Liberty

Terre Haute, IN – On the Dime, which was first created by the Coinage Act of 1792, and given its current design in 1946, with the head of Franklin D. Roosevelt on it, is engraved the word Liberty.

The word Liberty is one that has been fought over for centuries. Its derivative, liberal, once meant that you were a conservative, but eventually came to mean quite the opposite, although, according an Australian man I met recently, it still means conservative in his country.

When the Hippy movement came in the 1970s, during the Cold War, it hailed as a movement towards freedom and liberty. The Renaissance, although with very different styles of clothing, music, and hygiene, was also a movement towards freedom and liberty of thought and idea.

Many protests are about liberty. Men and women march the streets asking for liberty to do this or that; to abort their unborn babies, or, as it was during prohibition in the 1920s and 30s, to drink alcoholic beverages.

Also on the Dime, beneath the president’s face and the word liberty, is a set of words that there have been court cases to have removed. They are the words “In God We Trust.”

Liberty is seen by many as the lack of restraint of bonds. It is seen as the freedom to choose any way you want. However, those that believe in peace, in order, in prosperity, in law, and in the pursuit of happiness, recognize the danger of such an idea.

The book Death Raft shows, in the story of the ship Medusa, what happens when liberty is left unchecked. The ship struck a sandbar off of Africa. Without enough room in the boats, a raft was built, on which 150 men piled. They had two casks of water, but those fell overboard during fighting. They fought, killed each other, and fell overboard in a desperate struggle to survive. The other boats abandoned them in panic.

If men were left alone to do as they chose, we would have a world of Death Rafts. Constant civil unrest and bloodshed, and indeed, that is what a great deal of our history is, wars and madness because of appetites not held in check. If liberty is left without a restraint then there is no liberty at all. When there is too much liberty there is none. Law was created by God to defend man against himself. Liberty is only useful to those who know how to govern themselves.

“Liberty is not the right to choose, it is the result of making the right choices.”

 

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott

New Rome

Wadsworth, WI – It was the city of seven hills. Its architecture was known then for beauty, and is still remembered and recognized today. With an emperor and a senate, it was the seat of authority and power to all the world around it. It was also the site of one of the world’s largest churches. It housed a massive welfare state. It was the home of a proud people who felt complacently the most powerful people on the planet. Armies paid homage to them, but at the outskirts of their nation barbarian invaders lurked. But this mighty city was not Rome; this city of seven hills was Constantinople.

What is often forgotten about the fall of Rome is that when it fell it was not truly a world rocking event. It was a fizzle, a gasp, a last dying breath. When the city of Rome fell, the empire did not. The capitol of Rome had been moved in 330 by Constantine the great to “New Rome;” but the name put on the plaque erected by the city fathers was soon forgotten, and the first emperor to hold court there was the one after whom it was called.

Rome was now a social and political back water. What had once been considered an opulent province was now considered mediocre or worse compared to the Eastern provinces, rich with wealth. The history of this Eastern Roman empire, complete with its legions and purple clad emperors, began it history of over 1,000 years. The Western empire lasted, at the most, 500.

The eastern empire must not be forgotten when studying the fall of the Roman empire. Its history stretches through the crusades. It was not until 1453, when a massive army of Muslims besieged and, after a long and desperate fight which nearly turned them back, took the city. A little boy named Columbus had already been born two years earlier.

The empire of Rome eventually fell because of worldview. The war between East and West was brought the finale gasp, but that war also weakened the nation for many years before the finale battle. Dissentions and fighting also weakened it from within.

In the end, Rome fell because nothing lasts forever. The greatest pieces of architecture will collapse and someday be forgotten. Empires have come and empires have gone throughout the history of the world, from Babylon to the “eternal British empire” upon which the sun never set.

Now, Europe looks peaceful, and America secure in its greatness. But this is only a moment in time. The history of the world has had many peaceful moments, many treaties, but nothing will stand forever, not even Everest, it too will one day be washed into the sea. They cannot last because man always makes mistakes in all his kingdoms, his works, his ways. So in a way the one reason why empires fall is because they are made by men. The only thing that will last forever is the church of God, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.

 

Andrew C. Abbott

The Fall of Rome

Wadsworth, WI – He was an obscure general.

In 453, having finished his training in Alexandria in Neo-Platonism, Anathemas was sent to the wild and untamed border of Danubia to clear up the problems with barbarians there, made ever since Attila the Hun had died.

Anathemas was soon the emperor. He was killed in a civil war in Rome not long after. His last stronghold was the basilica. After him one war after another took place for several years, but the empire was gone. Twelve year old Romulus Augustus was the last emperor to claim the title. It was fitting perhaps that first king and the last emperor should have the same name. One had, according to legend, lost his brother. The other had lost his empire.

Many, many hundreds of tomes have been written on Rome, its rise and its fall. The greatest and most well-known being Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, at over a 1,000 pages, it makes the case that Christianity destroyed the empire. The speculations have been endless.

But despite the fact that it toppled in the end, everyone knows about Rome. Even those who know nothing about history know about Rome, and they know it fell.

The fact that it fell is one of the first things that comes to mind when people think of the Roman empire. They will often say that it came about because of the barbarian invasions. Adam Smith, the famous economist and author of the magnum opus of classical economics The Wealth of Nations, asserted that the empire fell because of a lack of moving about of the soldiers. The legions, he says, lost their division of labor, had multiple jobs, and thus disintegrated.

Others, like Robert O’Connell in his book Of Arms and Men states that it was the lack of ingenuity in the army, and the absence of new weapons. A lecture I heard earlier this year in St. Louis stated that they fell in large part because they were dull, and had no inventions of their own.

But why did Rome fall?

That is the subject of another article.

Andrew C. Abbott

Deeds, not Words

Delvian, WI – Henry Clay, (1777-1852) was a senator and presidential candidate during the time of American expansion and the politics leading to the Civil War. While still a lawyer, the story is told in The Essential American, that one night he stayed so long at the wine that in the morning he mistakenly argued for the wrong side. He won. The defendant said to him “you have ruined me!” Henry Clay then argued the case for the other side, and won again.

Facts are stubborn things, but theories are more stubborn. Nearly anything can be placed in any light. Just as things are seen through the color of the light shown on them, it is the same with facts.

Words are not only easy to use to manipulate facts, but so is the way they are said. St. Augustine said that speech making was completely dependent upon delivery. Many times in history troops have been moved to great actions by their generals. The generals used words to move them, saying only certain things, not mentioning the hardships to come, but only ones that are past.

It is the same with many army recruitment campaigns. Such songs as “You’re a lucky fellow Mr. Smith” of World War II, were a part of a campaign to make the army glamorous. But during the same war another campaign was used to frighten the men into signing by warning them of the Germans. It was the way the words were said and the words they used.

Words are powerful. But they cannot do everything. Many politicians can speak well of how they will save the world, but they have done that since the time of Greece and before. It is easy to sway people momentarily, or even for a period of years, with words and rhetoric. However, it is not words that will build a city, or a nation, it is deeds.

After a time words fade, the sounds begin to sounds hollow and old, and the once new phrases begin to sound cliché.  But actions must take place. In the end, they are all that will count. We only have the book the Acts of the Apostles, not the speeches of the apostles; it was the acts we were to remember. When it all burns up, our tombstones will not tell what we said; it will tell what we did.

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott