Autocratic Government and Dynasty, a Cozy World

Autocratic Government is a Cozy World

If in the future it should be Our pleasure to promulgate any law…it shall be transmitted with the sacred imperial letters, it shall be received in the bureaus of the other part of the Empire also, and it shall be published with the due formality of edicts. For a law that has been sent must be accepted and must undoubtedly be valid, and the power to emend and revoke shall be reserved to Our Clemency. Theodosian Code I, 1, 5. AD 429

By no one is it held to be doubtful that the writings of Our Imperial Divinity can be adduced also by heirs and in behalf of heirs, and that anything impetrated cannot be barred by lapse of time or annulled by any chance. Theodosian Code I, 2, 12 AD 413

Technically, the Roman Empire became an autocratic government when the Republican forms were completely dispensed with by Diocletian, but objectively the Empire was an absolutist monarchy from the time of Augustus. From Diocletian onward, the Empire was formally a monarchy, but even then the Emperor was chosen by "election" either by the army, or by the Senate. However, as far back as Augustus, the Emperor had exercised the right to designate his successor or successors, and Theodosius the Great carried that to its logical conclusion: he conferred the Imperial titles of Augustus on both his sons, Arcadius and Honorius, indicating that they should become co-equal rulers of the East and the West, respectively, upon his death. Honorius designated Constantius as Augustus when he married the Emperor's sister, Galla Placidia, who he also named as Augusta, but Constantius didn't live long. Given Roman custom, Placidia Augusta could not rule, but she served as regent and actual ruler during her son, Valentinian's, minority.

Theodosius the Great also established another institution, which was probably a major contribution to the eventual downfall of the western Empire: he appointed Stilicho, a general of Vandal and Suevian extraction, as Patrician and "father" of Honorius. For Honorius' first years as Emperor (he was ten years old when he ascended the throne), Stilicho was regent, the actual ruler in the west, and in fact he attempted to take power in the east, as well, but the 17-year old Emperor Arcadius resented his power, and the people who actually wielded power in his name (first Rufinus, assassinated with Stilicho's connivance, then Eutropius, a eunuch) managed to prevent Stilicho from controlling the east. However, the institution of the all-powerful general, Master of Both Services, and Patrician, persisted in the west. After Honorius turned on Stilicho (he was beheaded), there were a succession of incompetents (such as Olympius and Jovius) before Aetius took the position during Placidia's regency, a position he maintained until he was murdered in the throne room by Valentinian. After a further succession of incompetents, Ricimer took the position, and literally became the king-maker, who made and un-made Emperors at his choosing, and sometimes ruled without an emperor at all. Since election involved either the army or the senate, Ricimer could manage the election by the army quite easily. As Majorian stated on taking office:

Know O Conscript Fathers [the Senate], that I have been made Emperor by the decision of your election and by the ordination of Our very gallant army." Decreed Jan. 11, 458.

The "gallant army" referred to Ricimer, who had, in fact, named him Emperor. In 461 Ricimer arranged to have Emperor Majorian killed when it looked as if he was too competent and might endanger Ricimer's monopoly of power.

The point of going into this history is to show that an

autocratic government is not a stable system, but it is a system, and it can be "constitutional," as it certainly was in fifth century Rome. Constitutionality can cover a lot of sins, because it can be re-interpreted to justify the kind of autocratic regime that was extant in the fifth century. Think of John Yee's current interpretation of the "unitary" executive, which cannot be challenged by legislature or judiciary, especially in wartime.

By an objective interpretation, i.e. not a constitutional or legal one, the fifth century Roman Empire was ruled over by a military/bureaucratic dictatorship, a constitutional autocracy. Only the military and the bureaucracy had any power, except that the bureaucracy was manipulated by, or strongly influenced by the Senatorial class, and the army was a hybrid institution, one part Roman, two parts German, but its leaders aspired to be like Senators, or at least to live like them. The two different classes got on rather well, sharing power between them, much like the corporate, political and military leaders of today.

Further, from 378 until Valentinian was assassinated in 455, the Empire was ruled over by the Theodosian dynasty (until 457 in the East). After Theodosius the Great, none of the succeeding members of the dynasty were even competent. While Honorius was controlled by Stilicho and then by a succession of generals and by eunuchs behind the throne, Arcadius (Honorius' older brother) in the east was manipulated by Rufinus, the Praetorian Prefect, then by Eutropius, a grossly corrupt eunuch and court chamberlain, and then by his much more competent wife, Empress Eudoxia.

But, in view of what happened upon the death of Valentinian III, when there were no successors to the Theodosian line in the west, it is clear that the dynasty did provide something: stability. The dizzy succession of Emperors in the west after Valentinian III, and the succession of calamities, climaxing in the fall of Rome in 476, demonstrates that, if nothing else, the dynastic succession had kept a certain continuity in both halves of the Empire. When the line was lost in the west, the Empire was soon past retrieving. By contrast, in the east, when the last Theodosian Emperor, Marcian died (he was connected to the line by marriage to Pulcheria, daughter of Arcadius and Eudoxia), there was quickly established a new dynasty, the line of Leo--and the east survived.

Nevertheless, dynasty and autocratic government do not good government make.

Incompetence ruled. When Honorius was Emperor, the chicken coop was the capital of the Empire; when Valentinian III became Emperor, the capital was his bedroom. When the Senate negotiated an agreement with Alaric in 409 that would have forestalled the Goths from occupying Rome and sacking it (Alaric's armies surrounded the city), Honorius' Patrician, Olympius, (the head of the Imperial field armies after Stilicho was eliminated) failed to fulfill the Emperor's part in the treaty (the Senate had already paid Alaric 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, as well as silk tunics, dyed leather, and pepper). Both Honorius and his Patrician were based not in Rome, but in Ravenna. Olympius was against negotiations with the Goths partly because he was still involved in hunting down Stilicho's followers, but even after he was overthrown, his successor, Jovius, through a series of mishaps (including a response Alaric took as an insult), drove the Goth to sack Rome, and to carry off the Emperor's sister, Galla Placidia, as well as many other nobles.

In other words, the first sack of Rome, in 410, was caused by almost unbelievable arrogance and incompetence by the government. Alaric had even moderated his demands to land grants in two provinces and guarantees of grain, but through the ineptitude of the Imperial government, he ended up pillaging and burning the Eternal City, instead. He did not succeed, ultimately, in conquering Africa and therefore controlling Italy, but that was only due to his bad luck; his fleet was destroyed in a storm before he could set sail, and he died of a fever soon after.

The second sack of Rome, in 455, was due to the stupidity of Honorius' successor, Valentinian III. He had signed a treaty with the Vandals (who had conquered North Africa in 439), and they considered themselves honor-bound not to attack as long as he was alive, but plotters capitalized on his resentment of the competent general, Aetius, and incited Valentinian to murder the General in the throne room. When he wielded that sword, he destroyed his own power; he was killed not two years later by Aetius' followers, through the machinations of an ambitious Senator and outraged husband(who became Emperor Petronius Maximus for a few short months, afterwards). It was then that the Vandal King, Geiseric, knew it was time to attack--the only competent general had been murdered, and the throne had passed into the hands of a non-entity, outside the established dynasty. The Vandals earned the word "vandalism" in that sack, which was much more devastating than the sack carried out by Alaric.

Yes, autocratic government could also be spelled i-n-c-o-m-p-e-t-e-n-c-e.

And yet, even after 455, Senators deceived themselves into thinking that nothing had changed: Senator Sidonius could write of Rome that it was "head of the world."

Even when a competent leader led, the nature of bureaucracy in the autocratic government was such that it did not follow: the bureaus and departments, which had grown fat and corrupt under incompetents like Honorius, were not about to obey Emperor Majorian (458-461), who attempted to rule in the interests of the Empire as a whole. When he decreed forgiveness of taxes, for example, the treasury collected less, but apparently the landowners and officials continued to collect the taxes for themselves.

The later years of the Roman Empire in the West illustrate why selfish classes prefer an autocratic government. The autocrat is a tiny head on a bloated body even if he has good intentions. Put an administrative machine in place that is answerable to no one but the autocrat, and soon it becomes answerable to no one at all. But it is responsive to its own, that is, the people who fill its top offices, and their social equals and family connections. The bureaucracy didn't cease functioning; it just continued working for its own interests, and those of its relatives and friends.

A direct spiritual descendant of the Roman Senatorial class is the Mafia, or Cosa Nostra. The people who presided over the dissolution of the western Roman Empire were corrupted because they had absolute power; there were no limits on government at the time except poor technology (including organizational technology) and halting communications.

So, now we have a President who is claiming almost unlimited powers on the basis of his Constitutional powers as Commander-in-chief. And note: he is not so technologically limited as was Honorius, or Valentinian. And just as those two emperors demonstrated the failure of the autocratic government that results, so George W. Bush has demonstrated that autocratic rule in the form of centralization, secrecy and single party control has consequences like the disastrous war in Iraq and the series of miss-steps and sheer ineptitude displayed when dealing with Hurricane Katrina.

What is it about autocracy that breeds such incompetence?

Emperors Diocletian and Constantine created a mind-numbingly complex administrative system at the pinnacle of which was the Emperor. To complicate matters even further, Constantine and then Theodosius split the Empire into two parts: eastern and western, centered on Rome and Constantinople, respectively. Compared to modern bureaucracies, the Imperial service was not large, less than 50,000 strong, but compared to the technology of controls and communication extant at the time, it was huge. It took weeks to send messages from Rome to Constantinople, for example, and yet, as the passage at the beginning of the chapter explained, any decree "shall be received in the bureaus of the other part of the Empire also."

Absent political control, what does a bureaucracy do? Since power in a bureaucracy depends upon position, and the number of people beneath you, and since power also translates into money, much time and effort will inevitably be spent by bureaucrats on enhancing their own positions and aggrandizing power over others. The Imperial service was acutely concerned with rank, with title, with "cinctures of office," and the medallions to be worn on their paenulae indicating their lofty positions. To give but one example: the Praetorian Prefect, (who oversaw Vicarii, who oversaw governors--of Gaul, or of Spain, for example) wore a purple robe as indicator of his rank; it was like the Emperor's, except that it only came to the knee (the Emperor's came to the ankle). Other signs of his elevated office were a large silver inkstand, a pen-case of gold that weighed a hundred pounds, and a lofty chariot. On his entry, all military officers were required to bend the knee.

Almost all officials wore a variation of military dress, even though they were civil officials; military dress allowed them to display their ranks. Besides the hierarchies under the Praetorian Prefects, vicarii, and governors, there were bureaucratic establishments in each capital that over time became more and more elaborate--and expensive.

The Master of Offices (magister officiorum) presided over the civil service, and especially over all the secretarial departments in the palace. There were three important bureaus under him in the secretariat, or scrinia: the memoriae drafted documents and imperial decisions, the epistolarum dealt with foreign deputations and correspondence, and with communications to the provinces, and the libellorum dealt with petitions, legal questions (which had to be vetted by the Quastor, another officer) and with cases of appeal. The Master of Offices also was in charge of Imperial ceremonies, a very important function in the late Empire, managed by another department, the Officium admissionum. Even more important, the Master of Offices controlled the State Post (cursus publicus) and the agentes in rebus, who were the secret service of the Empire, and served as Imperial messengers, as well as spying on virtually everyone, including governors sent out to the provinces. There were over 1200 agentes in the east alone.

In addition, there were magistri scriniorum, who conducted secretarial business, like recording the Emperor's decrees, and then copying and distributing them; they were in direct contact with the Emperor. Since they were not under the Master of Offices, they therefore could become independent centers of power.

A study of one of these departments in the east, about 50 years after the downfall of the Empire in the west, revealed a highly stratified, rigid, corrupt body of civil servants with impressive-sounding titles; most were concerned with their own income, which depended upon a graded series of payments set by them that were required of departmental clients, i.e. civilian petitioners. What was most important to the officials in the departments was the maintenance of a large enough clientele that their income would be sustained or increased. The main source for the study, a John Lydus, revealed that disaster, for him, had occurred when a rival gained power over a competing branch of the service, and had rewritten the rules so that he and his department colleagues lost most of their business, i.e. most of their clientele, the people who paid the high fees.

This is what government looks like when it is controlled by a single party. It is what it could become in the US. We have had a preview with the New Orleans disaster, with the chaotic mess of the Department of Homeland Security.

Why could it look this way? Consider: have hearings on the failures of the administration over Katrina led to any major changes? "Heckuva a job" Brown was let go, and blamed for the debacle, but no one else was. Homeland Security looks an awful lot like the series of departments under the Master of Offices, sprawling and out of control.

Has the legislature asserted its control over the NSA wiretaps? The Senate committee responsible for such oversight was dubbed "the Senate Coverup Committee," because it seemed willing to swallow the administration's strained legal justifications, and was also willing to entertain the idea of providing legal cover for it. Why? Because what we have been seeing, since at least 2002, has been single-party government. Given the Democrats' tepid attempts at asking questions, it is at least a real question whether a Congress controlled by the putative "opposition" party would be much different. There are some Democrats with backbone, but there are not many. The extension of the Patriot Act, which allows all sorts of things with which the agentes in rebus would be quite familiar, like searches of library borrowing and gag orders against reporting the search to the people in question, generated only two opponents, after only cosmetic changes were made to the act. Democratic Senator Feingold tried to start a filibuster against it; he was supported by Senator Jeffords, a Republican turned independent. Not only all the Republicans, but every other Democrat voted to close off debate or abstained; the vote for the act itself was already determined: passed with solid Republican support and enough Democrats to permit the question to be asked: even if the Democrats control Congress, will they keep the Executive honest? With Republicans the march towards autocratic government is assured, but with Democrats it is only a little less likely. Only if the executive is Republican are Democrats likely at all to play the role of watchdog, even if they control the legislature, and then their fulfillment of the role may be only half-hearted. After all, they would want a Democratic president to have as much power as the Republican, wouldn't they? At least some aspiring presidential candidates seem to think so. It was speculated that the reason Hillary Clinton voted for the authorization of force resolution which enabled the invasion of Iraq, was because, according to Cokie Roberts, she would never vote for limiting a President's powers. If a Democrat were elected President, there is a real question whether the Democrats in Congress would then revert to being lapdogs.

What does autocratic government mean? First of all, rule by a single-party is part of the definition of autocracy, but you can also tell it by its fruits. Autocratic government is incompetent, and likely to be corrupt. It is certainly one of the reasons why the Roman Empire fell, and why the USSR self-destructed, as well. It does not mean a totalitarian system. Dissent was allowed up to a point in the Roman Empire: Senator Symmachus gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor for the restoration of the statue of the Goddess Victory to the Senate. Reportedly, even the Bishop Ambrose was impressed by his rhetoric, but the minute he was finished, Symmachus was whisked away at the Emperor's orders and dropped at the hundredth milestone from the capital, a pointed gesture: only a nominal exile.

As for the United States? An audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found millions of dollars stuffed into footlockers and filing cabinets, uncovered an American soldier who gambled away between $20,000 and $60,000 of the government's money while on leave in the Philippines, and found that three Iraqis plunged to their deaths when the elevator, supplied by a corrupt contractor, failed in a hospital. Those were only some colorful examples. In fact, despite supposedly spending almost $30.9 billion of US funds, and at least $39.8 billion of Iraqi funds , the Iraq reconstruction project has been an unmitigated disaster. Years after the war, Baghdad still has less electric power than it had before it, still is plagued by foul and inadequate water, and Baghdad still experiences gas lines miles long, because of the gasoline shortage in this oil-producing country: the American reconstruction project has been unable to achieve any of its goals--even to rebuilding the oil industry. As the examples above indicate, the insurgency is only one of the reasons, perhaps not the most important one.

However, an indicator that our government is in the process of becoming an autocratic government is the lack of outrage, the lack even of much media attention, when reports like the Special IG's come out. Despite such outrages, the Administration asks for more money to continue prosecuting the war (another $65 billion in February 2006), and the likelihood is that aside from a few Senators like Feingold and a few Congressmen like Conyers, no one will seriously attempt to block the administration's request. You can't vote against the troops, after all.

It is that passive acceptance of even the most incompetent of governments that will make the further construction of the autocratic government possible. After all, it wasn't just reconstruction in Iraq that has been shown to be incompetent. In fact, the same contractors found to have misused funds and over-stated costs in Iraq were the major contractors signed (in no-bid contracts) to carry out the clean-up in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. And reconstruction there has been slow, has incited many complaints, and has been highly politicized. In New Orleans, only "the sliver by the river," the parts of the city that were not flooded, had been resettled more than three months after the hurricane.

In other ways, the coming autocratic government might even be efficient. After all, when you have a single-party government, you know who your friends are, and who your enemies are. Congress granted Mississippi about five times as much housing aid per household as Louisiana, because Mississippi's Republican governor, Haley Barbour, was an ally of the Bush administration.

And then there is secrecy and torture. It has been stated over and over again that the Bush administration is the most secretive in US history. It is certainly true that the declassification ordered by President Clinton for many secret documents was reversed even before Bush took office, but the process has accelerated since. It is instructive to see how this took place. First of all, it was the intelligence agencies, and then some other agencies that objected to the 1995 declassification order, and by 1999, began to re-classify documents that had been in the public domain for years in the National Security Archives. The process was facilitated by the Bush administration, apparently, especially after 9/11. The CIA, the DIA and other agencies have a "secure room" in the archives where this process is taking place. Some documents undoubtedly were still sensitive, according to historians who had seen them, but other examples clearly demonstrate what is really happening. A re-classified document from the CIA from Sept. 12, 1950 was an assessment that intervention by the Chinese Communists in the Korean War was "improbable." On Oct. 27, 1950, i.e. just five weeks later, 300,000 Chinese Communist troops advanced into Korea. In other words, what the CIA was doing was attempting to cover up a major mistake it made 55 years ago. It is likely that at least some of the re-classification and of the current classification of almost everything done by government agencies is motivated by the same intent: bureaucratic self-protection. Secrecy puts government agencies beyond oversight--by Congress, the media and even the courts, since if what it does is secret no one will even know it is doing it.

In other words, while some secrecy may be understandable if you are carrying out a covert war--and we are--secrecy can become job preservation, and a cover for corruption and incompetence.

And just so you know, secrecy can go beyond simply torture and re-classification. Not only has Donald Rumsfeld stated that the administration needs to challenge news that undercuts the government's anti-terror efforts, presumably by its propaganda efforts, many of them covert, but something even more chilling is going on: on Jan. 26, 2006, Kellogg, Brown and Root, subsidiary of Halliburton, was awarded a $385 million contract to

"…build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space." [Italics added]

You wonder what these "new programs" might be, which would require detention camps each capable of holding up to 5,000 detainees, but government spokesmen wouldn't say. In connection with considering what to do in preparation for an epidemic of the bird flu, President Bush speculated that the Posse Comitatus Act (which prevents the military from carrying out civilian police duties) might be out-dated, and that a program of wholesale martial law and preventive quarantines could be called for. Daniel Ellsberg, of Vietnam whistleblower fame, speculated that the centers could be in preparation for a reprise of 9/11, in which Muslim immigrants and dissenters might be rounded up and put away, indefinitely. This was already done on a relatively small scale after 9/11 with "special registration" detentions of Muslim immigrants, and of course there is also Guantànamo.

Most immigrants don't vote, and "dissenters" wouldn't get the support of the electorate, either. Further, Karl Rove has said, and other Republicans have reiterated: governing only requires a majority of 50% plus one. The 50% minus one might just want to keep its collective head down if there are detention camps waiting for them somewhere (unspecified) out in the country.

Which brings us to elections and "elections" and civil wars: think of civil wars (Roman-style) and elections (American-style) as comparable, when you compare the United States today with the Roman Empire in the fifth century, or the fourth. The last full-blown civil war over succession in the Empire was between Theodosius the Great and Eugenius (393). Both had been "elected," by the army, but by different parts. Was it more costly than a US election? Our last election cost about $4 billion, in which candidates for federal office spent about $1.8 billion; the cost of ballots and election inspectors etc. would probably add another billion. Wars kill people, of course, but war during Roman times was not so deadly as it is now. Yes, some combatants were killed in the Roman wars of succession, and non-combatants sometimes, as well, when an army rampaged through a city which resisted them, or appeared hostile. Mostly, civilian casualties involved rape, looting, enslavement, small things like that.

Once the war was done, succession assured, the hostile cities might suffer awhile, have to pay higher taxes, or a special tribute, but that didn't last for long. Emperors wanted to appear forgiving, and above pettiness, after all.

After Theodosius-Eugenius, there were no more major civil wars, but there were many changes of government after Theodosius' grandson, Valentinian was assassinated (455), and almost all of those were "election" by the army. We would call them a coup d'etats, but then what would you call 2000? Coup de court? Would 2004 be coup de mecanique d'election?

In the cases of the elections by the army after 455, most involved few costs, except to the principals, those losing power, and their closest supporters. To them, of course, the costs were pretty severe; they were executed, or killed themselves, or, at very least were exiled. But consider the costs of our coup de court and the coup de mecanique: places that did not support the president elected, and classes of people who did not support him, were punished by the withdrawal of funds and presidential interest...well, perhaps not punished, so much as neglected, forgotten, discounted, the not-there, the invisible. The especial damage to New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina was because of these two factors coming together--the people who didn't support him, i.e. people who would need government help to get out of New Orleans, in other words the poor and black, and New Orleans itself, heavily Democratic, having its levee rebuilding funds cut by more than half (of course the government needed that money for the war, all $25 million of it--about 12 millionths of the cost of the war), so that the levees could not be rebuilt--and we know the result: looting and pillaging a city would do far less damage. Now, two-thirds of the black poor will probably never go back.

Of course I should point out here that actual, conscious malice was probably not at work; it was simply that losers were not connected, and winners were. Money was simply subtracted from one column and added to the other, a rather cold-blooded process.

Class and regional factors also seem to be at work with cuts to programs like heating oil aid, which benefited poorer people (more of them Democrats), and the Northeast, which went overwhelmingly against George in both "elections." But, of course Bush didn't consciously plan revenge; he just didn't know anyone who might suffer from these cuts, and couldn't imagine their effect; he's not very imaginative. Perhaps only a few people will die from exposure, maybe a few old people will get sick enough to die from starvation, or inadequate medicines, so perhaps that's not really comparable to looting a city--but its effects are more widespread.

Actually, if you look at George Bush's budgets, you can see almost at a glance, who was on the winning side of the "election" and who was on the losing side: the rich won; large corporations won; the defense-industry-security complex won--and they came home with the spoil: a larger and larger defense budget, tax cuts, special contracts, a lucrative war. And the losers were the poor, of course, and the Northeast, and large cities everywhere except in most of the South, and the education biz. They lost because, when you load down the winners with goodies, you've got to take goodies away from someone, even if subtly, with a thousand small cuts. Really, it is a whole new perspective on how the selfish class governs. A small Alaskan town gets a bridge that will cost $223 million, while New Orleans doesn't get levees rebuilt, which would have cost $26.1 million.

The administration doesn't mean to hurt anyone, of course. Conservatives are convinced that everyone will be better off if they provide boosts to investors, and if we go to war to maintain control of ("our") foreign oil--Americans need to maintain their "lifestyle." Also, I'm sure that the elite is entirely persuaded that they have to protect all of us from the terrorists, who may have killed nearly 3,000 Americans in one strike, and a few hundred more in other parts of the world. Some people might ask: how many have we killed, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in other places, like Indonesia since then? But the "winning perspective" is that the threat is so great that we must re-make the world, spend over half a trillion dollars a year to insure that we will never be attacked again, and that the rest of the world will happily submit to an American enforced peace and democracy.

Who actually gains from this ordering of priorities, and who loses? As I pointed out above, the military-security-industrial complex is a big winner, the regions where these industries are primarily located are big winners, but people who do not own defense industries, or who do not work in them, tend to be losers, as the disaster in New Orleans amply showed: money allocated to rebuild the levees was diverted to the defense effort. Another part of that winning perspective is that investors must be aided, and that everything else will follow from that: economic growth, jobs, prosperity will all trickle down if investors are cosseted, or at least so goes the rationale. On the other hand, you could simply look at it as: the people who won gained the spoils like tax cuts in dividends and capital gains and defense contracts; the people who lost saw their benefits wither, their eligibilities restricted, their interests ignored.

If you total up the costs, they might be greater than a Roman civil war. Because of who won and who lost (in the "elections" remember), we are engaged in a costly war, but we can't extricate ourselves because--the winners would lose. We are spending better than half a trillion dollars a year on military-security-defense, but think of all the things our nation could do with half a trillion dollars! Our method of election is much, much more costly than the occasional civil wars the Romans had, at least in the fourth and fifth centuries.

But then the losers in the fourth and fifth centuries were the poor, as well, and you might be able to make the case that they were greater losers than the contemporary poor; they were driven into serfdom or slavery, after all, and many must have starved, or died prematurely, or were unable to raise children to adulthood, which was probably why population was declining. That was one reason why the barbarians kept on moving into more and more parts of the Empire: the land was emptying. And the barbarians were also on the winning side, since they, like the owners of Raytheon or Lockheed, were in the defense complex, part of the "election" process, after all.

The other winners were the class of people who manned the lucrative government bureaus, and all their relatives and friends and social equals.

But the result of this autocratic distribution of benefits does not inspire confidence. The fact that the Empire in the west fell in 476 is less significant than that it had been in decline for more than a century because of the warped distribution of benefits allocated by the Empire. Peasants, who might have been much more productive as owners of their own farms, workers in the cities who might have been used to rebuild and improve the Empire's infrastructure, gangs of urban men, and bandits in rural areas who might have been recruited for the army, thereby slowing its "barbarization," all were not only ignored, they were consciously discriminated against, brutalized, and subdued. The attitude towards urban plebeians, rural serfs and slaves was to assume that they must be controlled and coerced: workers in factories were branded, serfs were beaten and hauled back to the land in chains if they tried to escape, and runaway slaves were sent to the mines, a sure sentence of death. No wonder there was wholesale flight from the cities, and from the countryside. The presbyter, Salvianus, points out that serfs were fully justified in deserting to the barbarian kingdoms: they were somewhat more decently treated by them.

Autocratic government, sooner rather than later, depends upon coercion for control. That is why President Bush insists that his powers as Commander in Chief in an un-ending war includes warrantless wiretapping, torture (if by other names), rendition to other countries where torture is less constrained, arbitrary appointment powers, and the power to imprison virtually anyone he claims is an "illegal enemy combatant." It is why he and his people insist that only cosmetic changes can be made to the Patriot Act, which gives him even more police powers, and even in times when there is no war.

Torture has been justified by Vice President Cheney and others by the clock scenario (it is also used in a Fox TV thriller program): if an accused terrorist is captured, and may have crucial information on an A-bomb set to go off in 12 hours in, say, New York City, then interrogators ought not to be constrained by arbitrary limits on the means to squeeze the information out of him needed to defuse the bomb. Disregarding the unlikelihood of such a scenario, and the immorality it advocates, critics have pointed out that torture is not an effective means to gain accurate information. Torture might force a man to talk, but the reliability of what he can be forced to say is highly suspect. If I were being tortured, and if I were a dedicated true believer of my cause, I would talk, but I would give as much wrong information as I could get away with. Intelligence agents largely agree: information gained under duress is highly suspect. Furthermore, if the government ever wants to put the man on trial, torture will make him immune from prosecution; any evidence even slightly tainted by torture will be thrown out of court as inadmissible.

So, why does the administration, and many of its apologists, claim that the option to torture (or at least to use cruel and inhuman treatment) must be retained by the government? The reason really is not in order to gain information; it is to terrorize, not only our putative opponents, but also everyone else: dissidents abroad, and even citizens at home. This is especially true when you realize that someone like Jose Padilla, a citizen, picked up at the Chicago airport, was not only spirited away and held for years, he was also systematically maltreated. That could happen to anyone! The crime with which he was initially charged, plotting to detonate a "dirty" bomb in a US city, has been dropped, as has a second accusation that he planned to bomb apartment houses in the Southwest. He was finally formally indicted for conspiracy involving a terrorist cell in South Florida. The more serious charges were dropped because they were based on testimony elicited during torture, and their authors (not Padilla) retracted them afterwards. Clearly, however, the administration wishes to avoid a court battle; it claims an unlimited right to detain anyone, because this is "wartime." The effect, however, is to increase the level of coercion acceptable throughout society, which enhances the autocratic powers of the government.

You have to wonder why the government insists on such absolute powers, especially since it claims to promote democracy: the powers are absolute because there is no judicial review. The government is claiming that it can hold people indefinitely and without any charges, therefore without any court oversight. Is this really necessary to "fight terror?" There is no need to impute diabolical designs on democracy on the part of the Bush administration. This is a case in which the executive does what it always tries to do: expand its powers; it merely takes advantage of the opportunities offered. In this case, however, events like the establishment of Islamist terror networks, the world-wide competition for energy, the conservative movement, the near triumph of global corporations, personalities--Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, and corporate control of the mass media--have combined to make the assault on democracy much more dangerous than it has ever been before.

The powers of coercion go far beyond those recently and formally claimed, or acquired powers. "Opposition party" leaders feel constrained in declaring their opposition to the war in Iraq, to the aggrandizement of extraordinary powers, to criticizing government incompetence, because they know that the media machine, prompted by the administration, will clobber them with ill-founded accusations, will distort what they say, and will make them sound "disloyal" or "weak," or "cowardly." Fox News and conservative talk radio have led the news cycle many times, putting out stories, like the accusations against Congressman Murtha (much like the "Swift-boat Veterans who savaged presidential candidate Kerry) that he, a long-time and much decorated Marine veteran, was not only advocating "surrender" when he stated that the US should get out of Iraq, but that some of his ribbons were probably un-merited.

Karl Rove even stated, again, that the issue on which Republicans would win Congressional elections in 2006 and Presidential elections in 2008 would be the cowardice of Democrats when faced with our security threats; that Democrats were either traitors or yellow, or stupid: still stuck in a "pre-9/11" mindset.

It is true that these kinds of tactics have been used before to win elections. For a generation after the US Civil War, Republicans "waved the bloody shirt," equating Democrats with "sedition" and secession. And it is true that eventually the tactic didn't work: no autocratic government was created then, although we may have come close if Teddy Roosevelt had not become President by accident. But these tactics were not supported in the 1870's by a media structure comparable to ours today. Then there was no such thing as a national network, nor was there TV, a medium that is more easily used for propaganda even than radio; there were only local and regional papers. Now we have a national media that appears ready to reinforce the Administration's message because its economic interests, those of the selfish class, are so clearly represented by Republicans. Further, TV is more easily used for propaganda, and, as has been acknowledged for years, is more easily manipulated by those in power. So, to those who argue that this is nothing new, that other presidents have claimed extraordinary powers in wartime, and at other times political parties have scapegoated and smeared their opponents in order to win elections, I would have to answer: these are different times. What has come together now is a constellation of circumstance and technology and concentration of power that makes the creation of an autocratic government like the one that ruled over the fourth and fifth century Roman Empire not only a real possibility, but a likelihood: unless the opposition realizes the dimensions of the power it faces, and counters it on all fronts.

Up until now I have only implied the creation of a modern dynasty in passing. It is true that Kevin Philips wrote American Dynasty, about the Bushes, and it is certainly true that George W. Bush would not have gotten where he is today if it had not been for his name, that it was only one initial different from his father, the former president. It is also probably true that George W. won the 2000 election (or came close enough that the court could award it to him) in part because there was a sentiment that it was "their turn." The 2004 election win (or almost win, aided by manipulations of polls and voting machines) was more due to his incumbency, his use of the "war on terror," than to his name. But we should ruminate on this: dynasty substitutes birth for merit. For a society that at least pretends that it is run by merit, that harks back to our revolutionary heritage in which we threw off the rule of George III, the idea of a ruling political dynasty should be anathema.

What is curious is that Americans do tend to think in dynastic terms. There is a natural assumption that Jeb Bush could run to replace his brother, or perhaps run someday down the line, and there is also a widespread assumption that Hillary Clinton will run to regain the position held by her husband. That makes her "frontrunner" in the polls, even though the election won't be for many years yet. It is also possible that George W. made use of this dynastic mode of thinking; it is even possible that Hillary might do so, although, so far she has discouraged such speculation. Supposedly, Jeb Bush has indicated that he will not run, for family reasons.

What is significant however is not the appearance of a dynasty, but the tendency to think in those terms: Americans want the kind of stability that the Theodosian dynasty provided, at least in appearance. Since Americans have only been thinking this way about presidents since the 1960's, with the emergence of the two assassinated Kennedys, you begin to wonder if there isn't something about the era that encourages the dynastic idea. Perhaps it is because these families (Bushes, Clintons, Kennedys) have the wherewithal to mount national campaigns, but it is largely, I think, because name recognition (and the associations that go with it) is such a powerful advantage in any electoral campaign. In any case, if the parallel with the fifth century is kept in mind, dynasty is a bad idea; it was a bad idea then, since it placed incompetents in power for a long time (62 years), and it is a bad idea now. After all, it is the replacement of meritocratic criteria with that of birth, in a society that used to honor the self-made man.

Is the second Bush even as competent as the first? Would Hillary really preside over a renewal of the Clinton years? In both cases the answer would have to be: a resounding no. In the case of Bush, especially, the dynastic idea favors someone who naturally identifies with the selfish class, those who are privileged, and want to protect their advantages. His background is identical to theirs, despite his attempt (and that of his father) to project the image that he's "one of us," a common man, and a self-made one, to boot.

My gut response is that a Clinton, or Bush, or Kennedy should have to overcome the handicap of bearing a famous name, should have to prove that they really were leaders of superior quality who would be selected to run for President even if they did not bear those famous names. Right. Almost anyone reading this will say, but "that's not how people think!" Exactly. Even in my local town, the new Town Justice bears the name, by marriage, of her predecessor, because people voted for a Seelbach to replace the retiring Seelbach. It is unfortunate that the dynastic idea is so long-lived; its revival now probably has much to do with our march towards autocratic government, and to rule by the selfish class, but also to the perceived instability that so many feel. In other words, it didn't cause either one or the other, but it revives when they occur, and is symptomatic of a desire for predictability.

Furthermore, dynasty provides a model for achievement that is more compatible with a society in which most people who are rich have become so because of the advantages, or even the wealth they inherited by the luck of birth. If you have rule by a class of inherited wealth, it makes perfect sense to select your leaders through inheritance as well. And the ruler should have autocratic powers, to insure that the wealthy can protect their wealth.

But it won't serve us well.

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