There was a cost: Reformers in Rome died violently at a rate that would make a First World War subaltern wince. Tiberius and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, Marcus Livius Drusus the Younger, Lucius Sergius Catiline, Publius Clodias Pulcher, and Gaius Julius Caesar, are the best known names of reformers, or populares, who died because of the reactionary party, or optimates, and their hired gangs of thugs.  Additionally, while the famous populares died in ones and twos, their anonymous followers died in their hundreds or even thousands in subsequent proscriptions.          

I can hear you ask: what does this have to do with that dark November in 1963?  Take a moment and substitute the names of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus for those of John and Robert Kennedy.  Change the name Marcus Livius Drusus the Younger to that of Martin Luther King, Jr..  Now, replace Publius Clodias Pulcher with Malcolm X.  This should help you to understand the stunning parallels between the late Roman and modern American republics.            

Ninety-five percent of historians exalt the optimates and their cause, refusing to acknowledge the murdering, rapacious nature of these men or the reactionary and repressive nature of their policies. 

For example:            

Marcus Tullius Cicero, who used his skills as an orator to manipulate the Roman Senate into declaring Catiline an enemy of Rome, permitted several of Catiline's accused co-conspirators to "escape justice" after they gave Cicero villas and other properties.              

Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger, gave a speech in the Senate against Catiline's less fortunate co-conspirators.  In this speech, Cato harangued the Senate into voting for the conspirators' immediate execution without a trial (after Caesar, who was no mean orator himself, had swayed the Senate into accepting the traditional punishment of exile), which was contrary to Roman law and custom.  Additionally Cato, a model of moral probity to todays Radical Right (note the name of the self-described conservative think tank the Cato Institute), was an alcoholic who had essentially given his wife to a friend, and then took her back (now that she was a rich widow) when the friend died.              

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus who had, under the self-appointed (at the head of an army) Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla, helped carry out a purge of populares that would have made Hitler, Stalin or Mao green with envy. Pompey subsequently bought up large portions of the land confiscated from Sulla's victims until he became Rome's largest landowner.          

The Romans lacked a written constitution, but they did have the mos maiorum, a mixture of a few written laws (including the Twelve Tables which were rarely invoked) and a massive unwritten tradition that went back to the founding of Rome.  The optimates interpreted, broke, and ignored this largely unwritten framework for their government to suit their needs at the time.  For example:            

The optimates could and did use unfavorable auspices, or signs from the gods, in an often successful attempt to thwart the will of the Popular Assembly, which was Rome's true lawmaking body, and the populares source of political power.             

The optimates did not hesitate to murder Tiberius Gracchus while he was a plebeian tribune.  According to the optimates "beloved" mos maiorum, while he held that office, Tiberius Gracchus' person was inviolable and his murder constituted sacrilege, and should have earned his murderers a heave ho off the Tarpeian Rocks.               The optimates made extensive use of bribery to subvert Roman legal, legislative, and electoral processes.  This included bribing juries, plebeian tribunes, and the electorate itself to ensure their continued preeminent position in Roman life.          

Roman optimate hypocrisy, like that of America's Radical Right, knew no limits.  They complained about Caesar's perpetual Dictatorship (which the Senate had voted to him), saying he wanted to make himself King.  Yet they had given their wholehearted support to Sulla's equally illegal Dictatorship.  They had even made Pompey sole Consul (the highest non-emergency office in Rome), when Roman law and tradition said there must be two Consuls.  To the optimates, like our own Radical Right, the only real law was their inalienable right to exploit the system for their own benefit regardless of the cost to the people of Rome or Rome itself.          

It seems an odd commentary on human nature that so many of the rich would prefer to spend money on bribes and murderous mercenaries rather than share any of their wealth with their workers or the less fortunate neighbors.  The patrician's primary modus operandi, both in Rome and America, seems to be to kill by "remote control," whether to salve their conscience or avoid the inherent danger of killing an opponent, I do not know.  Gaius Julius Caesar's assassins were a rare exception: reactionaries who dirtied their own hands with the deed.            

With this in mind let us return to the murder of John F. Kennedy, and all the other men who fell to assassin's bullets in the horrible decade that followed.            

Throughout history the primary difference between violence committed by the elite and that committed by the proletariat has generally been a matter of organization.  For example, the storming of the Bastille by the French peasants in 1789 was a spontaneous event by people at the end of their rope.  On the other hand, the Ludlow Massacre of striking miners in Southern Colorado seventy-five years later, was carefully orchestrated by minions of the Rockefeller Family, with military support from the Governor of Colorado.           

We are now engaged in the continuation of the struggle that lies at the heart of every republic, including the American and Roman republics.  It is a confrontation between the working and middle class on one hand, and the wealthy power elite on the other.  It is a struggle for the soul of the United States, with the winner deciding whether we are a nation of both the law and the the will of the people who are sovereign, or one of greed and expediency for the few.          

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