you don't like what I have to say even if you're opposed to the communism I'm promoting doesn't matter history is heading in that direction it's just gonna happen so you're Mazel sit back and and forget trying to oppose it I think he understood that that would be a disarming thing that he could he might help win the future for his side if he could simply disarm opponents we need to turn around turn that around and use it on our side that if there's one thing that may be inevitable it surely it is that people will be what God intended them to be and that is free and sovereign individuals people of character who make choices for their lives I think using that as a tool can be helpful in the battle of persuasion but I am optimistic I don't know when things may turn around but I think it's always important to work for good people to work for what they know to be right if for no other reason than for the sake of your own conscience don't you want some day when you're about to check out to be able to look back in their life and say something like the Apostle Paul did on the night before his martyrdom when he said I have kept I have run the race I have finished wait a minute he was a lot more eloquent run fought the good fight finished the race kept the faith yeah don't you want to be able to say that that you once you knew what the right thing was you didn't give up on it so always be optimistic we don't know the future but we do know that if we don't work for what we know it'll be right it can't possibly be a good one I have an observation and question the observation is that for an insight into the angry white young males the book alienated America by Tim Carney give some insights okay the question is do you view the u.s. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan as the kind of foreign interventions and empire-building that you allude to as being one of the causes of the downfall of the Roman Empire mmm good question I'm not a foreign policy expert but I'm a much more sympathetic to the original intervention in Afghan Stan given that was the origin of the 9/11 attacks then I am of the war against Iraq I think the war in Iraq was a mistake Afghanistan is a little more justifiable there are other interventions that are much less justifiable sending troops to Somalia a few years back and you know Woodrow Wilson started this business in a big way he invaded one country or another in Latin America something like 15 18 times I forget the huge number we kind of forget that but the source of a lot of the anti-americanism in Latin America goes back to Wilson's time where you didn't have the Communist Empire to say we gotta keep an eye out or what they might do in our hemisphere you didn't have that he's had these little local revolutions and and fusses that I don't think we're really part of our duty to get involved with that so that's how it handled that Afghanistan I think was justified I'm not sure if 18 years of being there is justified but the initial invasion was you mentioned a lot about the economic history of the Empire the Roman Empire is there a source that you would recommend that kind of I don't want to say summarizes it but actually documents and you know it gives the information yeah there are several first of all if you go to the fee website F EE org and type in say in the search engine Rome and maybe my last name read very quickly maybe the first item will be something called are we Rome and there I've listed with links a quite a few resources books articles from a lot of places so that's a that's a in a single place a lot of what you're looking for right there in terms of actual books is a this is a little hard to find these days because it's old but you can still get it on eBay I know HJ Haskell H aske ll wrote a wonderful little book sixty years ago called the New Deal in old Rome and as you might imagine he was drawing parallels with what he saw it up for the 1930s and what Rome did that's a good one more recent Mike Duncan he's a fascinating his story the rights for a lay audience and it's fun reading the storm before the storm and it's a history of the last hundred and fifty years of the Republic and the period I'm mostly focused on here his stuff is always good Michael Grant has written a lot he stuffs okay so those come readily to mine but that single page at feed org will give you a lot of sources you being a great historian system you being a great historian Larry if you could spend 24 hours with a deceased person other than Jesus Christ which would be an obvious choice who would it be and why Oh Thank You Chuck that's a question I've often asked the fact I wrote about this very thing and my writings on Cicero so I'll pick him he's always on my list I've asked myself many times if I you know if I had to pick ten people who would they be and Jesus is always one of them Cicero's always one there are a few others that kind of go in and out but Cicero is is one because he was just such a great man so so pivotal and even though he didn't succeed you might look back and say well it was everything he did was in vain he lost lost his life as well as the Republic but he gifted us so much his writings are you know we have more of the original writings of Cicero in existence that we have of those of anyone living before 1000 AD the guy was only prolific his stuff still survives a great deal of it I would love to have time with him just ask him what was it like as you saw your country crumbling all around you and what motivated you to be so courageous and out slow when you knew they can take your life at a moment as they ultimately did he would be one another one would be Leonardo da Vinci oh I don't think I'd have any questions for him I just say just leo just talk and I'll just I'll just listen I don't care what you say he would be one Joan of Arc would be another oh it's an endless list but Cicero will be right at the top currency devaluation is in the news what successful ways have nations dealt with and come back from serious inflation and currency devaluation oh that's a great question so my mind right now because in January I have to go to Ecuador to speak on this very subject because it will mark first week of January marks the 20th anniversary of Ecuador's successful dollarization no it doesn't work for everybody but in Ecuador they had before if you go back 21 years or so ago they had inflation that was approaching a hundred percent a year not anywhere near as high as the two million percent in Venezuela right now but still a hundred percent for a developed reasonably developed economy was quite the threat they reversed it by dollar izing by saying well you know instead of going to say a gold or a new Ecuadorian currency we're just going to everybody using dollars anyway in Ecuador so we're just going to make the dollar our currency so now if they have inflation it's because we have inflation but we've had so little that for 20 years they've had inflation in the low single digits just like we have instead of something approaching a hundred percent that isn't a permanent answer because it's so dependent upon another country what it does but it has proven to be helpful very helpful for and other countries have done something similar I think the best example my life no it's not quite my lifetime just before Germany post-world War two Ludwig Erhard became finance minister this would be about 1948 and Germany had of course was flattened devastated demoralized occupied divided and also ripped apart with hyperinflation which the Soviets were largely responsible for they were given the task of maintaining or making sure there was currency for Germany after World War Two and they had an interest in keeping Germany weak so they they were inflating the currency Erhard got in charge and all of a sudden on a Sunday night went on radio and even though he had not consulted the American occupying forces or the British of the French he did it on his own two-hour over our objections he announced on a radio that the next morning there would be no more price controls no more rationing and a brand new sound currency the deutsche mark and he said we're not going to inflate it we're gonna have balanced budgets for cutting taxes and tariffs were freeing up the economy and what do we call the next ten years the German post-war economic miracle and it was largely on the foundation of a sound currency at darts mark not convertible into say a precious metal which I think is often the ideal but at least it with strict limitations on how much the government could print and on us with a sound currency and a freer economy Germany went from defeated and devastated to the richest country in Europe again within a decade so those and you know in American history if you think hey hyperinflations only happened elsewhere they don't happen here we had two hyperinflations in American history one was the Continental dollar in the early years of the American war for independence we printed you may recall the old phrase not worth a continental we printed paper we put Ben Franklin in charge of the printing presses for crying out loud and he said okay we're only going to print six million dollars worth and several hundred million dollars more later they had to restore convertibility to gold and we started winning battles by that time because we were paying an honest money then the second time was in the American South when partly because they lost and partly because they printed too much the southern Confederate currency went to zero the northern greenback currency was cut by two-thirds in value we had runaway inflation in the north as well but both times the result ultimately was a restoration of a gold-backed currency Congress actually passed a law in 1875 called the specie resumption act that said beginning on the first of January 1879 they gave themselves four years they said every greenback we've printed will be backed by gold and not at a fraction of what we first promised on par what we promised at the start of the war and they gave themselves four years to make sure they was at gold reserves were sufficient to do it and bingo when the convertibility day came do you think people rush to the banks to claim gold for their paper they didn't and why because they had confidence Congress had done what had promised it salted the gold away promised to redeem they were ready to do so people said okay as long as is as good as gold I'll use the paper so we've had restorations of sound currency after hyperinflation is even in this country twice let's give a hand mr. Reid oh thanks everybody

Channel: Acton Institute

Views: 140,503

Rating: 4.6164012 out of 5

Keywords: Lawrence Reed, Foundation for Economic Education, Acton Institute, Roman Empire, Roman Republic, Character, Acton Lecture Series

Id: k3khNU5zktg

Length: 61min 46sec (3706 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/alongsleep]

This is relevant to Harris because some of the parallels Reed draws reflect PC culture. He identifies character as the primary cause of the downfall of the Roman empire.

Acton is a religious organisation but religion isn't mentioned within this talk. Well it is during the Q&A but it's easy to look over.

If there are any history majors who see fault in Reed's comparison, I'd love to know.

[u/turbopony]

I am an amateur historian who has read alot about Rome. I'm not a professional who is up on the most recent scholarship though, so I defer to the experts if any show up. That said:

Reed lays the fall of the Roman Republic at the feet of the decline of Roman character. How does he explain the decline of Roman character? The rise of the welfare state and overseas wars which strengthened the state and induced corrupt men to seek power within it. I don't think this is a fair reading of what happened.

Historians usually talk about the Roman Revolution as a century-long process by which the Republic fractured and came apart. It ended with the rise of Augustus to be the first emperor, but it started with the Gracchi over 100 years earlier. I think to answer this question I need to explain two things: the government and the army.

Roman Government

The way the Roman government worked under the Republic was that the vote was possessed by adult male citizens of the city of Rome. They voted in their tribes (of which there were 100 or so) which were groupings of citizens by wealth. The officers of the Republic (Consuls, Praetors, etc) would run the state and would propose legislation to the people. The Senate, which had no real power, would advise the people on what they thought best, and then Tribunes would bring the legislation before the assembly of the people (the plebians) to vote. Voting would proceed by tribe starting with the richest tribes (which would have a dozen people or so) through to the poorest. The last tribe, called the capita censi (the head count), were all the people of Rome without property, the vast majority of people. Voting would only proceed until a majority of tribes were decided on one side or another.

What does that mean in practice? The voice of the poor was irrelevant and the wealthy members of society, voting in their tribes, or serving as officers, ran the state.

Roman Army

The Roman army was raised by levies of citizen farmers. A war would start and Roman officials would go out into the countryside and raise an army from only the freeborn landowners. This meant small farmers. These people had homes to protect, would serve for a small amount of pay, and return to their homes at the end of the war. Because wars were local in the early republic this usually didn't entail a major disruption in rural life.

The revolution

The structure of the Roman state matters because of how this changed over time. Rome's system of government was designed to run a city state. But then Rome quickly found itself with an empire, first in Italy, then across the Mediterranean. This brought huge piles of wealth into the city, but it also brought huge numbers of slaves. When a Roman army would defeat another in battle, everyone who wasn't killed would be enslaved. Over time this transformed the Roman countryside. Gradually Roman small farmers were replaced with huge slave-based plantations owned by the rich. Those poor farmers would be driven into the cities looking for work. This denuded the Roman army of troops. Whats more, the soldiers drawn to serve from the smaller and smaller number of citizen farmers had to serve for longer and longer as Rome was drawn into distant conflicts with Pergamum, Egypt, etc. Small farming families were often left without the father or oldest son for a decade, which would cause those farms to fail and accelerating the process of consolidation of the countryside in the hands of the slave-holding rich.

There were numerous attempts to rectify this situation by legislation, but who controls the state? The rich, who could easily block attempts by reformers or the poor of seeking redress. Enter the Gracchi. They decided to exploit a loophole in the Roman governmental system whereby the Tribune can bypass the Senate and the officials of the state and bring legislation to the people directly. They attempted to ram through a land reform over the objections of the rich, and they murdered the Gracchi brothers for it. This started a cycle of reforms, retributions, murders, corruption, and decay which lasted a century. By the end, the army was filled with the landless poor from the cities who had to be paid from the largess of their wealthy Generals. The army therefore had more loyalty to generals than the state and Rome was ripe for dictatorship.

The cause of the end of the Roman Republic

In my opinion the Roman Republic ended because the Roman system of government was ill suited to managing a far flung empire and it was so rigid that while it could break, it could not bend. Reforms were desperately needed, but vested interests were so powerful that they could stop all reform until the system's collapse was inevitable. Reed's argument about character is probably best thought of as a consequence, rather than a cause, of this decline. As the institutions of government wither, bad actors will crowd into it.

What is the lesson for today? A government whose structures cannot bend, will eventually break under the weight of reforms demanded but unmet. This is the real danger facing American democracy, the public is clamoring for changes, and the government is, by design, so rigid and captured by vested interests that it cannot deliver them.