I can agree with the rep/oligarchy one. The United States is a Democratic Republic. We vote directly on our constitutions, however, we elect reps to make laws. A fairly better division of power than Rome, and so your answer stands as good or better than my own.

>> ^MilkmanDan:
But then again, by that standard has there ever been a nation that was a democracy? The US follows a fairly similar system (democratically elected Senate / Legislature, electoral college for Executives) but certainly isn't 100% entirely governed by popular vote. So one claiming that the USA is a democracy should technically phrase it as either a "representative democracy" or "democratic republic".
I figure Rome (ruled by Senate) was pretty close to being a "democracy", comparable to any modern country that we label as such. Which makes one think that it isn't a half bad idea for all of us to keep a watchful eye out for the next person who would aspire to be Caesar...
edit: Very notable that a much smaller percentage of the total population of Rome actually got to vote for their Senators as compared to an average modern "democracy". So the argument could be made that if the USA is a "representative democracy", Rome (while the Senate ruled) was a "representative oligarchy".>> ^Lawdeedaw:
Wait, an elected body ruled over Rome... but, this guy says later, since it had 300 that ruled it became a democracy? Um, wasn't it still a republic? I mean, democracy would be if everyone voted and I don't recall Rome being a nation of 300...

But then again, by that standard has there ever been a nation that was a democracy? The US follows a fairly similar system (democratically elected Senate / Legislature, electoral college for Executives) but certainly isn't 100% entirely governed by popular vote. So one claiming that the USA is a democracy should technically phrase it as either a "representative democracy" or "democratic republic".

I figure Rome (ruled by Senate) was pretty close to being a "democracy", comparable to any modern country that we label as such. Which makes one think that it isn't a half bad idea for all of us to keep a watchful eye out for the next person who would aspire to be Caesar...

*edit: Very notable that a much smaller percentage of the total population of Rome actually got to vote for their Senators as compared to an average modern "democracy". So the argument could be made that if the USA is a "representative democracy", Rome (while the Senate ruled) was a "representative oligarchy".>> ^Lawdeedaw:

Wait, an elected body ruled over Rome... but, this guy says later, since it had 300 that ruled it became a democracy? Um, wasn't it still a republic? I mean, democracy would be if everyone voted and I don't recall Rome being a nation of 300...

<insert obligatory shakespeare quote here, perhaps something from julias caesar.. here>

"et tu, William?"

>> ^joedirt:

she is an idiot.
You can find even worse examples in the Torah or Bible. So this is retarded. Yes, life WAS different hundreds of years ago.


Did you even watch the video? Whether or not life was different is irrelevant. Muslims look to the life of Muhammed as an example of how to live.

I admire Caesar and Genghis Khan as strategists and leaders, but at the same time I can recognise that both were guilty of what would be considered hideous atrocities in modern times. As such, I don't look to them for moral guidance. Unfortunately, Muhammed is not viewed with the same filter.

^And choosing to let your daughter live makes you feel like a primitive, hormone-driven animal?

I absolve you of your guilt, my child

I think power is a relevant factor in how shortsighted you can allow yourself to be. if you're king of the world, you'd better think carefully about your decisions, because they will have a huge impact. If you're a regular middle class guy in the western world, none of what you do is probably going to have a very huge (think Augustus Caesar) impact, so you're allowed to just follow the regular old Categorical Imperative and indulge in selfish, instinctual behaivor, ne?

Only job I ever got fired from was my very first job; working at a Little Caesar's pizza when I was 15. I kept calling in because I had rather gotten stoned with my buddies, and the final call went something like this:

Me: "Yeah, I'm not coming in..."
Asst. manager: "Hold on." (covers the phone, someone yelling in the background)
Asst. manager: "Did you hear that?"
Me: "Hear what?"
AM: "Joel said if you're not coming in, then don't come in again."
Me: "Does that mean I'm fired?"
AM: "Well, if you don't come in..."
Me: "Okay!" (hung up on her)

We then got baked and went and got Pizza Hut.

Chapter 1 courtesy of the http://richarddawkins.net/article,4217,Extract-from-Chapter-One-of-The-Greatest-Show-on-Earth,Richard-Dawkins---Times-Online

Imagine that you are a teacher of Roman history and the Latin language, anxious to impart your enthusiasm for the ancient world — for the elegiacs of Ovid and the odes of Horace, the sinewy economy of Latin grammar as exhibited in the oratory of Cicero, the strategic niceties of the Punic Wars, the generalship of Julius Caesar and the voluptuous excesses of the later emperors. That’s a big undertaking and it takes time, concentration, dedication. Yet you find your precious time continually preyed upon, and your class’s attention distracted, by a baying pack of ignoramuses (as a Latin scholar you would know better than to say ignorami) who, with strong political and especially financial support, scurry about tirelessly attempting to persuade your unfortunate pupils that the Romans never existed. There never was a Roman Empire. The entire world came into existence only just beyond living memory. Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Romansh: all these languages and their constituent dialects sprang spontaneously and separately into being, and owe nothing to any predecessor such as Latin.

Instead of devoting your full attention to the noble vocation of classical scholar and teacher, you are forced to divert your time and energy to a rearguard defence of the proposition that the Romans existed at all: a defence against an exhibition of ignorant prejudice that would make you weep if you weren’t too busy fighting it.

If my fantasy of the Latin teacher seems too wayward, here’s a more realistic example. Imagine you are a teacher of more recent history, and your lessons on 20th-century Europe are boycotted, heckled or otherwise disrupted by well-organised, well-financed and politically muscular groups of Holocaust-deniers. Unlike my hypothetical Rome-deniers, Holocaustdeniers really exist. They are vocal, superficially plausible and adept at seeming learned. They are supported by the president of at least one currently powerful state, and they include at least one bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. Imagine that, as a teacher of European history, you are continually faced with belligerent demands to “teach the controversy”, and to give “equal time” to the “alternative theory” that the Holocaust never happened but was invented by a bunch of Zionist fabricators.

Fashionably relativist intellectuals chime in to insist that there is no absolute truth: whether the Holocaust happened is a matter of personal belief; all points of view are equally valid and should be equally “respected”.

The plight of many science teachers today is not less dire. When they attempt to expound the central and guiding principle of biology; when they honestly place the living world in its historical context — which means evolution; when they explore and explain the very nature of life itself, they are harried and stymied, hassled and bullied, even threatened with loss of their jobs. At the very least their time is wasted at every turn. They are likely to receive menacing letters from parents and have to endure the sarcastic smirks and close-folded arms of brainwashed children. They are supplied with state-approved textbooks that have had the word “evolution” systematically expunged, or bowdlerized into “change over time”. Once, we were tempted to laugh this kind of thing off as a peculiarly American phenomenon. Teachers in Britain and Europe now face the same problems, partly because of American influence, but more significantly because of the growing Islamic presence in the classroom — abetted by the official commitment to “multiculturalism” and the terror of being thought racist.

It is frequently, and rightly, said that senior clergy and theologians have no problem with evolution and, in many cases, actively support scientists in this respect. This is often true, as I know from the agreeable experience of collaborating with the Bishop of Oxford, now Lord Harries, on two separate occasions. In 2004 we wrote a joint article in The Sunday Times whose concluding words were: “Nowadays there is nothing to debate. Evolution is a fact and, from a Christian perspective, one of the greatest of God’s works.” The last sentence was written by Richard Harries, but we agreed about all the rest of our article. Two years previously, Bishop Harries and I had organised a joint letter to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

[In the letter, eminent scientists and churchmen, including seven bishops, expressed concern over the teaching of evolution and their alarm at it being posed as a “faith position”at the Emmanuel City Technology College in Gateshead.] Bishop Harries and I organised this letter in a hurry. As far as I remember, the signatories to the letter constituted 100 per cent of those we approached. There was no disagreement either from scientists or from bishops.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has no problem with evolution, nor does the Pope (give or take the odd wobble over the precise palaeontological juncture when the human soul was injected), nor do educated priests and professors of theology. The Greatest Show on Earth is a book about the positive evidence that evolution is a fact. It is not intended as an antireligious book. I’ve done that, it’s another T-shirt, this is not the place to wear it again. Bishops and theologians who have attended to the evidence for evolution have given up the struggle against it. Some may do so reluctantly, some, like Richard Harries, enthusiastically, but all except the woefully uninformed are forced to accept the fact of evolution.

They may think God had a hand in starting the process off, and perhaps didn’t stay his hand in guiding its future progress. They probably think God cranked the Universe up in the first place, and solemnised its birth with a harmonious set of laws and physical constants calculated to fulfil some inscrutable purpose in which we were eventually to play a role.

But, grudgingly in some cases, happily in others, thoughtful and rational churchmen and women accept the evidence for evolution.

What we must not do is complacently assume that, because bishops and educated clergy accept evolution, so do their congregations. Alas there is ample evidence to the contrary from opinion polls. More than 40 per cent of Americans deny that humans evolved from other animals, and think that we — and by implication all of life — were created by God within the last 10,000 years. The figure is not quite so high in Britain, but it is still worryingly large. And it should be as worrying to the churches as it is to scientists. This book is necessary. I shall be using the name “historydeniers” for those people who deny evolution: who believe the world’s age is measured in thousands of years rather than thousands of millions of years, and who believe humans walked with dinosaurs.

To repeat, they constitute more than 40 per cent of the American population. The equivalent figure is higher in some countries, lower in others, but 40 per cent is a good average and I shall from time to time refer to the history-deniers as the “40percenters”.

To return to the enlightened bishops and theologians, it would be nice if they’d put a bit more effort into combating the anti-scientific nonsense that they deplore. All too many preachers, while agreeing that evolution is true and Adam and Eve never existed, will then blithely go into the pulpit and make some moral or theological point about Adam and Eve in their sermons without once mentioning that, of course, Adam and Eve never actually existed! If challenged, they will protest that they intended a purely “symbolic” meaning, perhaps something to do with “original sin”, or the virtues of innocence. They may add witheringly that, obviously, nobody would be so foolish as to take their words literally. But do their congregations know that? How is the person in the pew, or on the prayer-mat, supposed to know which bits of scripture to take literally, which symbolically? Is it really so easy for an uneducated churchgoer to guess? In all too many cases the answer is clearly no, and anybody could be forgiven for feeling confused.

Think about it, Bishop. Be careful, Vicar. You are playing with dynamite, fooling around with a misunderstanding that’s waiting to happen — one might even say almost bound to happen if not forestalled. Shouldn’t you take greater care, when speaking in public, to let your yea be yea and your nay be nay? Lest ye fall into condemnation, shouldn’t you be going out of your way to counter that already extremely widespread popular misunderstanding and lend active and enthusiastic support to scientists and science teachers? The history-deniers themselves are among those who I am trying to reach. But, perhaps more importantly, I aspire to arm those who are not history-deniers but know some — perhaps members of their own family or church — and find themselves inadequately prepared to argue the case.

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips . . . continue the list as long as desired. That didn’t have to be true. It is not self-evidently, tautologically, obviously true, and there was a time when most people, even educated people, thought it wasn’t. It didn’t have to be true, but it is. We know this because a rising flood of evidence supports it. Evolution is a fact, and [my] book will demonstrate it. No reputable scientist disputes it, and no unbiased reader will close the book doubting it.

Why, then, do we speak of “Darwin’s theory of evolution”, thereby, it seems, giving spurious comfort to those of a creationist persuasion — the history-deniers, the 40-percenters — who think the word “theory” is a concession, handing them some kind of gift or victory? Evolution is a theory in the same sense as the heliocentric theory. In neither case should the word “only” be used, as in “only a theory”. As for the claim that evolution has never been “proved”, proof is a notion that scientists have been intimidated into mistrusting.

Influential philosophers tell us we can’t prove anything in science.

Mathematicians can prove things — according to one strict view, they are the only people who can — but the best that scientists can do is fail to disprove things while pointing to how hard they tried. Even the undisputed theory that the Moon is smaller than the Sun cannot, to the satisfaction of a certain kind of philosopher, be proved in the way that, for example, the Pythagorean Theorem can be proved. But massive accretions of evidence support it so strongly that to deny it the status of “fact” seems ridiculous to all but pedants. The same is true of evolution. Evolution is a fact in the same sense as it is a fact that Paris is in the northern hemisphere. Though logic-choppers rule the town,* some theories are beyond sensible doubt, and we call them facts. The more energetically and thoroughly you try to disprove a theory, if it survives the assault, the more closely it approaches what common sense happily calls a fact.

We are like detectives who come on the scene after a crime has been committed. The murderer’s actions have vanished into the past.

The detective has no hope of witnessing the actual crime with his own eyes. What the detective does have is traces that remain, and there is a great deal to trust there. There are footprints, fingerprints (and nowadays DNA fingerprints too), bloodstains, letters, diaries. The world is the way the world should be if this and this history, but not that and that history, led up to the present.

Evolution is an inescapable fact, and we should celebrate its astonishing power, simplicity and beauty. Evolution is within us, around us, between us, and its workings are embedded in the rocks of aeons past. Given that, in most cases, we don’t live long enough to watch evolution happening before our eyes, we shall revisit the metaphor of the detective coming upon the scene of a crime after the event and making inferences. The aids to inference that lead scientists to the fact of evolution are far more numerous, more convincing, more incontrovertible, than any eyewitness reports that have ever been used, in any court of law, in any century, to establish guilt in any crime. Proof beyond reasonable doubt? Reasonable doubt? That is the understatement of all time.

*Not my favourite Yeats line, but apt in this case.

© Richard Dawkins 2009

A Bacon Caesar doesn't sound that bad actually

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I think Sir Digby Chicken Caesar would make a better Holmes.

I think this is far more a product of Krupo's point than billpayer's point.

Having parents who give their children little to no attention AND having completely absent fathers to boot... where else can a young girl get the attention and 'affection' she wants? From boys in this way.

Very, very sad, just don't try to write it off so easily as another consumerist society problem (although if the reason the parent's are giving no attention is because they're chasing the dollars at work, then to a degree it is), think of it far more as an issue with not taking parenting and YOUR role as a parent seriously.

You don't just give birth (or far too often now, schedule a convenient Caesar) and then pay the bills for your child... you actually have to be A PARENT.

Poor kids, they are screwed for life because of this.

>> ^dannym3141:
>> ^Payback:
Unless you have acreage, and the dog gets worked and played with EVERY day, if you own a border collie, you are abusing it. A border collie cannot be penned, tied up, or ignored any more than you can.

Not being funny but you ain't caesar milan, i really don't think you should be blanketly accusing non-farming collie owners of abuse.
Yeah, i'm a dog owner from a dog owning family (bismillah!), i/we have had many breeds, including collies. No farm, though.


I was more setting up the joke in the second part, but if you're not spending time in a park or somewhere it can run almost daily, it will suffer. This is from personal history and friends who breed Border Collies.

>> ^Payback:
Unless you have acreage, and the dog gets worked and played with EVERY day, if you own a border collie, you are abusing it. A border collie cannot be penned, tied up, or ignored any more than you can.


Not being funny but you ain't caesar milan, i really don't think you should be blanketly accusing non-farming collie owners of abuse.

Yeah, i'm a dog owner from a dog owning family (bismillah!), i/we have had many breeds, including collies. No farm, though.

>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^imstellar28:

That is of course, the classic counter argument to what I (and everyone on the Hill) is proposing.
My view is that the picture you draw is too static. If the market is always better at providing prosperity, why are people losing jobs and having to spend less?
It's not crushing taxes levied to pay off the debt -- we've never really had anyone try to do that.
It's not crushing regulation stopping people from starting businesses, it's the bankers themselves cutting off investment capital because they're afraid they've already gambled and lost every penny they own.
Maybe it's because when the market is left to its own devices, it pushes empty ponzi schemes as the main engine of the economy, instead of the old-fashioned idea of actually producing goods and services that require work.
I'm not saying that incurring the debt is a good idea, I'm just saying that if we slash government "spending" to a level below our falling revenues, you'll only make the situation worse, and make revenues drop even further as the economy grinds to a halt.
I think we both agree that this whole thing will sort itself out, in the same way that we'd agree that life, in some form, would survive a nuclear war, the difference is, I want to fight the nuclear proliferation because I don't really want my survival skills tested that much, while you say "nukes for everybody!" because you have faith that the natural order of things will work out to the best possible result.
As for the thought that this is the result of 90 years of government meddling, I don't think there's evidence for that at all. Again, the issue isn't with our national debt or regulation, it's with what the private sector did when government "got out of the way".


I was being somewhat facetious in my earlier post, Imstellar's post is much closer to my line of thinking. I disagree with the Krugman/Summers/Geithner/Obama plan which is what you are advocating. My problem is I don't trust them. You seem to be hoping for a Cinncinnatus when history shows you always get a Caesar to some extent. I think things will get very bad no matter what we do. The Obama Administration's hope is to get the "economy going again." Obama's plan is skipping an important part of the process though. Savings and production need to be built back up again which will mean huge asset declines in the mean time. If this process is skipped (it will be largely) then we will have massive inflation. These bad investments need to be liquidated not propped up or we'll be stuck in this rut a lot longer than we would be otherwise. There will always be a buyer at the right price. The problem is that the banks are insolvent and instead of selling their deposits to smaller less politically connected and better capitalized banks they are threatening to take the whole system down. The government should let them fail but they won't because then JPM and GS won't be around to naked short gold to keep the dollar looking good for Obama's big spending plans. Well, I don't know how long they can keep that going we're 2 weeks in Obama's presidency and gold is skyrocketing. You want to know where that TARP money went? Covering short positions in gold.

1. Midnight at the Well of Souls and the Well World novels - Jack L. Chalker (This is the series that got me started on sci-fi.) 1-5 are the best. The later novels were disappointing.

2. Hyperion and the rest of the Cantos series - Dan Simmons (you cried at the end of the last book didn't you Netrunner.)

3. 1984 - George Orwell

4. Caesar - Colleen McCullough

5. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Great stuff. Didn't know Julius Caesar's battle against the Gual's was this epic, a definite watch.