Divide and Conquer

How does an organization go about enslaving a nation?  As the witch in The Wizard of Oz said, “These things must be done delicately…”   You start out by gradually unionizing the manufacturing industry out of business, until one day, businesses can no longer afford the extravagant health benefits and pensions.  Once upon a time, all that businesses were called upon to do was provide for hospitalization and accidental work injury.  If you got the sniffles, you were on your own.

Meanwhile, you must go about dividing up the family unit.  Not only do you want to outlaw inheritances by imposing estate and death taxes, but you want to reduce the number of potential future workers.  Fewer workers will command higher wages, and eventually drive corporations to poorer, more populous nations willing to work for much less than the average American worker.  Onerous taxes and regulations will push companies to that brink where they at last seek out foreign shores, leave the field wide open for Progressives to finish the job of taking over the country with economic and social Communism, in all its many flavors:  socialist, Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist.

On his radio show yesterday, Glenn Beck played audio from an interview Jesse Jackson, Jr. gave a reporter for The Daily Caller.  Jackson said that Obama should not only circumvent Congress to get accomplish his agenda, but use tax dollars to employ every in the country who needs a job.
In the video Jackson said:
“I believe quite frankly in the direct hiring of 15 million unemployed Americans. At $40,000 a head, some more than $40,000, some less than 40,000, that’s a $600 billion stimulus. It could be a five‑year program. For another $104 billion, we bail out all of the states. The problem within the states ends tomorrow for 104 billion. For another 100 billion, we bail out all of the cities. For about $804 billion, we put 15 million Americans to work, we bail out the states and we bail out the cities but we do it through direct hire. We put people to work cleaning up communities, we put people to work through a Civilian Conservation Corps, through a Works Progress Administration because the hour demands it. And as more people work, they pay taxes, they pay taxes into the fourth quarter, they buy wares, they buy homes.”
Worse still, he proposed that Obama implement his agenda by fiat:

“I hope the president continues to exercise extraordinary constitutional means, based on the history of Congresses that have been in rebellion in the past,” Jackson said. “He’s looking administratively for ways to advance the causes of the American people, because this Congress is completely dysfunctional.”

Beck was appalled, as we all should be.  To say that this is disturbing and dangerous is no exaggeration, no matter how much Glenn is given to emotional theatrics.  Later, he played video of Obama announcing to an audience that he thought it might be time to circumvent an ‘obstructionist’ Congress that wasn’t getting anything done.  Octavian Augustus Obama Caesar.

According to Edward Gibbon (“Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”), who made an extensive study of the waning years of the Roman Empire, beginning with Augustus (a name ‘forced’ upon the potentate by the Senate of Rome), the popular Assembly (that would be the House of Representatives for us) was completely dissolved.  Then Augustus set to work on gaining control of the Roman Senate.

“The reformation of the senate was one of the first steps in which Augustus laid aside the tyrant and professed himself the father of his country.  He was elected censor; and, in concert with his faithful Agrippa [his general], he examined the list of the senators, expelled a few members whose vices or whose obstinacy required a public example, persuaded nearly two hundred to prevent the shame of an expulsion by a voluntary retreat, raised the qualification of a senator to about ten thousand pounds, created a sufficient number of patrician families, and accepted for himself the honourable title of Prince of the Senate, which had always been bestowed by the censors on the citizen the most eminent for his honours and services.  But whilst he thus restored the dignity, he destroyed the independence of the senate.  The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.”

Or in our case, completely dismissed and ignored by him.  Gibbon notes that the senators realized “it was dangerous to trust the sincerity of Augustus; to seem to distrust it was still more dangerous.”  Augustus was offering to step down as emperor, even though he scrupled not to remind them, that he had saved the republic.  “Amidst this confusion of sentiments,” Gibbon tells us, “the answer of the senate was unanimous and decisive.  They refused to accept the resignation of Augustus; they conjured him not to desert the republic, which he had saved.  After a decent resistance, the crafty tyrant submitted to the orders of the senate and consented to receive the government of the provinces and the general command of the Roman armies under the well-known names of pro-consul and imperator.”

Augustus vowed to keep the title only for ten years, at which time he professed to hope that the Republic would be “healed” under his ministrations.  Of course, it wasn’t, and to the very end of the empire, Rome underwent a regular, ten-year ritual of “electing” its emperors.  Under some emperors like Hadrian, the empire flourished.  Others like Commodus (he’s one of the emperors in “Gladiator) brought shame to Rome through his butchery, and others through debauchery.  When the barbarians arrived at the Gate, Rome no longer had the will or the power to fight them off.  Instead, they tried to buy Alaric off.  But why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

The barbarians at Zuccotti Park merely need to bide their time, while their commanders put the iron bars of their laws around us.  We will be the slaves, the prisoners, the inmates, while the inmates run the asylum, as the saying goes.   A disbelieving public is reluctant to listen to someone like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or even Mark Stein.  As history repeats itself, we will watch as the House of Representatives eventually loses its power and the Senate is commanded by the Executive branch and the President’s crony advisors.  As we’ve seen today, New York City and the property owner are reluctant to use force on the barbarian students, aided as they are by various union goon organizations. 

Rome didn’t want a violent confrontation with the Visigoths, either.  They tried to “negotiate” with Alaric.  But Rome fell, all the same.