The restoration of the Republic

In my sixth and seventh consulships, when I had extinguished the flames of civil war, after receiving by universal consent the absolute control of affairs, I transferred the republic from my own control to the will of the senate and the Roman people. 

- Caesar Augustus, Res Gestae 34

The Res Gestae Divi Augustus was Imperial Roman propaganda, commissioned personally by Augustus to put out his side of the story of his reign.  In it, he declares that he restored the Roman Republic, torn after a century of bloody civil war.  Well, that's how it has been translated by historians.

Except the ancient Romans did not have the idea of a "Republic" as we know it.  Plato famously wrote a book called The Republic, although since he wrote in Greek it was actually called Politeia. Translated into Latin as De Republica, Plato's politeia bears no resemblance to any modern concept of a Republic so we should not be surprised that the Romans didn't really understand notions of bicameral legislatures and all that.

Translations are funny things.  A better translation of politeia might be "the body politick" - this expression was popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  It ran a wide range of options, from individual democracy (as in ancient Athens) to tyranny (rule by a Tyrant, or dictator).  Check your concept of "Republic" at the door.

Likewise with Caesar Augustus, who unsurprisingly did not speak English nor have an Ivy League education.  He used the term res publica, not Republic.  Res publica is notoriously hard to translate because the translations come out clumsy but more accurate, or graceful but less accurate.  It combines government, the economy, public morality, and the happiness of the people.  You see why it is so hard to translate.

So when Augustus restored the res publica, he did not mean at all that he "restored the Roman Republic".  But his propaganda was very much that he restored things to the way they were supposed to be, before all that nasty civil war stuff.

This may be our future.  Our Res Publica is in pretty bad shape, and getting worse.  It very well may take things getting very bad indeed until someone with the right marketing and messaging "restores the American Republic".  What it will look like is anyone's guess, but Augustus' model was an entirely new one that was very carefully draped in the cloak of the Old Ways.

I wrote about this a long time ago: The Fifth American Republic:

If we were going to vote ourselves out of this, we would have done it 60 years ago.  But even then, it wasn't really America.  Moldbug yet again:

By my count, Anglophone North America ex Canada is on its fifth legal regime. The First Republic was the Congressional regime, which illegally abolished the British colonial governments. The Second Republic was the Constitutional regime, which illegally abolished the Articles of Confederation. The Third Republic was the Unionist regime, which illegally abolished the principle of federalism. The Fourth Republic is the New Deal regime, which illegally abolished the principle of limited government.

Of course, all these coups are confirmed by the principle of adverse possession. Otherwise we would find ourselves looking for the rightful heirs of Metacom, or Edward the Confessor, or whoever. Nor is there any automatic reason to treat any of these five regimes as better or worse than any of the others. If, like me, you're tired of the Fourth Republic and would like to see it abolished, all we know about its successor is that it will be the Fifth Republic. It has no need to resemble the Third, the Second or the First. 

We snicker at the French, always rewriting their Constitution.  We gloss over that our Constitution has been a "living document" at least since the time of James Polk.  At least the French had the decency to write their changes down in public.

Archaeologists unearth layers of detritus, reconstructing ancient living patterns from the cast off, scattered rubble.  Similarly, we can observe the layers of parasitic attachment to the Res Publica.  RTWT, all of the links.

And so Obama is a commie, as it Mitt Romney, George Bush major, and Eisenhower.  Non-commies (Sarah Palin [and Donald Trump - Borepatch]) are fiercely excluded from the political Great Game.  What's different is that information flow now is possible outside of the political and intellectual elite.  The perceived legitimacy of this class is now at a historic low.  How will it end?

Who can tell?  But one thing is clear - it cannot continue as it is, with the Elite papering over the cracks with increasingly low caliber drivel.  The Republic waits, expectantly.  Maybe it will just be a higher caliber drivel.

Or maybe it will be Peace.