Americans Are Ill-Informed And Historical Analysis Is Largely Absent
Robert Kimball Shinkoskey Photos: Wikimedia Commons Turns out, lots of very instructive ancient history is hyper-relevant for what is happening today in the U.S. You see, things keep repeating, but we keep thinking our daily news is totally brand new. For example, pre-Christian countries like Athens and Rome practiced successful democracy long before we did here in America. The lessons learned from their experience holding on to democracy and then finally losing their grasp on it is available to us. However, we seem to have little interest in checking it out with everything else going on in our lives. Also, our political, business, and cultural leaders are too busy enhancing their own careers to learn from history, and our educational leaders only reach a small fraction of our people with their history lessons. For another example, there is a body of Judeo-Christian scripture that tells us a lot about democracy in a country at the root of our current Christian religious experience—ancient Israel. However, our Biblical scholars are much more interested in maintaining the fiction that the scripture is all about religion and ritual, and nothing about politics. Much easier to ignore the very practical ancient Hebrew Republic and the very political Jesus of Nazareth. From Greece and Rome, we learn that democracies must impeach politicians early and often, well before power overruns all of what little ethics, morals, and good faith office holders had in them before they ran for office. Problem today, folks, is that the degree of power that American politicians handle is vastly greater than what the ancients had at their disposal. Power is even more quickly seductive to them and devastating to the people than long ago. Abigail Adams, one of our Founding Mothers, put this nation on notice with her warning to her husband, America’s second President, John Adams. She wrote, “Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.” Abigail was strongly implying that men and women must work hard to resist the urge to usurp power from the people, and also that the law itself must prohibit them from doing so when they can no longer resist the urge. President Adams demonstrated the tyrannical personal impulse his wife saw in him during his time in office, as have many presidents after him. America finally corrected a glaring mistake in our foundational constitutional law in our 22nd Amendment, which limits the terms of Presidents to two, after President Franklin Roosevelt helped himself to four terms of elected office. However, even so, we demonstrated our lack of foresight by still allowing members of Congress and the federal courts to bathe themselves in power for 20, 30, even 40 years while they drive the country into the ditch, without ever imposing terms limits on them to prevent serious misbehavior. From ancient Israel we learn that regulation of luxury and prevention of a budding class of legal untouchables is an absolute necessity for the survival of a humanitarian, egalitarian government. The people of Israel, with the help of Moses, rejected the “golden calf” style of national government where the leader lounges around in a palace laden with gold fixtures only made possible by the rigorous taxation of the great majority of the people, as Aaron initially did to the people. Add to this the modern American “golden calf” habits of rampant monopoly in the economy, the piling up of luxury estates by a budding aristocratic class, and interest rate gouging of poor and middle-class people and we have monarchic autocracy on steroids today. Israel’s 2nd constitutional commandment against “graven images” makes clear that no political leader’s image is to go on coins, banners, statues while he is alive, making him so special that the people are persuaded to believe that he and his family must rule in a dynasty of kings immune from the reach of the laws forevermore. This kind of historical political analysis is nowhere to be found in journalistic reporting in America today. I think it must be in the interests of some pretty rich and powerful people to keep such a tight lid on it. Robert Kimball Shinkoskey is the author of books and editorials on democracy, religion, and the American presidency.
Black News 
Robert Kimball Shinkoskey
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
Turns out, lots of very instructive ancient history is hyper-relevant for what is happening today in the U.S. You see, things keep repeating, but we keep thinking our daily news is totally brand new.
For example, pre-Christian countries like Athens and Rome practiced successful democracy long before we did here in America. The lessons learned from their experience holding on to democracy and then finally losing their grasp on it is available to us. However, we seem to have little interest in checking it out with everything else going on in our lives. Also, our political, business, and cultural leaders are too busy enhancing their own careers to learn from history, and our educational leaders only reach a small fraction of our people with their history lessons.
For another example, there is a body of Judeo-Christian scripture that tells us a lot about democracy in a country at the root of our current Christian religious experience—ancient Israel. However, our Biblical scholars are much more interested in maintaining the fiction that the scripture is all about religion and ritual, and nothing about politics. Much easier to ignore the very practical ancient Hebrew Republic and the very political Jesus of Nazareth.
From Greece and Rome, we learn that democracies must impeach politicians early and often, well before power overruns all of what little ethics, morals, and good faith office holders had in them before they ran for office. Problem today, folks, is that the degree of power that American politicians handle is vastly greater than what the ancients had at their disposal. Power is even more quickly seductive to them and devastating to the people than long ago.
Abigail Adams, one of our Founding Mothers, put this nation on notice with her warning to her husband, America’s second President, John Adams. She wrote, “Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.” Abigail was strongly implying that men and women must work hard to resist the urge to usurp power from the people, and also that the law itself must prohibit them from doing so when they can no longer resist the urge. President Adams demonstrated the tyrannical personal impulse his wife saw in him during his time in office, as have many presidents after him.
America finally corrected a glaring mistake in our foundational constitutional law in our 22nd Amendment, which limits the terms of Presidents to two, after President Franklin Roosevelt helped himself to four terms of elected office. However, even so, we demonstrated our lack of foresight by still allowing members of Congress and the federal courts to bathe themselves in power for 20, 30, even 40 years while they drive the country into the ditch, without ever imposing terms limits on them to prevent serious misbehavior.
From ancient Israel we learn that regulation of luxury and prevention of a budding class of legal untouchables is an absolute necessity for the survival of a humanitarian, egalitarian government. The people of Israel, with the help of Moses, rejected the “golden calf” style of national government where the leader lounges around in a palace laden with gold fixtures only made possible by the rigorous taxation of the great majority of the people, as Aaron initially did to the people. Add to this the modern American “golden calf” habits of rampant monopoly in the economy, the piling up of luxury estates by a budding aristocratic class, and interest rate gouging of poor and middle-class people and we have monarchic autocracy on steroids today.
Israel’s 2nd constitutional commandment against “graven images” makes clear that no political leader’s image is to go on coins, banners, statues while he is alive, making him so special that the people are persuaded to believe that he and his family must rule in a dynasty of kings immune from the reach of the laws forevermore.
This kind of historical political analysis is nowhere to be found in journalistic reporting in America today. I think it must be in the interests of some pretty rich and powerful people to keep such a tight lid on it.
Robert Kimball Shinkoskey is the author of books and editorials on democracy, religion, and the American presidency.
