The Past, Today

Study of the past is the most effective, important, practical way to better mold the future. In the foundation of America, our forefathers laid the bedrock of our values and way of life based on the knowledge of successes and mistakes of the past. Civilizations such as the ancient Athenians assisted the construction of the democratic values America holds today; the Athenians have simply been a part of the ushering in of democracy to the much of the world, our own country included. However, having an even greater impact than the Athenians on the American government and way of life was the Romans.

The Romans created the first large-scale representative democracy, and even though their success was limited, their failures influenced the founders’ decisions in their conception of our American government as it is today. As military officers, knowledge of the “why” behind the values held by Americans and how they came to be is essential to comprehending the oath we swear to the Constitution and fulfilling it.

The Ancient Romans, following in the footsteps of the Greeks and adopting much of their traditions and culture, instituted a form of democracy that sought to remedy the main issues that Athens’ direct democracy failed to address: namely stability and the overwhelming mob-rule. In order to achieve this, the Romans created a republic in which (most) citizens could participate and choose representatives to accomplish their demands. In fact, many of the founding fathers praised the Roman Republic and those who defended; take, for example, James Madison on Cicero (Cicero was a staunch defender of the Roman Republic in the face of the dictatorship of Julius Caesar): “Among the ancients there are two illustrious examples of the epistolary style, Cicero and Pliny, whose letters present you with models of fine writing, which have borne the criticism of almost two thousand years.”¹

Taken from a 10,000-foot view, the Roman legislative “branch” of government is relatively akin to our own, considering the millennia separating our nations. However, no nation is perfect, and Rome still failed to achieve stability in times of emergency. Tyrants and emperors readily filled the void created when centralized power was necessary, and the Roman Republic gradually lost its potency.

By considering the past and learning from its mistakes, our founding fathers were able to create one of the, if not the, most successful nations ever to dwell on this earth. As officers, warfighting will not be our only medium of the profession: diplomacy and bureaucracy almost inevitably will force themselves into our lives at some point and without a comprehension of history and past civilizations’ — especially the Romans’ — failures, our success in fulfilling the mission we swore an oath to is jeopardized. The institution of our mission, our nation, stands upon the bedrock of an understanding of the past: be it the Romans, the Greeks, or any person we can learn from; our nation and humanity’s progress will forever be inextricably linked to those in our history.

— Gregory Mathias

Word Count: 465

¹Adams, John. The Letters of John and Abigail Adams No. 117. 1776

The Conquerors

Every so often over the course of history, an exceptional leader blindingly outshines his fellow men and undertakes a course of action that leaves a permanent imprint upon the future. Two such men that will never be forgotten are Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan themselves. The men, swaths of land, and resources these men trampled underfoot and held in the palm of their hand have very few if any times been matched. Both conquerors and their empires exemplified similar levels of brutality and tolerance, and though both failed to last, they both exemplified some of the greatest single-handed conquests and birthings of empires in history.

Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan come from very different backgrounds. Being born to King Philip of Macedon, Alexander had a somewhat better start to his empire. As Alexander rode over Persia and Asia, not only did he allow local populaces to retain their culture and religion, he even adopted practices of the people he encountered, much to the chagrin of his own. Similarly, Genghis Khan was relatively tolerant of any culture that his conquest encountered, his people even adopting and integrating into their own other cultures’ practices as they spread across Asia. Both Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan’s empires ruled firmly but made plenty of allowances for the original values of the cultures they subjugated.

While both empires displayed relative tolerance in certain cases, when met with resistance, neither regime faltered when it came to responding with far greater murderous ferocity than their enemy. Alexander the Great himself, during the siege of the Phoenician city of Tyre, he reportedly crucified more than 2,000 survivors on the beach and selling 30,000 more into slavery, not to mention the 6,000 battle casualties.

Though Alexander was brutal, brutality cannot be matched when it comes to the inhumanity of the Mongols. A rare survivor, Ibn al-Althir describes in great detail the atrocities the infamous Mongol hordes committed while on rampage across the entirety of Asia. The Mongols “spared none, slaying women and men and children, ripping open pregnant women and killing unborn babes.”¹ From the perspective of the conquered, the Mongols appeared to have no morals, “and regard nothing as unlawful, for they eat all beasts…, nor do they recognize the marriage-tie,”² furthering their countenance as other-worldly. When it comes to sheer atrocity, both conquerors vie for a strong case, but the Mongol hordes beat out Alexander the Great’s army every time.

As if history repeats itself, we constantly see certain individuals in history transcend their fellows and become a driving force behind a cause that is perpetuated by their followers. Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan both exemplify such an individual with their charisma and pure leadership capability. In terms of the characteristics of the empires, both offered relative independence for those who acknowledged their superiority, but when met with intransigence, the consequences for the perpetrators were bore from extreme obduracy, mercilessness, and pure barbarism. Such men above the rest must be acknowledged and learned from.

—Gregory Mathias
Word Count: 506

^{1, 2}Al-Althir, Ibn. The Perfect History. 1225

(Space) Operatic Empires

It is often anecdotally noted how life mimics art, but should it not be rather expected that the reverse is true? After all, where else do artists draw their inspiration from other than real life? George Lucas’ Star Wars is a perfect example of art mimicking life to a noticeable extent. Though the Empire — their aesthetics, their tactics, their aura — is primarily intended to mimic Nazi Germany, many other analogies arise, especially in the plot and narrative regarding the transition from “republic” to empire, with Ancient Rome.

Since the dawn of known time, human nature has yearned towards order amidst chaos, desiring structure and rule to enforce common principles. However, in the process of achieving these ends, the means by which the ends are attempted to be achieved often skew and circumvent said principles, erring on the side opposite the values once sought to be protected. The process of attempted fair governance devolving into relative chaos, only for a sovereign ruler to rise to the head of the “Leviathan” repeats itself over and over in human history, Ancient Rome being a prime example. In the wake of Greek democracy, its failures, and its successes, the Romans attempted to institute a government representative of the people, yet not too volatile, in the form of a republic. The Roman Republic, however, as expected in our 20/20 hindsight, degenerated into a corrupt group of the social elite controlling an enormous populace.

Out of dissatisfaction with the Roman Elite, a figure named Augustus Caesar rose above the rest in the eyes of the people. His achievements as in the Roman civil war — reuniting the “republic” — earned him the support of the people. In the Star Wars universe, perhaps a figure with less virtuous intentions yet just as much popularity achieved through nearly the exact same means arises in Emperor Palpatine, formerly Chancellor. The Star Wars Republic, undergoing a seemingly unending civil war, “won” under the continually extended, “emergency wartime powers” leadership of Chancellor Palpatine. When the (concocted) opportunity arose, Palpatine catapulted himself into the position of permanent emperor. Both republics’ degradation into autocracy is perfectly described by Thomas Hobbes in The Leviathan:

“The attaining to this Soveraigne Power, is by two wayes…The other, is when men agree amongst themselves, to submit to some Man, or Assembly of men, voluntarily, on confidence to be protected by him against all others.”¹

Augustus Caesar and the Emperor both left their republican government intact, not doing away with a powerless entity out of fear of the people’s potential uproar, but rather stripping them of what little powers they had left. Both rulers ruled absolutely, there is no doubt. However, rulers never last forever. In a twist akin to his adoptive father, Emperor Palpatine was betrayed by his most trusted subordinate, ending the Galactic Empire, at least temporarily.

In modern-day America, we see history repeating itself just the same as it always does. In relatively recent history, the executive branch has amassed an amount of power our forefathers would never have envisioned. Starting with the expansion of bureaucracy in the New Deal, WWII, and beyond, the executive branch, especially the presidency, has a disproportionate amount of power relative to the other ideally equal branches of our government. More recently, the War Powers Act of 1973 gives the President control over the military unprecedented, not dissimilar to the “temporary” powers “Chancellor” Palpatine was given to conduct his “war”.

With the perfect hindsight of history available to Americans today, it should surprise us when we see its negative aspects repeating itself. However, it appears that human nature, in art, in Ancient Rome, or today, inevitably drifts towards the condition of a sovereign, unitary, autonomous ruler.

— Gregory Mathias

Word Count — 582
¹Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679. Leviathan. Baltimore :Penguin Books, 1968.

Immigration Yesterday and Today

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program implemented during the Obama era and the debate surrounding it bears an eerie resemblance to the debates in Athens surrounding metics following the Peloponnesian Wars. Similar to DACA “Dreamers”, metics functioned in the society in which they lived, though they were not necessarily citizens. Many metics were well respected and educated, gaining the respect of citizens; others detracted from the positive perception of metics, some being loan sharks or even criminal. Facing a similar situation today in America, we must make a very similar decision regarding the non-citizens living within our borders.

The similarities between Athens’ and the United States of America’s circumstances regarding non-citizens inside the borders is almost exact. Both states held apprehensions about allowing foreigners into their borders without correct qualifications. Both are willing, to different extents, to make exceptions to this rule or even grant citizenship to their aliens. Both have parties in opposition and promotion of granting leniency to the foreigners.

Regarding the electorate debate in class, the debate largely did not persuade or dissuade my views regarding dreamers from their current state. In fact, even though my character was forced to take a hard stance against granting metics citizenship (due to his enormous debt), I personally agreed with the moderate democrats in their policy of granting citizenship on a case-by-case basis. I agree with this policy (in the general sense) to the point where I believe it is the best course of action for our country to take regarding DACA “Dreamers” or any immigrant wishing to become a citizen in this country.

As of late, President Donald Trump is pushing for a border wall to prevent the illicit/criminal activities taking place on and across our southern border. Though he recently circumvented Congress in favor of declaring a national emergency, during previous negotiations he offered a “pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million young immigrants living in the country illegally, in exchange for new restrictions on legal immigration and $25 billion in border security.”¹ Relative to hardliners today, this seems a relatively acceptable compromise, similar to the way in which many, if not most, parties were relatively open to the moderate democrats’ proposition during the electorate debate.

Plato in his Laws proposes:

“Any one who likes may come and be a metic on certain conditions;…he must practise an art, and not abide more than twenty years from the time at which he has registered himself;…when the twenty years have expired, he shall take his property with him and depart.”²

This proposal, while radical today, was not reviled during its time. This policy does not provide a pathway to citizenship for any foreigner, something modern values of human equality cannot tolerate. However, working visa policies today do bear great resemblance with Plato’s recommendation. In relation to DACA “Dreamers”, Plato’s proposal is too extreme; however, working visas are a solution that can perhaps sate some of the desires of both sides.

Athens and The United States of America, as well as other countries around the globe, past and present, have grappled with the controversies regarding foreign aliens and non-citizens, inside and outside their borders. The similarities never end: human nature simply mirrors itself over and over again. The electorate debate in class allowed for arguments taking place today to be replayed in a past era; at the same time, the activity forced everyone into the shoes of someone else, perhaps someone whose notions were disagreeable, and necessitated the argument for a side they did not choose. Even though the platform of this debate lent itself greatly to the possibility of a change of mind regarding today’s issues, my mind was not changed; however, it is now more open.

-Gregory Mathias

Word count: 544

¹Miller, Zeke, et al. “Trump Plan Offers Citizenship Path to 1.8 Million Immigrants.” AP News, Associated Press, 26 Jan. 2018, http://www.apnews.com/e4536bf8932e43ea89203a16d904c561.

²Plato. Laws, Book VIII. 348 BC.

Democracy or Democracy?

American Representative Democracy finds its beginnings and roots in the Athenian experiment of Ancient Greece. However, though the two stem from similar original ideas — such as equality and giving citizens a voice — the dissimilarities are too egregious to reconcile the ideas as alike. Representative and Direct democracies both contain advantages over one another, but when it comes to the most successful form of governance, Representative Democracy is the better of the two.

In the beginnings of America and in the writing of the Constitution, the founders sought to give as many people a relevant voice as possible. Though each individual can have a voice equal to everyone else’s, a voice may as well be inaudible if it is shouted down by a collective number of voices. These collective voices are expressed by James Madison in Federalist No. 10 as “factions”.

Factions in Athens formed as easily and readily as they do today, following human nature, of course. This is what America’s founders would have called “mob rule”, but which the Athenians would have called the best form of “democracy”. In theory, every citizen had equal say in the Athenian assembly. However, any faction — such as the Thrasybulans, the Periclean Democrats, the Solonian Aristocrats, or the Followers of Socrates — threatened to outshout any persons or groups hedged against them, ignoring perhaps the indispensable needs of smaller factions in favor of their possibly short-sighted, ill-natured agenda. In other words: Rule of Athens fell into the hands of whatever “mob” happened to be in control at the time, leaving the administration of one of the world’s most powerful city-states at the whims of the “mob”.

Factions are an inevitability of human nature. Like-minded people will converge into symbiotic relationships, forming ever-expanding groups that threaten all other opinions and ideas. There are two means of countering factions, as James Madison elaborates on in Federalist No. 10: “the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.”¹ The founders recognized factions as inevitable, and since the possibilities for removing them — destroying liberty or giving every citizen the same opinion (e.g., 1984) — are as impractical as they are impossible, it then became the best course of action to control their effects.

In order to control the effects of a “mob rule”, the founders introduced a system of governance that far more successfully gave citizens a voice in the direction of politics than an Athenian Direct Democracy ever could. The bicameral legislature, the Great Compromise, offered a remedy to give states a proportional say as well as an equal say, thus, California cannot so easily enact policy detrimental to Wyoming. The executive branch provides a central figurehead to unify America and chart its course. The judicial branch administers the closest form of fair rulings in criminal and civilian cases the world has seen.

No system of government is perfect. Human nature prevents this. However, when given the opportunity to prefer Direct or Representative Democracy, Representative Democracy — especially its American incarnation — is the best selection available.

¹Madison, James. Federalist no. 10 (1787) 2009.

Tyranny and Today

Few ancient civilizations have impacted the Western World to the extent that Ancient Greece has: from ethics to Hollywood to government, the Ancient Greeks have influenced culture to a degree no other ancient civilization matches. Yet, this is not to say the West today is a mirror image of Greece; on the contrary, many differences have arisen or expanded — from semantics to morals — most evident in the definition of the word “tyrant,” with the apparent change in definition illuminating not only a change in terminology but a change in values.

Today, when “tyrant” is used, negative connotations, as well as denotations, arise. However, the Greek origins of the word do not necessitate these pessimistic implications. Perhaps arising out of overuse, the word “tyrant” refers to oppressive dictators, such as Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, a despot the Washington Free Beacon refers to with the word “tyrant” in their article titled “Venezuela’s Tyrant Gets Six More Years”¹. Surely the Greek definitions of the word cannot have been too distant from our current usage, but the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus proves this notion wrong in his recountings of one of Greece’s first and most famous tyrants: Pisistratus. “…there was an influx of men from the country demes who found the rule of a tyrant more pleasant than freedom.”², Herodotus narrates. Though “tyrant” in today’s, modern context is (over)used correctly, in its original state in Ancient Greece, our usage of the word would be incorrect.

Dictionary.com defines “tyrant” as “a sovereign or other ruler who uses power oppressively or unjustly.” By this definition, the aforementioned article on Venezuela perfectly fits our definition of a tyrant. However, Venezuela’s tyrant is a complete antonym to the Greek perception of the same word. This change in definition likely came about, or rather was reinforced, during the European Enlightenment. James Madison himself stated that “The truth was that all men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” When monarchies with absolute power in their countries became oppressive and untrustworthy, Enlightenment thinkers saw the power itself as the means of corruption, not the powerful. This aversion to potentially benevolent power began to work its way into our society to the point where the Greek word for a benefactor with “tyrannical” power became a reference to some of the evilest people in our history. This utter reversal of word definition completely epitomizes a culmination in the disparity between the past values of the West versus today’s.

—Gregory Mathias

Word Count: 412

¹Kliegman, Aaron. 2019. “Venezuela’s Tyrant Gets Six More Years”. Washington Free Beacon. Accessed January 25 2019. https://freebeacon.com/blog/venezuelas-tyrant-gets-six-more-years/.

²Herodotus. Herodotus : The Histories. London, Eng. ; New York :Penguin Books, 1996.

³“Frank Miller 300 Movie Vs. 300 Spartans History – Battle Of Thermopylae”. 2019. Historyvshollywood.Com. Accessed January 25 2019. http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/300spartans.php.

⁴“Avalon Project – Madison Debates – July 11”. 2019. Avalon.Law.Yale.Edu. Accessed January 28 2019. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_711.asp.