Rebel TV E33 Cicero Condemns the United States Government and... We the People 2/17/21

I haven't heard a lot of comparisons recently about the fall of the Roman Empire and the current trajectory of America. I suppose the majority believe with the ascent of King Joe to the presidency America will be saved from whatever destruction President Trump was supposed to visit upon us. Somehow we think we are different, I'm sure the Romans did as well. They were once a republic with a constitution, lived under the rule of law and the system created great wealth. By the time of Marcus Tullius Cicero, who lived to see the rise of Caesar, the foundations of the republic were gone. If we take a look at some moments of his life and his comments on his time, I believe you will see some eerie parallels.
Young Cicero was an idealistic law student under the legal star of his day, Scaevola. By this time Rome, by force of arms, guile and trickery, dominated the world. Its citizens had grown wealthy and fat, ignorant or indifferent of their rights, and had become apathetic about the ruthless politicians who craved ever more power and riches. Cicero's first client was a wealthy businessman, a man of integrity who believed in and trusted the system and his fellow man. But there were powerful men in government who coveted his wealth and used the power of the bureaucracy to destroy him. Young idealistic Cicero submitted documentary proof of his client's innocence to the judges confident that with such irrefutable proof, justice would prevail.
The case was not going as he had expected, however, so he consulted his mentor, Scaevola, and asked the reason for his failure. Scaevola, disgusted, pounded the table and said "Imbecile! Of what use are records presented to tribunes, consuls, or senators if the government is determined to rob and destroy a man who had displeased them, or who possesses what they want? Have I truly wasted all these years on such an idiot as this Marcus Tullius Cicero!"
Does this sound familiar? A justice department weaponized against those who dare confront the swamp, a knee jerk media who condemn without facts, show trials of men like President Trump and his allies. We do not live under the rule of law but of men who pervert the law or ignore it all together to destroy their enemies and protect their friends. A two tiered justice system is the very definition of injustice.
This particular client was ruined through confiscatory and unjust taxation and what Cicero has to say in his defense is chilling in its description of America. Before the Roman Senate he pleaded the man's case with these words. "We are taxed in our bread and our wine, in our incomes and our investments, on our land and on our property, not only for base creatures who do not deserve the name of man, but for foreign nations, for complacent nations who will bow to us and accept our largess and promise us to assist in the keeping of the peace - these mendicant nations who will destroy us when we show a moment of weakness or our treasury is bare. We are taxed to maintain legions on their soil, in the name of law and order and the Pax Romana, a document which will fall into dust when it pleases our allies and our vassals. We keep them in precarious balance only with our gold. Is the heart-blood of our nation worth these? Shall one Italian be sacrificed for Britain, for Gaul, for Egypt, for India, even for Greece, and a score of other nations? Were they bound to us with ties of love, they would not ask our gold. They would ask only our laws. They take our very flesh, and they hate and despise us. And who shall say we are worthy of more?"
Is this not a perfect description of our current situation? Taxed on every activity to pay for those who hold the enslaved contributor in contempt both domestically and abroad? Do many of our supposed allies around the world not despise us? Obama dropped billions in cash at at airfield in Iran, King Joe will no doubt to the same. Will they not continue to chant “Death to America” along with the Saudis and others? When our economy and currency are destroyed you don't think King Joe's Chinese “friends” will turn on us overtly and gladly take our position in the world as top dog with many cheering them on? We learn nothing from history and continue to throw good money after bad. At least President Trump tried to hold our allies accountable and halted some of the stupidity by stopping the flow of money to the Palestinians and others. Now the spigot will be turned back on full force.
Cicero did not win his case, his client was bankrupted. But he spent his life pleading the cause for fair and honest government, unfortunately a losing proposition then as it is now. His discussions with Sulla, who had little faith in the people, were recorded. Sulla believed the vast majority of people were wrapped up in themselves and their own welfare and too timid to stand up for their natural rights. He told Cicero the middle class, the lawyers, the physicians, the bankers, and the merchants would make no sacrifices. He said none of your lawyers will challenge the lawmakers and cry to them, "This is unconstitutional, an affront to a free people, and it must not pass!" He asked Cicero, "Will one of these, your own, lift his eyes from his ledgers long enough to scan the Twelve Tables of Roman Law, and then expose those who violate them and help to remove them from power, even if it costs their lives? These fat men. Will six of them in this city, disregarding personal safety, rise up from their offices and stand in the Forum, and tell the people the inevitable fate of Rome unless they return to virtue and thrift and drive from the Senate the evil men who have corrupted them for the power they have to bestow?"
Is this us? How few true whistleblowers in government will stand up for truth and against the swamp in today's cancel culture? Too many hold faith in Republicans but they did nothing substantial to contest the election or do more that occasionally slow our decent in tyranny for decades. Ultimately, they are cowards. How many of us will risk our money, our comfortable lifestyle, even our lives to stop complying with and feeding the beast that desires our complete subjugation? Are Americans really unique? Or are we no different that the Romans or any other people. I guess time will tell.
Cicero battled against Catiline, a brilliant, ambitious and evil man who was attempting to overthrow the Roman Republic decades before Caesar. He was using emergencies to destroy the liberties of the people. Sound familiar? He was also trying to silence those who disagreed. Also familiar. Cicero, standing before the Senate had this to say. "Too long have we said to ourselves 'intolerance of another's politics is barbarous and not to be countenanced in a civilized country. Are we not free? Shall a man be denied his right to speak under the law which established that right?' I tell you that freedom does not mean the freedom to exploit law in order to destroy it! It is not freedom which permits the Trojan Horse to be wheeled within the gates. He who is not for Rome and Roman Law and Roman liberty is against Rome. He who espouses tyranny and oppression and the old dead despotisms is against Rome. He who plots against established authority and incites the populace to violence is against Rome. He cannot ride two horses at the same time. We cannot be for lawful ordinances and for an alien conspiracy at one and the same moment."
Hypocrisy is nothing to this whose only value is power. They are happy to incite violence when it suits them and condemn it when it might work against them. They proclaim the sacredness of the Constitution as they destroy it spirit and letter. They abuse the lovers of liberty and freedom by perverting those very words.
Cicero continued: "Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the 'general welfare of the people.' Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen."
I need not even comment on that, the excesses of our government and their enslavement of us under the guise of providing for the general welfare are obvious to anyone with eyes. Cicero eventually became Consul and did his best to stop the waste and thievery. The corrupt could not let that stand and sought to remove and banish him. Does this sound familiar as well? Pleading his own case before the Senate, he stated "The Senate, in truth, has no right to censure me for anything, for I did but my duty and exposed traitors and treason against the State. If that is a crime, then I am indeed a criminal."
Crassus, Caesar and Pompey were all present and agreed with his banishment. His smile was sad as he spoke. "You have succeeded against me. Be it as you will. I will depart." He then told them all, "For this day's work, lords, you have encouraged treason and opened the prison doors to free the traitors. A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the carrier of the plague. You have unbarred the gates of Rome to him."
The corrupt enemies of America now reside in the highest offices of the land and protect the traitors to the Republic who began the coup five years ago. They speak the language of liberty but betray its every principle for their own gain. The left, the statists, the Democrat party that embraces the ideology of Marx and Lenin and their enablers among the so called opposition are surely rotting the soul of our nation, the plague they have brought will be our end.
Exiled from politics, Cicero continued to fight against the corruption but Sulla was right. The people he knew, the businessmen, the doctors, the lawyers, Rome's middle class told him, "We do not meddle in politics. Rome is prosperous and at peace. We have our villas in Caprae, our racing vessels, our houses, our servants, our pretty mistresses, and our comfort and treasures. We implore you, Cicero, do not disturb us with your lamentations of disaster. Rome is on the march to the mighty society, for all Romans."
Until the barbarians are at the gates, no one believes the gravy train will end. No one wants to hear the truth, they enjoy their delusion too much. Cicero despaired of ever being able to make a change. He wrote a book but his publisher asked, "But who will read it? Romans care nothing for law any longer, their bellies are too full." His was truly a voice crying in the wilderness.
So who was to blame for the death of the Roman Republic? Was it Caesar? Brutus thought so but Cicero bitterly corrected him. He said, "Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions and laughed delightedly at his licentiousness and thought it very superior of him to acquire vast amounts of gold illicitly. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.' Julius was always an ambitious villain, but he is only one man."
We the people make up this nation. But too many, perhaps you are one of them, have willing traded freedom for the security offered by the charlatans who fleece us and desire to reduce us to slavery. While there may or may not be a majority who give lip service to the Constitution and the republic there is no question the vast majority are comfortable receiving the largess stolen from the productive and now, from a multitude of future generations. Who is willing to jeopardize all the temporary benefits of a frayed and strained safety net? We have sold our freedom and our future for the hope that government will provide for all our needs and fix all society's problems.
Of course to those who understand liberty and human nature none of this is a surprise and the founders, who were all too familiar with Cicero, saw it as well. Patrick Henry, who thought the Constitution gave way too much power to the national government warned us to "be extremely cautious, watchful, jealous of your liberty. Instead of securing your rights, you may lose them forever." He said, "there will be no checks, no real balances in this government," and looking ahead he said "this government will destroy the state governments and swallow the liberties of the people." Benjamin Franklin thought things would be well run for a time and then it would end in despotism. Thomas Jefferson gave name to its form when he said it would become an oligarchy.
They were right, they warned us, but nothing is preordained or predetermined. We yet have free will, we choose our path, we choose whether our liberty is worth defending. If liberty gained is not highly valued, there will always be men and women who will gladly reduce us to servitude for their own ends. The choice is ours, the struggle is not over, it only ends when we give up. May there yet be enough men and women of courage who will restore all that has been lost, who will rescue our most noble experiment from the jaws of destruction, a new generation of patriots who will pledge their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the most worthy cause of all.

This edition is a rewrite and consolidation of “Cicero's Prognosis” by THE HONORABLE MILLARD F. CALDWELL in 1965