A man named Marcus Tullius Cicero (Cicero) was born about a hundred years before Christ, a Roman statesman, good talker, and writer. He died 43 years before Christ and wrote about humanity’s failings. Years ago, his words made sense in Latin, these days only in English. Oddly, they resonate.
Why does humanity never learn? Why do we keep insisting on doing the same dumb things? Why do we not listen to people like Cicero, distrust those in power – limit government?
Why do we fall victim to false promises, over and over again, imagining those in power are different, will make better decisions for us – will not hurt us, until they do?
Why do we think human nature changes, when Cicero – and many who followed, including Christ, taught us – that humanity is fallen, power is prone to abuse, governments tend to corrupt, and think they can be God, never getting there because they cannot?
Cicero was – perhaps not a surprise – a favorite of our Nation’s founders, skeptics of government, all quick to pull Cicero from their bookshelf, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Hamilton, and even John Locke before them.
So, what did this Cicero guy have to say? If we are going to save ourselves from big government, drive the arrogant from power, and return liberty to the people, how?
Well, one thing Cicero said, from painful experience, watch out for the enemy within. Disdain for common people, for their rights, is corrosive and brings all the worst to the surface.
Said Cicero: “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it can not survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.”
Of course, Cicero was not thinking of China penetrating our towns, cities, states, Congress, White House, schools, and statehouses, nor of Marxism, Maoism, or fascism, words that did not exist. He was talking about power, how is can be taken from the people, often in a flash.
What else did he worry about? He thought a lot about intergenerational relations, kids, and how we teach, care, love, or choose to ignore, abandon, and give government power over children. He worried that society – by which he also meant parents, and families – is ruined by uncaring.
He wrote: “What society does to its children, so its children will do to society.” If we teach caring, confidence, self-reliance, suspicion of government, and concern for the future, we win, if not, we lose.
So, how are we doing? What do you think? We have let drug traffickers run wild, demoralized and defunded those who protect us, passed laws making people afraid to protect themselves, chosen not to teach skills and values taught to us as kids, taught to kids since our Nation’s founding.
What else? We have allowed degrading, dehumanizing ideologies into our schools, and promoted them – the idea that gender is an ice cream flavor, that kids waiting at birth can be killed, that faith is to be mocked, tolerance for good ideas, history, science, health, hard work derided. How is that going?
Cicero was already there, and saw it coming, as did our forefathers, who tried to warn us – who wrote, taught, led and bled, died, and were followed by sons and daughters doing the same, all for us.
Where are we, then? Time to wake up. What else did Cicero see? Why did our founders love him? He was prescient, and could see around corners, all the way to ours, so here is what he sees.
Tucked into longer essays, “Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his errors,” and “more is lost by indecision than wrong decision … Indecision is the thief of opportunity.” Do we teach those things, or do we practice them, are we now?
“When a government becomes powerful, it is destructive, extravagant and violent … it deprives honorable men of their substance, with votes to perpetuate itself.” Makes you think?
“The budget should be balanced, treasury refilled, public debt reduced, the arrogance of officialdom tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt.” Does anything come to mind? It should.
Why do we never learn? Maybe we will. Perhaps Cicero’s words can guide America again, as they did at our founding. I hope so. They can even guide our daily life, which he also wrote.
In one essay, he even addressed my question – why do we never learn? “Six mistakes mankind keeps making, century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”
So, there you have it, a blast from the past, Cicero’s time capsule, one that may surprise you. Amazing what they knew, how much is forgotten, worth remembering. Latin still eludes me, but not Cicero’s main logic. America has time, and need not fall as Rome did, but we better get on it!
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
