A praise of Political Severity

I've added to the list of prominent men that I admire the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. Many might know by now that when regarding to Rome I focus on the republic, and by the name Rome I always mean the republic. Consistent with this vision I consider everything that happened after Julius Caesar to be a tragic story of tyranny and slavery. I do not depart from this vision, but my recent immersion into Machiavelli's thought has given me the extraordinary tool to twist and change my vantage point according to necessity and fortune, something that is essential, if not mandatory, to understand anything that has to do with politics. In this new approach, now that I'm rereading the Prince, I've been impressed by Machiavelli's high praise of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, a man famously recognized for his unscrupulous political actions. Like any other emperor, he was a tyrant. But when we leave the republic and its freedom behind, and we set our play in the realm of absolute and long-lasting tyranny, our value judgments and normative claims must shift, something in which Machiavelli was extraordinarily skillful at.

Machiavelli writes that "because of what Severus did was remarkable and outstanding for a new prince, I want to show briefly how well he knew how to act the part of both a fox and a lion, whose natures, as I say above, must be imitated by a new prince" (P XIX). Interestingly enough the nature of both the fox and the lion were the beastly natures that the humanist tradition, the inheritance of Cicero, would condemn as unworthy. Machiavelli would turn this tradition upside down, being his praise of Severus one of the turning points of this break with the humanists (Skinner, 1981, 40). This led me to Herodian of Antioch, the source from which Machiavelli draws his portrayal of the Roman Emperors in chapter 19 of the Prince.

Of Severus Herodian says that "he was surely the most accomplished of all men in pretending to pledge his good will, but he never kept his sworn word if it proved necessary for him to break it; he lied whenever it was advantageous to him, and his tongue said many things which his heart did not mean" (History of the Roman Empire, II). He ruled for almost eighteen years, his son Caracalla succeeded to the throne successfully and he brought peace and stability in a moment in which the empire's structure of political authority was about to collapse after Commodus deserved death. What does this say about the ancient Ciceronian and today's Kant/Mill-liberal moralities and their relations to politics? Maybe that they don't worth a penny when the chips are down, and that the true nature of political power is tested precisely in these moments of emergency. Recently this vision of politics was exposed by Carl Schmitt, who might be blameworthy of his Nazi allegiance, but whose political insight and sincerity cannot be denied. So with Machiavelli.

Reading about how Severus managed to take over the empire by using the cunning of the fox in bamboozling everyone into his own scheme, and then defeating his enemies with the ferocious strength of the lion, produces nothing but awe and admiration (the charm of evil). But the most interesting contrast regards the unsuccessful attempt by the previous Pertinax to establish his imperial authority by the "strength" of moral convictions and reasonable arguments, in a lame attempt to imitate Marcus Aurelius, which led him to be butchered by his own praetorian bodyguards, thereby ending his less-than-three-months rule. His incompetence to understand politics could have sunk the Roman Empire into long-lasting anarchy, if it weren't because of the skillful and vigorous intervention of Severus. Which lead me to my conclusion: those that want to hold their moral integrity at all cost in the face of impelling necessity, at least in the realm politics, can be the most irresponsible actors of all; because instead of weighting the good of the community as the main reason of their historical position, they prefer the maintain their conscience clean, i.e. the paradoxical conclusion that acting morally can be utterly selfish.

This is so obvious, so common sense, that hearing the self-righteous liberals and left-wing socialists speak about justice, fairness, equality and progress makes so much noise in a world of wretched human beings. John Stuart Mill praised Marcus Aurelius as the most glorious and virtuous Roman Emperor. And he is right in doing so, because under his rule the Empire enjoyed the peak of its accomplishments. But he is deceived in believing that Marcus Aurelius example can be taken to be a fixed rule in a world of ever-changing conditions, not to speak of the almost silly discourse of modern Kantianism.
Septimius Severus, 21st Emperor of the Roman Empire (14 April 193 – 4 February 211)

The Iliad and human destiny

I'm rereading the Iliad. The first time I came upon this marvelous poem I was fourteen years old. Eleven years have passed since that great moment where I picked, without knowledge of anything, to read the most human and spectacular work offered by the Ancient world. I did not understand most of it, but I remember that I felt in love with its content. Today I picked it again and now, that I have a deeper understanding of the poem, I cannot help but be touched and inspired by this tragedy.

Many things we can learn from the Iliad, but I would like to focus on one of them which I consider to be essential: destiny. The Ancient world had a deeper and more inwardly felt understanding of that thing called destiny which terrifies the Western mind. The Iliad opens like this:

"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Zeus fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

"And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Zeus and Leto; for he was angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people..."

It is a God, Apollo, who initiates the chain of events that leads toward the end of the whole tragedy, and the Gods presence is prominent from beginning to end. Every time the heroes try to free themselves from their destiny, the Gods bring them back to the course they cannot avoid. In Shakespeare's brilliant words; "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport" (King Lear, 4.1.36). The Ancients had a profound faith in destiny, the reason of why oracles where so important in their cults. The idea of deciphering what the Gods had prepared for men was pervasive in their culture, and key to understand their role, not only in society, but in the cosmos as a whole. The Iliad is the greatest achievement, I believe, in this world-feeling.

The West, however, and since the discovery of free will by St. Paul, resists the idea of a destiny. It is unbearable for a Western to admit that his future is sealed by doom. There must be a way out of it, or otherwise he would not deal with the tragic reality of the human condition. He must believe that he is in control of his own destiny. I think that this world-feeling is stronger than anything else in the United States, with its creed of the American Dream. But it took a more radical form in Europe, where Communism (and Hegelianism) became the banner of a promised realm where human individuals will free themselves, at last, from the curse of historical determinism. Liberals from the other side (from Kant and Mill to recently Rawls) want to settle the conditions from which then individuals will become self-fulfilled. The Western project and its progress is a restless struggle to free itself from the unbearable burden of doom.

I must admit that in this particular world-outlook of the Western mind I have departed to rest in the tragic interpretation of the Ancients, at least as well as I remain alive in this world. It is my impression that destiny is a reality that transcends human endeavors. But destiny must be understood properly and we must avoid the simplistic understanding that most people have of it. Destiny is not about a pre-written book that says that you are going to take a step toward the left instead than toward the right on a particular moment. First of all destiny is impossible to defeat in the reality of death. This is the reason why the Ancients cared so much about glory and transcendence in a world of terrifying oblivion; the reason of why the heroes of the Iliad don't fight for mere power and wealth, but for glory and honor, the only possible way to stay alive. In this sense the Ancients can be considered to be much more individualistic than their Western counterparts.

Christianity offered a way out: the Kingdom of God, the prize gained by those that set in the journey to follow Jesus. The only way death can be defeated is by faith in the Kingdom of God and the Final Judgement. Because of that any attempt to transcend death in this life became folly and stupid. The doom of death was inevitable, but the possibility of eternal life was offered; hence the individual can be free in choosing the path toward that eternal life, and finally having control of his destiny at least after the time of its death. But Modernity and its obsession to take charge of human destiny became so ambitious that denied the promise offered by Jesus, and set on the quest to find freedom and salvation on this earth. The consequence was the greatest defeat our civilization had received. However the dream remains alive in pop culture, when we see all these movies and read all these bestsellers where the heroes manage to triumph over the forces of their environment, and rebel against the Gods in the most contemptuous way without fear of retribution. It is then when I realize how naive and arrogant our society is. The delusion of the man that controls its destiny is one of our greatest weakness, and now that Communism and Capitalism have failed in delivering the promised freedom to us all, we have turn toward technology, a destiny controlled by machines that are dead as rocks; that impress us with their fancy shapes and glittering lights, so that we remain in a state of sopor at our tragic ending: that we never had control of our lives and destinies, and we are already in a world where machines control our movements and our interaction with other human beings, without possibility of return but through holocaust/Apocalypse.

In this future visage of desolation where humans become an appendage of technology I have returned to the Iliad as my personal retirement to find repose in times of heroes and conquerors when I'm surrounded by noise, concrete, metal, electricity and waves.

Luzardo and Barquero: the mirrors of our generation

Reading Doña Bárbara (1929), probably the most acclaimed Venezuelan novel by Rómulo Gallegos, I was touched by a conversation that so vividly portrayed the deep rooted feelings of the Venezuelan spirit. The story takes place in the Venezuelan llanos (or Great Plains): an endless expanse of flat grassland, scorched by the sun in the dry season, and in the wet turned by torrential into fever-ridden swamps and lakes; it is the home of a wild and warlike breed, a racial mixture from Indian, white and black stock, hardened by their savage surroundings and capable of great endurance on horseback. Santos Luzardo (the hero), returns home after years spent in Caracas pursuing his university studies. He has become an urbane man and his ways totally contrast with the wild ways of the llanos. He has a conversation with his elder and only cousin left. His name is Lorenzo Barquero, who also did his studies in Caracas years before, when he was the most promising member of the family; but now he is a drunk, useless and decrepit man living in a tiny, stinking and dirty hut, after losing all his properties to the dangerous woman known as Doña Bárbara. Santos Luzardo is coming back (as his cousin Lorenzo did before him), and is determined to change the savage and semi-barbaric ways of the llanos, with the optimist view of a man of progress. However Lorenzo's state is absolutely disencouraging. Here is part of the conversation between both [the translation is mine]:

Santos: ..."It is necessary to kill the centaur", you said. I, of course, didn't know what a centaur could be and not even could I explain myself why the llaneros carried it inside them... Years after, in Caracas, a handout reached my hands of a speech you had delivered in I don't know what patriotic meeting, and imagine my impression when I found the famous phrase there. Do you remember that speech? The topic was: the centaur is barbarism and, therefore, it must be done with...
Lorenzo: ...Look at me carefully, Santos Luzardo! This specter of a man that was, this human wreck, this carrion that speaks to you, was your ideal. I was that which you said previously, and now I am this that you see. Aren't you afraid, Santos Luzardo?
Santos: Afraid, why?
Lorenzo: No! I'm not asking you for you to answer me! But for you to hear this instead: that Lorenzo Barquero who you have spoken of was nothing but a lie; the truth is this that you see now. You are also a lie that will banish soon. This land does not forgive... I started to realize that my intelligence, that which everyone called my great talent, did not work but while I was talking; as soon as I fell silent the mirage would also banish and I couldn't understand absolutely nothing. I felt the lie of my intelligence and my sincerity. Do you realize? The lie of your own sincerity, which is the worse that can happen to a man... To kill the centaur! He! He! Don't be an idiot, Santos Luzardo! Do you think that that of killing the centaur was pure rhetoric? I assure you that it exists. I've heard it neighing. Every single night it passes by here. And not only here; there, in Caracas, also. And far beyond too. Wherever one of us is... he hears the centaur's neighing. You've heard it too and that's why you are here. Who has said that it is possible to kill the centaur? Me? Spit on my face, Santos Luzardo. The centaur is an entelechy. A hundred years it has galloped over this land and another hundred will pass still. I thought myself civilized, my family's first civilized, but it was enough to be told: "come and avenge your father", for the barbarian inside me to emerge. The same has happened to you... Santos Luzardo! Look yourself in me! This land does not forgive!

I edited the conversation so as to show what I think is more interesting in it. It speaks, I think, about the deepest reality in Venezuelan society (I'm tempted to say Latin America, but it might be too bold). I am of those that think that not infrequently poets and novelists portray the human condition in a more acute and spiritual way than any philosopher or scientist. Rómulo Gallegos might have interpreted the tragedy/comedy of our national experience in the best way possible, in the dialectics between our will to progress (in Santos Luzardo) individually and collectively, and our inclination toward barbarism (in Lorenzo Barquero). Venezuelan history is a constant tension between these two forces; when we seem to be on the right track of what we think (what we like to think) is the road toward perfection, the internal forces of our turbulent and wild spirit, deeply rooted in the memory of our war of Independence, emerges as a destructive force that, cloaked in the disguise of justice and fairness, it immerses us in backwardness. Lorenzo Barquero is a metaphor of all of us, the man that tasted both worlds, that personifies both tendencies.

Our national history is filled with centaurs. The war of Independence produced tons of them. Bolivar was the first one (and also the one that combined Santos and Lorenzo in its greatest expression); Boves, not being a Venezuelan born, was also possessed by it in its most barbaric form. Páez was the first one to carry the name explicitly, and that by the end of his life tried to tame it (successfully as an individual and failing absolutely as the nation's leader). Both 19th and 20th century Venezuela has centaurs ruling and being ruled (in the bodies of the leaders, and the bodies of their followers and enemies alike). The 20th century has the more technocratic expressions. And when we seemed to have taken our leave from this tragic/comedy tradition, the centaur revived again, now in its most gruesome form. All Venezuelans know (once again) how is it like.

The figure of the progressive man in Santos is extremely interesting: a man deceived by the taste of modernity. He is our traditionally tragic hero, whereas Lorenzo has reached the level of our comedy hero. "Wherever one of us is... he hears the centaur's neighing". I can't but totally agree with this statement. I that know the country in which I was raised, and the symbols and feelings that it has produced in my being, I hear the centaur's neighing. And this last lines I write for all of my friends and the Venezuelan youth that today study abroad, many of whom were forced by the circumstances. Santos Luzardo is our mirror. And Lorenzo Barquero might be our destiny. The former we already are; the latter is a matter of choice. I don't believe in progress; everything is in eternal return. Venezuelan history: the eternal return of the centaur. Who wants to be part of this play? And what would be your role in it? Ask yourself these questions and choose. Lorenzo asks "Aren't you afraid, Santos Luzardo?" I would say yes.

"Everything becomes and recurs eternally - escape is impossible! - Supposing we could judge value, what follows? The idea of recurrence as a selective principle, in the service of strength (And barbarism!!)" Nietzsche.

United States Form of Government

If we approach the History of the United States of America from the perspective of forms of government, first we can trace its beginnings to the year of the foundation of Jamestown in Virginia (1607). It is true that the colonies of North America came from many European countries and not only from England. There were colonies from France, Spain and the Netherlands. But what later became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is, on the aggregate, the form of government of the colonial times in what later became the United States. So we can plausibly proceed from the general assumption that the United States emerged as an independent free republic from the Monarchy of Great Britain, and from nowhere else.

What later became the free republic of the United States was first under a monarchical constitution; and the monarchs can be listed as follows:
1) King James I, 1607-1625 (from the foundation of Jamestown);
2) King Charles I, 1625-1649;
3) King Charles II, 1649-1685;
4) King James II, 1685-1688;
5) King William III, 1689-1702;
6) Queen Anne, 1702-1714;
7) King George I, 1714-1727;
8) King George II, 1727-1760;
9) King George III, 1760-1776 (until the Declaration of Independence).

The Declaration of Independence marks the overthrow of the monarchy and the constitution of a free republic: The United States of America under The Articles of Confederation. The final establishment of the republic came under the ratification of the United States Constitution (1789), and the inauguration of its first Congress and President. However, what could have been a free republic, came more in the form of an oligarchical constitution. Most of the Union had by that time property qualifications for voting right. That is common ground in the institutions of oligarchy since the political philosophy of Aristotle.

The prudence of the Founding Fathers was their capacity to understand the limits of their victory. A complete democratic revolution in 1776 (that of course would have included the African American population) would have caused civil war and total division, making the republican project a complete failure, and would have resulted in a dictatorship, most probably of George Washington, the strong man of the time. It happened in France after a so radical democratic revolution that began in 1789, that resulted in Bonaparte's dictatorship under the name of Emperor (The mirror revolution of 1848 also ended with another dictatorship by a Bonaparte). In Russia, the radicalism of the revolution of 1917 brought about a civil war and eventually Stalin's dictatorship under the name of General Secretary of the Communist Party. Not to go far from Anglophone experience, the English republicanist revolution of 1649 executed King Charles I, and its religious and political radicalism resulted in Cromwell's dictatorship under the name of Lord Protector. History of Hispanic American republics is filled with examples of the same phenomenon. What made the Founding Fathers so successful was their prudence to administer their victory according to the possibilities of the times. Hence, the first decades of the United States were more similar to an oligarchical constitution, with slavery included.

The impressive nature of the United States Constitution is its ability to adapt and evolve through time. No wonder why they call it a "living constitution". After the generation of the Founding Fathers finished their administrations in the White House and Congress, the next generation of politicians took charge. By the times of the revolutionary war, Clay, Calhoun, Quincy Adams and Jackson were children or unborn. When they took charge of the country, the next step in American Democracy took place: Jacksonian Democracy and the end of property qualifications made the United States a white male democratic republic. Lincoln was a mere teenager. When his republican movement (the generation after the Jacksonian, the founders of the GOP) took charge, they defeated the most dangerous rebellion against the Constitution, ended slavery and moved forward toward universal male democracy. Women had to wait till the 19th Amendment (1920) that ended the long road toward universal suffrage, the peak of Modern Democracy. However true republicanism, equal protection of the law, came during the 60's with the Civil Rights Movement.

My point is, just as in Rome, the United States began its history under a monarchical form of government, and through the abolition of that constitution it advanced toward a republic. First it came in the form of an oligarchy and later, with constant civil action, it democratized itself slowly. Also as in Rome, the United States has never turned into a full time generalized democracy, and nothing similar to it. It has preserved republican principles of mixed government that do not deny the elites their space for ruling, nor excludes the people from some engagement in political power, and always holding the creed that the law is the only legitimate way of making any reform.

The question now goes, is the United States heading on the same road that led Rome to universal empire and ultimately to slavery?

Thucydides and Republicanism

"For though it be the part of discreet men to be quiet unless they have wrong, yet it is the part of valiant men, when they receive injury, to pass from peace to war, and after success, from war to come again to composition, and neither to swell with the good success of war nor to suffer injury through pleasure taken in the ease of peace. For him whom pleasure makes a coward, if he sit still, shall quickly lose the sweetness of the ease that made him so" (Thucydides: I: 120).

This might sound an ethic of an eye for an eye, but real political wisdom is at place here. Liberal pacifist ideas are so common these days, and especially among educated middle class young people, that what seems to be the most basic common sense is underestimated as simple chauvinism. War is never good from a moral standing point. But then, politics and morality depart when the most extreme circumstances come at play. When a country is attacked, or humiliated, or some external aggression is inflicted upon it, how can we expect it to lay down? As Thucydides accurately points out, that would be nothing but a cowardly behavior.

Another thing is at play. Peace and prosperity bring pleasure and laziness. Liberal thinking, again, at defending the individual's choice at all cost, render any kind of personal sacrifice (either for country or religion) as irrational, unnecessary or crude fanaticism. The problem of the ease of peace is that, by making men lazy, it makes them cowards; it softens their characters, making them fall in love with their pleasures; and when the time comes that their liberty to be lazy is threatened and the risk of being taken away by tyrants or conquerors, they are overthrown by panic or indolence, which result in crude slavery. Today's liberal ideas (and particularly libertarians'), are nothing but a very complicated set of political and ethical beliefs that are the truest road toward losing any liberty at all and falling into the longest period of slavery.

"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" John F. Kennedy, presidential inaugural address, January 20, 1961.