A couple of great articles on heroes of past political discourse:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance18.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance7.html
Remembering the lessons of Brutus and Cato
Discussion in 'History Forum' started by Stratiotes, Sep 9, 2004.
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Strat,
I've got Cato's Letters but haven't read it yet. Another excellent resource, though, on that time period is The Struggle for Sovereignty also published by Liberty Press. I'm bad to read the first volume of a set and not finish up, so I've only read half of the set.
I do believe that Cato and Brutus are mistaken as to the implicit danger of a standing army in a constitutional democratic republic. They were alarmed at standing armies in the time (in Cato's case, afterward to some extent in Brutus's) of monarchic despotism. Though there is always the danger of large concentrated coercive force, I don't believe it is nearly integral to a system such as ours.
It's interesting, BTW, that Yates and Lansing did their own version of the Notes on the [Federal Constitutional] Convention. -
His premise that standing armies are what occupies and oppresses the people is an astute observation.
But that is really a conclusion and based on a very different set of premises than what is evident in the history of the US, a nation made by war.
I do not see his parallelism here. But I surely do see myself as a Whig and not a Federalist! -
"his" whose? Rockwell?
I see myself as a Federalist in the Madisonian sense and not the Hamiltonian high Federalist sense. -
I am a democrat if you mean the party of Jefferson. I'm a republican if you mean the party of William Jefferson Clinton. God save the USA.