Gee’s Reviews > The Coming Caesars > Status Update

The Caesars of the future, if they eventually materialize, will only be a terrible symbol of something more terrible still: the death of our Western soul—and the body would not be long in following it to the grave of history

when wars and revolutions devastated the culture areas, the great bulk of the culture-people themselves began to long for peace and security at any price, for the constructive stability displayed by the civilization-states. It was the appeal thus involuntarily created that compelled the civilization-people to take over the leadership of their respective worlds, that compelled them to extend their more democratic soci

In Tocqueville’s words, “Of all societies in the world, those which will always have most difficulty in escaping absolute government will be precisely those societies in which aristocracy is no more, and can no more be.”

Democratic equality has done away with hereditary aristocracies everywhere, and in all cases, gigantic bureaucracies recruited “democratically” take their place—the most convenient tools in the hands of the Caesars: the Chinese mandarins who replaced the dying aristocracy, the Egyptian bureaucracy created by Pharaoh Amenemphat

The rise of Caesarism in America is considerably eased by a number of American features. In the first place, democratic equality, with its concomitant conformism and psychological socialization, is more fully developed in the United States than it has ever been anywhere, at any time. There are no social barriers, such as existed in Rome’s remnants of aristocratic tradition

Augustus tried strenuously to inculcate a respect for the constitution and revive the “rule of law” that the exaggerated adulation of the Roman masses and the Oriental populations for his person made difficult. He was forced by the popular will to become the absolute monarch he did not want to be. It was the long-term change in psychological climate, not the formal breaches of the constitution, that destroyed the rep

attempted time and again to bolster those failing institutions that had raised Rome above all other nations, and also why they could not find the men to do so. It was not the republican institutions as such but a high-minded ruling class that had raised Rome above all other nations, and this class no longer existed.

Public opinion was by and large still in favor of the old constitution of the republic, but without being willing to make the necessary sacrifices to uphold it. Everywhere, it was a sentimental attachment to constitutional forms rather than to the substance of freedom. All that could now be done was support one strong man against another

The larger a community becomes, the less does it seem to respect an assembly, the more it is attracted by an individual man. The reason for this is plain: the larger the masses, the more they display feminine traits by emphasizing emotional reactions rather than rational judgment.

The need of Americans to personalize and dramatize all issues can be satisfied only by concentrating attention on the President—thereby giving him increasing power. Because he can now communicate over the head of Congress with the nation, he can always dominate legislative proceedings