17 Comments

The Macaulay piece quote is timely. I've been reading Peter Turchin's 'War and Peace and War' and he really buys into the (Republican) Rome solidarity thing.

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I can't help it -- I like Horatius at the Bridge.

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author

Nothing wrong with that!

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Oh man... in re the Golden Age of Leftish Comity...

XXXII

Then none was for a party;

Then all were for the state;

Then the great man helped the poor,

And the poor man loved the great:

Then lands were fairly portioned;

Then spoils were fairly sold:

The Romans were like brothers

In the brave days of old.

XXXIII

Now Roman is to Roman

More hateful than a foe,

And the Tribunes beard the high,

And the Fathers grind the low.

As we wax hot in faction,

In battle we wax cold:

Wherefore men fight not as they fought

In the brave days of old.

[Thanks for this...sending to my dad, with a wager he will read the whole thing aloud immediately...]

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:-)

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Shit... I wrote this before I even listened to the podcast! Great minds (yours) sometimes think alike with less than great minds (mine)!

(But my dad is marching around his Chicago North Side bungalow bellowing about the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods, so it’s all good.)

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:-)

If you are going to write fanfic poems that you think the ancient Romans would have written had they been Scots, you should go all-in. And Macaulay did!

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He and not Chesterton should have been the one who wrote of my own people (well, the ashes of my fathers), “The great Gaels of Ireland are the men God made mad/

For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

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Oct 12, 2023·edited Oct 12, 2023

Here's what happened to Horatius after the fight at the bridge: https://www.combat.ws/S4/SAMIZDAT/HORATIO.HTM

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That's very funny.

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"timid in not aggressively going after every corner of TrumpWorld for its corruption,"

I did like the idea of packing the visitor galleries in Congress with the Jim Jordan's assault victims, 1/6 victims during votes on Jordan as Speaker.

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"there was a golden age of comity, common purpose, and energy in the left-of-center political sphere back in 2005 to 2008"

It sure didn't get us a tax on net CO2 emissions, merit based immigration, or even revenue increases to reduce deficits.

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I had this thought while listening to the podcast: Butler is wrong in the sense that it is not Trump the Democrats ought to go after, but rather the people who idolize him: crooked cops, exploitative bankers, bigoted real estate brokers, etc. There would be real material benefits for people already predisposed to vote for Democrats and it would feel like substantive action on matters of social justice.

I'm not saying that necessarily realistic, of course. It's just what went through my head and I wanted to share.

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Oct 12, 2023·edited Oct 12, 2023

Well of course Biden is corrupt. He's been in politics for 50 years. He represented a state known for blatantly favoring corporations over people. So the issue is not is Biden corrupt. The issue is how corrupt is he compared to other politicians? And compared to Trump his corruption is quite minor.

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Off topic, but I'd like some good ecumenic historian who is also a good economist, ... say Brad DeLong, to write a series (a few books?) on what the Ancients should have done differently to increase GDP/capita, until Malthus caught up.

Eliminate the bread subsidy in Rome and Constantinople?

Be more intentional with allowing barbarians to enter/settle?

Paper fiat money?

Spend more on infrastructure and the Army and less on gladiatorial games?

Head tax on slave owning?

Babylonian Caliphate, Fatimid Egypt, X Dynasty China, etc. mutatis mutandis.

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Couldn't we at least have a crappy AI transcript? :)

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