With all the current prattling by conservative hacks about "liberals" and "liberalism", as if caring about the conditions of other people is a horrible attitude, you would think the more intelligent among the hacks would understand the lessons of history. Or is that too "liberal" for them?
Without the lessons of history, our future may be a dark time. And of lessons, history has plenty to offer us--about ourselves, our children, and the roots of anti-liberalism.
In its baldest expression, anti-liberalism is not caring about your neighbors, the people of your city, the people of your country, or the human species. You care about "country" or "freedom" or "business"--but not about people. You paint yourself as a "rugged individualist" or a "philosophical conservative" or, more recently, as a political and social "moderate"--because these days "moderate" may be a safer label at dinner parties. But no matter the label, it's all anti-liberalism and striking in the way the lessons of history are so conveniently ignored.
Anti-liberals have their slogans. "Self-reliance" and "fiscal responsibility" and various other anti-liberal slogans fly around the media like intoxicated pigeons, but if one looks behind the slogans they are all part of the political mechanics of anti-liberalism.
The most cogent historical lesson for us is probably ancient Rome, a thousand-year nightmare of anti-liberalism that made 20th century Fascists (who tried so hard to ape the Romans) look like amateurs. Although 20th century Soviet Communists did not try to ape the Romans, they quickly embraced an anti-liberalism as degenerate as that of the Fascists. Absolute power and anti-liberalism feed each other.
Anti-liberalism is a social attitude, and we need to take it seriously and try to understand it. The roots of social attitudes are always intriguing. How do they arise? How are they sustained? Why do they change?
We can make substantive contact with the anti-liberalism of ancient Rome through a glass case in the Louvre museum in Paris. It's a small terra cotta piece from ancient Rome that needs some close attention.
The general image of the piece is more imposing than the craftsmanship. Most of the details are eroded, but enough remains to startle our eyes and mind. A woman is astride a bull, apparently tied to the animal, hands tied behind her back, her face turned upward as she no doubt screams. She appears to be wearing a loincloth, but otherwise she's naked. A leopard has mounted the bull in front of the woman, the leopard on its haunches with its paws grasping the woman's waist, its mouth at her chest as it tears at one of her breasts in the process of killing her.
This is no presumed heroic gladiator fighting a wild beast with sword and shield. This is a woman with tied hands and no weapon presented as live meat to a wild animal. Miniature pieces with similar depictions were apparently sold in shops near the various arenas of the Roman Empire, souvenirs of the "games", where on the bloody sand the bulls and leopards and live human meat and various spectacles of human killing were seen directly by a cheering mob of many thousands. The spectacles were seen by the crowds from dawn to dusk, at least a hundred days a year for centuries. When school children today are taught the glories of ancient Rome, the tranquility of the Pax Romana, the noble life of Roman orators and poets, the gore and human blood on the sands of the arenas remains an adult secret. We hide from our children the reality that in ancient Rome death was a spectator sport.
There are those who believe that it's not possible to objectively evaluate the violent acts of another culture. Not only do I disagree with that attitude, but I think it's necessary that we make many such evaluations, mandatory that we try our best to understand anti-liberalism--and especially its dangerous culmination in murderous group violence. The alternative, to place historical phenomena like American lynch mobs and Nazi death camps beyond analysis, is too simplistic and too dangerous. We must analyze, take into account our personal cultural biases--and continue to analyze.
The population of the city of Rome during the early Empire was about one million. The slave population totaled about 500,000. The legal status of nearly everyone else fluctuated through the centuries, but in general anyone living in the city of Rome who was not a slave or a freed slave had full citizenship, including the children of freed slaves born after freedom of their parents but not before. Within the group of citizens of Rome, social status was determined officially by wealth and property more than by lineage. Many politically powerful people were the descendants of freed slaves in a family line that some time after freedom managed to acquire sufficient wealth. It's probable that approximately 1,000 extremely rich families ruled the city and the empire.
A Roman slave had no legal existence and was more or less considered a detached part of the master's body. A former slave had some privileges but not full citizenship. Children of freed slaves during most of the Empire did not have full citizenship and had little social acceptance. On the other hand, freed slaves and their descendants who managed to accumulate wealth (all shopkeepers and tradesmen were former slaves or the descendants of slaves) achieved social status and even had access to noble titles.
During the Empire, any slave--man, woman, or child--could be killed, tortured, or raped by a master essentially without recourse. In contrast, if a slave in a household murdered the master, all the slaves in the household were usually executed. Rome was a city stratified according to social class, with social class determined essentially by wealth. Twenty per cent of the population of the city of Rome was on the grain dole (the Roman version of welfare)--mostly freedmen and their children--all without a source of income.
Approximately 600 senators lived in Rome, all with many slaves, some with as may as 100 slaves. Wealthy commercial families also had many slaves in their household. In addition, many citizens of wealth maintained farms and vineyards outside Rome, all the agricultural industries manned by slaves. The essential social situation was hardly complicated and was familiar to many societies before and since: oppression of a majority by a minority, with harsh punishment and fear of punishment as mechanisms of control: an apotheosis of anti-liberalism.
(to be continued)
