Cities are a manifestation of the collective vision of its people. As their people dream, so their cities grow over time. They are its grandest visions, with the potential to be great.

Comparing a silvan city like Vienna, over 2000 years old, to a neon metropolis like New York is a demonstration of how, whereas Europeans had ages to meld their minds into collective commonwealths, the United States melting pot has only begun to work. Americans are all over the place temporally and culturally, despite sharing a locality, and that has a jarring effect on the civic scenery.

To bring unity to that vision, to create a cultural narrative, is a great opportunity for any aspiring Academic, knowing that the seeds of the ideal city he plants will find fertile ground. But whereas many cities spring up, others are founded. While some develop their mythos organically, others find their beginnings steeped in bloodshed.

Whereas America had her revolution, Rome’s early legends show a city founded on rape and violence. As legend has it, Mars raped the mother or Romulus and Remus. What happens next reiterates that. From there, Romulus, after killing his brother to have the honor of founding a city, populated it with exiled criminals and the Rape of the Sabine Women. Violent beginnings give rise – to the providential eye – the opportunity to create origin myths.

A truncated history. Both Cicero and Virgil saw the opportunity in Rome’s hazy red past to root the city in the Platonic ideals essential to any good society. Plato, had led the way with his vision of the politea. Virgil saw this opportunity and rooted Rome’s history in Greece’s past. In the Aeneid, he describes a cultural founding of the city that Augustus was building, Augustus who was turning a city of brick into a city of marble.

Augustus based this vision on the one Cicero described to Julius Caesar in Pro Marcello (Virgil Lesson 2, wherein we find out whether Cicero really ordered the assasination of Julius Caesar), and we know he truly actualized this vision because we have his Res Gestae, a historical account of his many great deeds, the temples he built, etc. It is for this reason he gives a shout out in the next section I must translate.

As for how Cicero rewrote Rome’s past, his new history is recounted in my thesis.

Originally posted 2010-03-09 04:02:36. Republished by Old Post Promoter

I was talking to a geometrician this weekend, and the conversation had interesting implications for our system. If you thought that our country’s education system was bad due only to lack of funding, think again. The problems began with the crusade on geometry in the 1920’s, 30’s, and 40’s. Likewise, the deeper problems within our system do not necessarily reach back to the inception of civilization itself with civilizations like Babylon.

History was not intended to go this way. Christianity was hijacked forty days after its inception, just as Neal Stephenson asserts, but it was hijacked from Rome.

St. Paul stole the ideas from Cicero, but although the form is familiar, the meat of them could not be more different. While Cicero, evokes “terror” of the flame and the sword besieging the republic, Paul pillaged his techniques not for the integrity of the republic but to the detriment of suckers.

Meanwhile, Augustine actually wrote his City of God right over Cicero’s Republic (note the similarity of titles: The usage is not accidental – Augustine was actually using Cicero’s geometrical margins for his own purposes without the knowledge of how to do it himself), a fact that wasn’t discovered until the 18th century, when the forgery was discovered and the work was reinstated, not as a piece of superstition or metaphysical rhetoric, but as a guiding force for our civilization.

Likewise, Descartes’ proof of god, for example, is very disappointing to read, at least for the enlightened eye. It’s all “there was a mountain, and triangles,” but the proof is not well-rounded, and in fact is just rhetoric. The current disdain for proofs of god that stemmed from that is disturbing.

Cicero was a big proponent of an educated populace until he despaired of the fickleness of the public towards the republic. However, in this country the government not only realized that education was the stepping stone to enlightenment, but they took away the primary keys. Geometry was the first to go.

The current basis for teaching math, including calculus, has no basis in how math is supposed to be taught. All enlightened concepts correspond to math, and any enlightened person can easily understand math and mathematical concepts almost instantaneously. That is because they work from the concept to the formula, rather than the other way around.

For over two millennia, Euclid was the de facto geometry teacher. Why? Because in his enlightened state he invented the methodologies, and thus was the perfect person to introduce them. Becoming enlightened is difficult enough when exposed to the proper educational and mind-opening processes. Moreover, much of our symbolic body is comprised of geomtetrical symbols (the pyramid and the eye, for example); geometry is fundamental to both the world and our minds, and no doubt this is why it was the first thing to go.

Not only can’t the lack of education continue, but in fact it is one of the key components to a proper democracy, as the Athenians well knew. Moreover, those who are not properly educated (lead out) are misled, and their entire persons go awry, and lack sustainability.

To have an entire country purposely mis-raised to be slaves bodes questionably for posterity, as an educated populace is one integral aspect of a true democracy. Moreover, an actual conspiracy against education on this scale cannot be tolerated, and perhaps the best way to oppose the trend of ignorance in this country is to begin again at the beginning, with the reinstatement of geometrical learning tools like Zome “toys,” multi-dimensional geometrical modeling pieces.

Originally posted 2007-06-12 06:52:38. Republished by Old Post Promoter

 If Athens went out and hired the military dictatorship of the Spartans

If you think that the people who sanction? this will be more merciful to us, caveat emptor. The country.

It’s time to turn from politicans and rhetoricians to statesmen. It is up to statesmen to speak for the people.

If Humpty Dumpty has a gre

Render unto Caesar what is Caesars, feh. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, feh.

On 6 senators in Roman history were uncorrupt enough to refuse a proconsulship. In ttfact, corruption was so commonplace in Rome that in between offices, or the course of

One of them, Cicero, Catalilne

Originally posted 2007-12-04 04:26:40. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Although this would work just as well if instead of Rome we put [insert name of republic here], but note Cicero says “No new Rome.” Cicero’s Republic is always the first source on policy for all republics.

This excerpt from Cicero’s speech against agrarian law, which Cicero deems  the most important  of his speeches, carried such weight because Roman agrarian legislation was the reason for the fall of the republic.

He gave this speech upon the first day of his ascension to consulship, when the republic was at it’s height. He overturned the law, and defeated the legislation. Pompey would later overturn the republic to gain it in the Lex Julia.

VIII. In fact, if we look round to survey everything which is pleasant and acceptable to the people, we shall find that nothing is so popular as peace, and concord, and ease. You have given up to me a city made anxious with suspicion, in suspense from fear, harassed to death by your proposed laws, and assemblies, and seditions. You have inflamed the hopes of the wicked; you have filled the virtuous with alarms; you have banished good faith from the forum, and dignity from the republic.

[24] Amid all this commotion and agitation of minds and circumstances, when the voice and authority of the consul has suddenly, from amid such great darkness, dawned on the Roman people; when it has shown that nothing need be feared; that no regular army, no band of extempore ruffians, no colony, no sale of the revenues, no new of command, no reign of decemvirs, no new Rome or opposition seat of empire, will be allowed to exist while we are consuls; that the greatest tranquillity of peace and ease will be secured; then, no doubt, we shall have much reason to ear that this beautiful agrarian law of yours will appear popular.

[25] But when I have displayed the wickedness of your counsels, the dishonesty of your law, and the treachery which is planned by those popular tribunes of the people against the Roman people; then, I suppose, I shall have reason to fear that I shall not be allowed to appear in the assembly, for the purpose of opposing you; especially when I have determined and resolved so to conduct myself in my consulship, (and the duties of the consulship cannot be discharged with dignity and freedom, in any other manner,) as neither to desire any province, nor honour, nor dignity nor advantage nor anything whatever which can have any hindrance thrown in its way by any tribune of the people.

[26] The consul states, in full senate, on the calends of January, that if the present condition of the republic continues, and if no new event arises, on account of which he cannot with honour avoid it, he will not go to any province. By that means I shall be able, O conscript fathers, so to behave myself in this magistracy, as to be able to restrain any tribune of the people who is hostile to the republic,–to despise any one who is hostile to myself.

-Cicero, On the Agrarian Law

Originally posted 2007-08-31 21:29:07. Republished by Old Post Promoter

WE came through a dark age and the end of the ice age for christ’s sake. and everyone’s trying to pretend like it didn’t happen. But those were dark years for Europe and Rome. That we camGe through it we thank to the providence of Cicero and the Greeks (at Constantinople) for carrying us through.

Scholarship will try to tell you otherwise but trying to forget that there was a dark age only causes us to  pay less tribute to the ancients, to whom we owe all the renaissances and revivals of classical thought, certainly petrarch but also newton owe a great deal to classical "philosophy" (science meets spirituality).the fundamental knowledge was there.

c If all philosophy is just rheotirc, then the reublic is very important. Not only must we fulfill the former age, but we must be the vangaurd for the

where did the ancients get it all? there have been many ages of human history, the greeks recorded with the alchemist hesiod that they’d come out of a dark age.

Originally posted 2007-12-08 08:41:42. Republished by Old Post Promoter

While all eyes were on Obama to announce a winning strategy against pirates off the coast of Somalia this week, I had complete faith in his team to choose the right tactic. After all, with such a diligent team they couldn’t miss historic naval strategy of Pompey the Great against pirates: cut off their land ports.

Somalia has no government. Despite international outcry against entering a sovereign state, the fact remains that Somalia doesn’t have one, or that’s all they have; no matter how the denizens of this anarchist country may feel about this state of affairs, (“The ruined men of all nations,” in the words of the great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen, “a piratical state with a peculiar esprit de corps.”) its lucky for us.

Similar Historic Battles

Caesar vs. the Cilician Pirates

When pirates captured and hatched a plan to ransom a young Caesar back to Rome for 20 gold talons, he laughed at them for not knowing who he was, and said, “I’m worth fifty, at least.”

After he’d been ransomed back, he rallied a fleet and went back and destroyed the pirates to a man, crucifying the lot of them.

While he was in captivity in the pirate camp, the other pirates said that, although a prisoner, he acted like he owned the place, joining in all their pirate games

Caesar vs. the Gauls

In another example of this ploy by land, in his Gallic Wars Caesar was already familiar with a tactic wherein he would double his troops back to the next town that the Gauls received grain from and then seized it, ensuring that the Gauls went without supplies in their own land.

Pompey vs. the Pirates

• Pompey vs. the Pirates The above quote from a famous classicist is from this link, an article by another famous classicist. The article is about how a September 11 like event, wherein consuls were kidnapped by pirates in Rome itself, so after brushing himself off from Cilicia, Pompey hatched a plan emptying the treasury for a campaign it only took him three  months to complete.
• Pompey vs. Ancient Piracy from militaryhistoryonline.com,
• Piracy in the Greco-Roman World –shows that even after Pompey used the hype to make himself “Great,”  “pirate” remained a buzzword in the senate, and indeed, this issue has created a lot of buzz in the news. The pirates were further important because they threatened the sanctions of Pax Romana; likewise, modern pirates threaten the United Nations, which has banned piracy. Moreover, they have adopted a very modern strategy , which is to use this as an excuse to restore order and a republic to Somalia, which is for anarchists as Dubai is to libertarians: a living example of the failure of their theories.

Originally posted 2009-04-12 09:57:59. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Capitalism is so anti-American. Did I say that? It is the antithesis of everything our governmental model should stand for.

According to Cicero, a republic which is not just is not a republic. Ergo, a republic which is not for the people, by the people, is not a republic too. Therefore, a republic which is for money, is not a republic. So, capitalism is unrepublican. Ha! It’s quite true.

INTELLECTUALS AGREE

Originally posted 2008-06-10 00:33:39. Republished by Old Post Promoter

I find it sort of odd, no, scratch that, typical that people disagree with the Empire. Ah, congratulations you rebellious little humans. Congratulations on being rebellious! That’s good, that desire to fight for truth and justice. Unfortunately, not only could fighting against the Empire probably be detrimental to all humankind, it is probably one of the truest, most good things that we have. Be rebellious about being rebellious, be radical about being radical, and you might just arrive at the truth, sort of like looking at your reflection at a fun house through a mirror that makes you look fat and another that makes you look skinny. I don’t mean that to be clever: I mean that, the conspiracy is that so few people know the truth, (they are either corrupt, or angry at corruption, ruling out about 99.99% of the population), and so it has so few champions. Whenever something your government does that’s wrong pisses you off, that’s good! Once again, like the fun house, when you look at the corruption, you see how things should be, so corruption tautologically reveals the ideal. And so you can see why the truth isn’t a really popular thing. People tend to think that the corrupt thing represents the government, when in fact corruption is the very bane of government, and eats at our ideal systems like rot, with the ability to bring them low.
Another reason why the truth about matters like Republic and Empire are so popular is because you don’t know what they ARE, and the reason why you don’t know is the very reason why you should. You don’t know because you were never taught in school that what a republic is, in fact, the definition is not on wikipedia. Despite pages and pages of notes saying that a republic is a mixed constitutional system, that the definition that states it is a government which is not a kingship is wrong, and that it is strictly a government composed of elements of democracy, kingship and oligarchy in perfect balance, they (the corrupt) do not want you to know this, because if you did, why you would have the key to making an educated decision on every bill that it came across your desk come voting time, as the republic says you can, that people are wise enough to judge the information before them, and you would be, and this is why they don’t want you to know. because you see, unlike in a democracy, in a republic the people vote on laws, so the easiest way to corrupt a republic is through the people (the senate and the president are checked by more laws) the corrupt people who get in office don’t want you to learn this, and so it is not taught in schools. And if people learned this, that a republic is a government for the people, by the people, they would be free (free to take part in their government).
You know what other simple defitions they haven’t even begun to be taught in schools? Many of these truths have been hidden so long you’d almost need a degree in classical history and Latin to know them, that’s how long the truth has been hiding. Empire is one of these words that the rebellious love to hate. Anarchists even more hate this word, as they hate all government, not realizing their own part in the cycle of governmental decay (see section). I shold have definitions of both these words on the site, since

Originally posted 2009-03-28 08:04:23. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Most people don’t realize the truth in morality, until they become enlightened. They don’t understand there is a need to be moral, when they cannot hear the furies torment you. Samsara threatens when you think a wrong thought, if you step off the path.

It is the duty of the wise to guard the more foolish, and many do not know the reason to be moral, and think it is okay to be shiesty.

Is it is the duty of leaders to be representatives for morality? Certainly we want them to be moral in their political decisions. But is not what is done in the privacy of your own home, your business?

Certainly it is illegal to beat your own child, but this is because it is a crime against another citizen, and are we not all citizens?

Does this give the right to life people a start?

According to the scientifically divine wisdom of the ancients, when their vast and mighty civilization was at an intellectually advanced state, the republic (a mixed constitutional system, balancing the elements of kinship and oligarchy with those of democracy, in a rule for the people, by the people) does not have jurisdiction over your private life, because it is outside of the public sphere.

This brings up a problematic conundrum with respect to a republic as opposed to a democracy. Technically, voting is undemocratic; if the the majority is allowed to decide for the minority, it is mob rule, or ochlocracy, democracy’s opposite, according to my Columbia History professor, Richard Billows. And if the minority aren’t served, then you can have an injustice.

Thus we must be mindful of this in issues such as abortion. If the fetus is judged to be not yet alive, then it is still a woman’s right to choose. This is a big choice, and one that politicians are forced to navigate.

However, in the public sphere, it is the wise who traditionally ruled, and received more votes because they would cast theirs for the interest of the republic, having been enlightened as to its nature, and its basis on a foundation of good. Their knowledge also gave them the wisdom to judge political issue morally, defining the boundaries of the law.

Past this line at which we have judged it acceptable for politicians to legislate morality, we have another type of morality, at which they must be moral in their decision not to step over.

Originally posted 2008-09-07 13:04:29. Republished by Old Post Promoter

4.10 The Master said, “In the affairs of the world, a gentlemen has no parti pris: he takes the side of justice.”

Originally posted 2008-12-15 03:17:27. Republished by Old Post Promoter