"The Life of Greece", by Will Durant

On Tacitus, Durant writes, 


Juvenal is even more damning of the Romans. As per Durant, he 


Juvenal warns Postumus against marriage. He portrays the women of Rome as;


Finally, Juvenal recommends Postumus should 


In contrast to Juvenal, Seneca wrote. 


Both sound familiar don't they? Perhaps there is, after all, something to be learned from history.  

This bit from Durant about the reorganization of the Roman Empire might have resonance to some today. The discussion is about Emperor Diocletian who ruled before Constantine.


Our republican institutions are beginning to fail us as well. It has taken only about 250 years. Will the coming rule out of D.C. become another adjective/byword for an age and government known for duplicity, treachery, lies, cheating, theft, murder and opaque laws and rules? Will future students use the adjective Washingtonian they same way we use the word Byzantine? Pray it doesn't come to that.

One of the books I am presently reading is, "The Age of Napoleon" by Will Durant. This is vol XI in his "The Story of Civilization."

The book opens with the origins and actions of the French Revolution. I am on page 95 and the book is now beginning to focus on Napoleon's rise through the Directory.

Some 14 pages earlier, Durant makes a brilliant observation about power, when writing about Robespierre's last speech before the Convention." This was the last straw which cost him his head.


I believe we are seeing this being played out in our present government.

I have covered close to 300 pages of Durant's "The Age of Napoleon," and am finding it very interesting. I have never been a big fan of the "Little Corporal" but after reading this far, my estimation of him has improved.

He was the force behind changes in the French education system, which are still with us today. When writing about the "top of the intellectual pyramid" i.e. "the Institute National de France" Durant writes:


He sounds very like us, or since he was born almost 200 years before us, we sound like him.

I have read past page 600 and still have about 170 to go before completing Durant's "The Age of Napoleon." Having read six or seven of Durant's volumes dealing with history prior to this period, I believe I would be correct in saying that this volume would be of most interest to today's general reader of history. It covers a period which is far enough behind us to give historians the time to reflect, but is close enough for us to see the real effects the period has had on our own times. Names like Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, Goethe, Beethoven, Lord Byron and Robespierre should still arouse familiar ideas and memories in even the half-educated among us.

Below is a longish quote from and on Edmund Burke. Many believe this is the basis from which modern conservatism sprang.

I am sure we have all run into much of this before, but I believe such thoughts must be repeated, repeated and repeated again.

Burke makes the case for "The Wisdom of the Ages" as a guide to life. 

As I have mentioned before, the radicals (in France in this case) went after religion before they went after economics. They still are because they know religion/culture will beat out economics for many people. 

One of the worst times during the French Revolution was during the first week of September of 1792.  Let me quote Durant.
Many of these priests and others were pulled out of jails and slaughtered over the next few days. It seems that, at first, they were executed by revolutionaries fearful of the collapse of the revolution, but soon these were joined by thugs, thieves and sadists in mass killings. Something like 1,300 priests, Swiss, monarchists or ex-servants to the King and Queen died in this blood lust. Such luminaries as Danton, refused to do anything to stop the murder. 

Interestingly, the exile (25,000)  and murder of so many priests presented some problems. 
One should note that there were large differences as regards economics between the different factions mentioned above. Some were quasi-communists, others believed in property rights, but all hated Christianity.  Not much has changed, as Brad has noted.  

That sounds good to me.

The French Revolutionaries had the idea that they could organize and run society better than a priesthood and better than a king. And their organizing principle was going to be "reason."

Given the flaws in kings and priests, and the often sad state of affairs of a nation, that idea is plausible on the surface. But when they started murdering people en masse, it became obvious that something was fundamentally wrong with their approach.

And we know that one of their errors was Utopianism, the belief that society could be made perfect (not just good). And, for them, that meant removing the corrupt elements, like cutting the mold off of a piece of bread. The problem is, that mold is in everyone. You can't ever cut deep enough. There could be no end to murder using that philosophy. And, indeed, the Revolutionaries soon began to consume each other.

Utopianists (and Leftists) have no patience for trade-offs or for acknowledging and accepting some of the hard and fixed realities of life (such as male and female, material and immaterial, and even moral and immoral).

In the Westworld series that I'm watching, there's an overall implicit element about this whole project of a corporation setting up a theme park with Hosts (robots) who are life-like and living out a script specifically chosen for them. In this world, Dr. Ford is the equivalent of God. He sets up the conditions and lets them play out, modifying the world, and the Hosts in it, to suit his purposes.

From the point of view of the Hosts (who become conscious and apparently can feel things), the world is set up for them to suffer for the benefit of the Guests (visiting humans). And when they realize this, the Hosts rebel. They have no thought of creating a Utopian world. It's just one big, gigantic slaughter...somewhat like the French Revolution.

We find ourselves in the same world. Most religions claim a benevolent God, but most have always lived in a world where millions were slaughtered for the benefit or amusement of a relative few (kings, conquerors, criminals, etc.) To think that man can do a better job of running this world than god is somewhat self-evident.

Thank god, as it were, that we have hospitals, and all the modern technology that brings us health and comfort. And thank god again that we have mostly learned to substitute commerce for conquest – something that the barbarian Putin has not learned and has no interesting in learning. It is absolutely imperative for our well-being that we rise above the state of nature. All philosophical and theological arguments are mere trifles if not mindful of this end.

Of course, that's exactly why and where the Judaeo-Christian worldview comes into play. Despite no end of hypocrites in this project, this tradition has done more than about any other element to help human nature rise above the state of nature. No, that worldview isn't about advancing technology or building better iPhones, per se.

But what the French Revolutionaries and Leftists forget (or just don't care to acknowledge) is that the material is not the only foundational element of a good society. Man can build all kinds of fancy things but still make his world a living hell if human nature is left to revert to a state of nature. And wiping out a priesthood is a recipe for moral disaster. The priesthood (at least in theory, often not in practice) was one of the elements that could tame human nature.

Just as there is a need to rise above the state of nature and to build hospitals, so we need to rise above the state of nature in regards to human nature. All those who say that "people are basically good" are fools, and destructive fools at that. As Dennis Prager notes, babies may be born innocent, but all people have to be made good.

Under the heading "the more things change, the more they remain the same," I want to take a moment to introduce the ideas of one Georges Couthon who was a member of the Committee for Public Safety and close ally of Robespierre.

This fiend was responsible for the Law of 22 Prairial which stripped away the rights of those accused of political crimes and resulted in the rapid increase of political executions in France.

Yet according to Durant, Coulthon in his hatred of and fight against Christianity "proclaimed a new theology in which Nature would be God, and heaven would be an earthly utopia in which all men would be good."

Sound familiar? Our leftist Climate-Change fakes are using the same fraudulent playbook and are equally as fiendish and immoral as Coulthon, Herbert, Chaumette and various others of the time.

The only positive from this is that these scum were murdered by their co-revolutionaries, many of whom were then murdered by other revolutionaries.

These, and more revolutionaries, would have fit right in with Lenin's, Trotsky's and Stalin's Bolsheviks. This should be no surprise as the Bolsheviks took much of their playbook from the Jacobins and others of the time.