America's Future: Republic Or Empire?

[Joeve]

This is a transcript of Joe Vecchio's daily "Cup O' Joe Report" podcast, availaible via "screaming audio" here and posted with the permission of the author.

Last September, in an article I wrote comparing America to ancient Rome, I wrote that In giving up their power as citizens, the Romans asked only that the Emperors leave them alone; that the civil service would keep the roads in repair, that there was food enough to eat, plenty of entertainment, and that they could be free to live their lives in peace as long as they posed no threat to the elite class.

But of course if history has taught us anything, it's taught us that no matter how much money or power people have, they always want more. The Bush administration, the Republican leadership and their financial backers are a greater threat to the US than terrorists like Osama bin Laden because they're operating within the system in order to loot it. But the people who have forsworn politics are their enablers. They either don't know or don't care about what's going on, they just want to live their own lives and not have to worry about what's going on in Washington or elsewhere. And I doubt that any of us can convince them that they could make a difference if they wanted to.

What happened to Rome didn't happen overnight. Rome was a Republic many years before it became an Empire, and if America is going to fall as the Roman Empire did, it won't be any time soon. But if it does, it will only partly be because of the power of the corporatists who control the Republicans. It will happen because we allowed it to happen. As I've said before, we can be citizens, or we can be subjects. The choice is still ours.

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