But the same disease can also kill a republic slowly. Cicero, the great Roman statesman and philosopher who was also a great reader of Plato, warns that redistributing wealth by taking it from lenders and giving it to borrowers is among the worst things a leader can do because it wreaks havoc on a credit system (On Duties, Book II, chapters 83-85). This in turn can cripple an economy and lead to the same awful result: the death of the republic. Since credit is a function of the credibility a borrower has in the eyes of a lender, nothing can damage it more than if lenders expect to be repaid with their own taxes. While we can be grateful we haven't seen more of this, we should keep a hawk's e...

But the same disease can also kill a republic slowly. Cicero, the great Roman statesman and philosopher who was also a great reader of Plato, warns that redistributing wealth by taking it from lenders and giving it to borrowers is among the worst things a leader can do because it wreaks havoc on a credit system (On Duties, Book II, chapters 83-85). This in turn can cripple an economy and lead to the same awful result: the death of the republic. Since credit is a function of the credibility a borrower has in the eyes of a lender, nothing can damage it more than if lenders expect to be repaid with their own taxes. While we can be grateful we haven't seen more of this, we should keep a hawk's eye on the new Congress for any signs of this sort of redistribution.

After all, we would only be deceiving ourselves if we thought that our republic by virtue of its size, technology, hefty GDP, or anything else is somehow immune to what destroyed other republics. Human nature destroyed ancient republics, and it could destroy ours.

Our founding fathers for the most part had all read Plato's Republic. Yet, today, we seem to be ignoring the safeguards they set up in the Constitution from their reading of Republic. Jefferson's quote: "I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. or another very similar: "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies . . . If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by ...

Our founding fathers for the most part had all read Plato's Republic. Yet, today, we seem to be ignoring the safeguards they set up in the Constitution from their reading of Republic. Jefferson's quote: "I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. or another very similar: "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies . . . If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] . . . will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered . . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -- Thomas Jefferson -- The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill, (1809)