Why Liberals don't understand

Yesterday I was puzzled by a short, casual conversation I had with a class colleague. It has occurred to me that the republican tradition of thought and speech is so forgotten, and contemporary debate has departed so much from it, that people actually can't understand, and usually misunderstand when one speaks of republicanism. It seems to me like if we were talking two different languages, where the notions of one translate into the complete opposite in the mind of the other. This difference must be mended, and some common ground must be built from the classical republican tradition for liberals to ever start to understand what we are saying in the first place, which doesn't seem to be the case most of the time.

First of all I would like to explain from where my inspiration in republicanism comes from. I think this is something shared between intellectuals and academics in this tradition, but it is a feature that seems to be left aside. Republicans are deeply influenced by the Roman experience. Rome is a symbol of the highest degree in our thought and ideas (even more than Sparta and Athens, Venice or Florence). However I've realized that common-sense thought has a completely different understanding by the symbol Rome, and from here springs the most radical of contradictions.

It took me some time to realize this, but when I speak Rome, I've noticed that almost everyone thinks and remembers the experience of the Roman Empire, the period of the Caesars, the longest tyranny known so far. The great abyss between me and most liberal interlocutors starts here. When I speak Rome, it seems self-evident to me that I'm referring to the Roman Republic, its institutions, its laws, its traditions, its multiple inter-generational heroes and their political virtues and prudence. The Rome of the Scipios, of Fabio Maximus and Marcellus, Titus Flaminius, Aemilio Paulus, Cato the Older and even up to the decadent times of Cicero and Cato the Younger, Brutus and Cassius. The Rome that defeated Pirrus and Carthage, and that put the Macedonian dynasties to their knees. This Rome is so different, and contrasts so much with the Rome enslaved by Octavius, that the sole names Imperator and Caesar should strike republicans with obnoxious feelings. This is the first thing that people must understand when we speak the name of Rome, and not the nefarious names of Caligula and Nero. Not only is it Caesarism reason of repugnance in itself as a tyranny, as Tacitus well portrays, but also for the reason it was Caesarism that violently killed the republican dream, as we read in Sallust.

Another name that strikes liberals in a totally alienated way is that of Machiavelli. The Florentine writer is probably one of the most influential and venerated thinkers in Western republican tradition. Most people would be surprised by this, and it is because most people associate Machiavelli with The Prince, the most insightful treaty on tyrannical rule. They forget that more than The Prince, it is in The Discourses that we read the sincere and honest Machiavelli. A treatise based on comments on Titus Livy's History of Rome, The Discourses are a profound explanation of the classical republican creed previous to liberal ideas, and its respective abhorrence toward tyranny (In The History of Florence there is also a wealthy account of Machiavelli's republicanism as opposed to tyranny). People, in a curious parallel of thinking in Rome as the Empire instead of as the Republic, hear and think of Machiavelli as The Prince, instead of as The Discourses. Of course popular culture is partly to blame. The Prince is so much more famous, just as Ceasars are so much more portrayed in movies and literature than the ancient patriots. No wonder why people get so surprised when you tell them that your examples and highest symbols are Rome and Machiavelli, names that common-sense remembers with dread instead of admiration. This memory of only part of the story (the ugly part), plays a role in what makes the republican tradition so alien in our liberal-dominated times.

These misconceptions, errors in communication, make liberal and republican tradition seem so exclusive, whereas in sooth it's not the case. Common ground between both is not scarce, especially because liberalism first emerged as a branch of classical republicanism. But today's liberal confusion of portraying republicanism as an authoritarian ideology kindred in spirit to fascism is nothing but a blatant calumny, demonstrating nothing but short-sightedness and ignorance. However it is true that republicanism in its classical form is a-liberal, which is not the same as to say anty-liberal! A-liberal in the sense that its political values are previous to liberalism, and somehow lack many of its features, and for good reasons. While liberals are so concerned about the danger of coercing the individual, republicans are deeply disturbed by the potentiality of the tyrant, historically embodied by Julius Caesar. Liberals don't care much about who's in power and how, as long as he behaves and respects individual rights; republicans can't understand this respect for citizens without addressing the structure of political institutions in relation to citizenship itself.

Probably the most contrasting difference between liberals and republicans is that they focus, give priority and value different things. Tyranny, that is, uni-personal arbitrary and illegitimate rule is the most obnoxious possibility for republican tradition; considered the ultimate state of political slavery. Whereas for liberals individual rights and entitlements are universal, and any violation of what they interpret as these rights is illegitimate (Even the tyrant has rights). For republican thought this might be nothing more than absolute naivete, because the most important value is patriotism, the love for your country, its institutions and its liberty. This could contradict what liberals consider individual universal rights, especially if it implies making war against another country, where the most human of rights, life, is systematically alienated. This might be true also for republicans, but from our perspective it's a price we have to pay in the service of our country. Individual rights are just simply not that relevant when the safety and liberty of your country is at stake (Lincoln proved it). This is a statement of facts that usually liberals are not willing to acknowledge. Differences of this short are those that would permit, for example, discrepancy regarding Israel. Whereas I as a republican admire the strength and courage of Israel's republic, a liberal would focus on its terrible human rights record. It's not that I deny this record to be condemnable, which it is; it's just that I don't consider it politically relevant. The same happens when liberals are willing to negotiate with a mild dictator (as it happens so often when they use the fetish concept self-determination), whereas republican thought finds them obnoxious and worthy of intervention and replacement (let us say, a nefarious tyrant like Saddam Hussein, or today's Gaddafi!).

In conclusion, something that liberals are inclined to do: they confuse patriotism with nationalism, which would make republicanism side by side with a regime of a man like Mussolini, for example. Under republican standards, any regime like those of Bonaparte, Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Peron, Castro, Chavez, etc., stand in the hall of the Caesars; of Tiberius, Caligula, Neron, Commodus, etc. A liberal could like Marcus Aurelius (like J. S. Mill did), but a republican would always repudiate its regime as a matter of political principles. Republicanism demands republic, and it's logically irreconcilable with any style of tyrant. Hobbes is a correct example that liberals wouldn't necessarily pass this test.