Apparently you are still carrying water for the old hegemony and canāt see why such people are called Neo-Cons. Mike Pompeo? John Bolton? Seriously?
They are not conservatives! They are the old country club for big growth! Tell me what they are conserving?
Sit back in your rocker old man and smoke some more idealisms!
I agree; with a lot of little caveats that Iām sure youād allow. They donāt change
the underlying understanding of what we are up against; many of us see the same Dark Side versus us, the us being variable and a lot of us are worried that we may be closing in fast on the end of the Republic. Sadly, republics donāt last more than 250 years, Rome being unusual, historically. Democracies do even worse. They fail for the same reason. Republics are formed to prevent majorities from forming blocks that vote themselves the minoritiesā stuff. Weāre watching that being thwarted now with Joe ascending in a Party of fools who have populated the ranks of civil service over many decades with greedy, lazy, mean-spirited, jealous, unscrupulous people we would call the Dark Side. The upper ranks of civil service have been filled with people who think like the political appointees who cycled in and out every 4 years which were unfortunately, of a type: the kinds of people who wind up as political appointees running whole agencies are political in nature; they are not professional managers; they do have technical expertise in the area that the agency services, regulates, supervises or manages. They are usually political office holders that lost in the last election or are tired of Congress and need a high paying place to land inbetween election cycles. They bring with them their Congressional staff that is like them; they hire subordinates, who hire subordinates, who hire subordinates who are like themselves. While the political appointees rotate out, and are replaced by more of their ilk, many of the subordinates like their new warm, well-paid civil service lair that is well protected from economic ups & downs, and election cycles which always include periodic losses. Civil service jobs are protected from discharge without very bad behavior. They can be transferred around when they need to be gotten rid of, but thatās not easy for the boss, either.
So, from the top down, the myriad agencies, departments, bureaus, services, etc. are populated by a type, and they arenāt there because they are professionals.
Is it any wonder that the proclamations, regulations, rules, mandates, prohibitions, et al, donāt reflect real life? The need to regulate our BBQs, change our light bulbs, tell us what to eat, or not, just to keep busy. Or make that, to keep busy. Etcetera. They never, ever, do the minimum to keep out of our lives and leave us to our own decisions & devices. Instead, they expand the scope and range of their authority with tacit permission of Congressional watchdogs, all of which increases the size and tax dollar consumptionā¦ and importance of their existence. They are of a type; control freaks, and that requires controlees; thatās us.
Somewhere, I donāt remember where, I ran across an evolutionary chart of nation states that listed the how of(mostly) all cultures come into existence, and exit. I canāt find the official, educated explanation, but this is similar: Territory is conquered; the people within it become subjects of whoever is strongest, and he commands. When territorial ownership is no longer contested, peace ensues; successor governing bodies with strong leaders evolve becoming less restrictive and more populist in nature with less resistance from citizens and no threats from foreigners, a sense of community builds. Longer periods of peace evolve from ease of community life, then thru time for enlightenment; thence eventual laziness & decadence. Decadence leads to crumbling of commonality of community goals, values, and rules, leading to disorder and in-fighting. What follows from there is dissolution and destruction of the society and itsā culture into chaos open to revolution from within or conquest from outside. None of the above steps are regular in time-rates of change. Steps tend to be very irregular in length, marked by the rise of powerful people who influence one way or the other, but steep when they do change, up or down.
Our fat & happy peak period was the 50ās, it had taken us 175 years to arrive. The 60ās began the steep decline into decadence with free love, drugs, disrespect of culture, and the institutionalizing of a cultural split between Right & Left. Right continued to grow wealth of the country while Left slowly seized control of Intelligencia, -the schools and universities, and eventually leach into the formerly neutral territories of big govt and big business. The current citizenry is deeply divided and if that canāt be changed, soon, armed camps will arise, -BLM & Hamas are two example of the beginnings of such, and the other side will need to organize and the scope of clash will build to a breaking point. Iām talking to myself here, but this all sounds imminent.
The East Roman (Byzantine) Empire lasted 1,000 years. Ezra Pound figured out how they made it possible, but saying that will be antisemitic.
Term limits for members of the Congress (Parliament), who are not part of the administration, may be the solution. If the administrationās policies are successful, then their heads could be re-elected but the US Presidents alternate every 4 (or 8) years, whether the policies are successful or not, which means long-term policies become secondary.
Same for US companies and corporations. If a president (CEO) doesnāt bring out substantial profits within a short period, he will be fired. Such a system makes long-term corporate strategies unrealistic.
I think thatās a stretch. " The textbooks say the Byzantine Empire was a theocratic autocracy uniting church and state under an all-powerful emperor believed by the Byzantines to be Godās viceroy and vicar."
There are lotās of countries that use the term Republic in their name today, 159. China, Cuba, North Korea all use the word. I like to think of myself as a King. Russia beats them all having no less than 22 republics in the Russian Republic There are even more countries that actually are republics but donāt call themselves that. I, too, admire the Byzantine Empire, but I think of it differently than a republic.
I havenāt considered myself a viceroy, but I like the sound of it.
Cāmon manā¦ with all the stuff you post, youāre going to worry about that?
There appears to be some bias among the western historians, meaning in English/French/German speaking countries against the āEastā Roman Empire because somehow āeastā is a dirty word this day and age. LOL
The cencept of god-king is ancient. In ancient Egypt and Persia (Iran) for example. Basically itās the Greeks who proved that the armies of ādemocraticā city states could not be beaten by those of the Persian god-king.
There is an interesting concept in China. The concept of Heavenly Mandate. The Heaven chooses a potential ruler (because of his virtues and what not) and he will rise to remove a corrupt government. His dynasty will last as long as it remains virtuous, but when it become corrupt, it will lose the Mandate and rebellions will occur when Heaven chooses a new (potential) ruler.
More interestingly, the Japanese concept of the emperor is akin to that of Persians, and not Chinese. There was a Japanse emperor in the 7th century who believed he was descended from ancient Sumeria. Interesting, interesting.
There are autonomous regions besides republics.
I donāt know the difference, though.
Moscow and Saint Petersburg have a special status, which is no surprise.
There is a very interesting figure in the Old Testament: Cyrus II or Cyrus the Great, the Persian king of the 6th century BC.
Isaiah 45:1
āThis is what the LORD says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him so that gates will not be shutā
Cyrus is also mentioned by Jeremiah and Ezra to be a righteous king who conquered Babylon and permitted the Joos to return to Judea. Isaiah treats him as a messiah, although he was obviously not a Joo.
Who is this LORD? Yahweh?
As Paul Wallis points out, itās not the same god āYahwehā who ordered the Israelites to massacre the Amalek and the Canaanites centuries earlier.
All the historians I have ever known would agree with you; me, too. Actually, maybe I should re-state that:if I knew any historians, they would agree with that. Iām picky about with whom I associate. Anyway, Iāve always found the history of Constantinople interesting. It was the center of everything for awhile, although the Chinese might argue that point, too. Maybe the two whiles didnāt overlap? Hereās a recent picture I have taken of Constantinople while flying over it-
Actually, I didnāt take the picture, Amos Chapple did. Iāve never flown over Constantinople, or Istanbul for that matter. I havenāt been there but I did sell a guy some seeds. Actually, I didnāt sell him the seeds, he paid for them, I sent the seeds and he said he didnāt get them and God only knows where the seeds went. I had to give him his money back. Actually, it wasnāt his money, it was mine, after all I sent the seeds and I donāt really know if he got them or not. There are some people who do such things as get the stuff and then play dumb. Actually, theyāre not playing dumb; I think heās playing me, dumb. Heās got the seeds and Iāve got the shaft.
Iāve never been to Europe either. I have been to Asia, but not closer than 8k. I think thatās Asia on the other side of the Bosporus. This is as close as Iām getting to them bizarres.
