Thursday, February 5, 2009

The Kyklos – Cycle of Government

For those that are unfamiliar with this term, “The Kyklos” is the phrase used by some classical Greek authors to describe what they saw as the political cycle of governments in a society. It was roughly based on the history of Greek city-states in the same period. The concept of "The Kyklos" is first described in Plato's Republic.

In its simplest form it is the transition from monarchy to aristocracy, to a classical republic, to a democracy, which inevitably evolves into a tyranny. There are several cases of this throughout history with some variation; the most common example is post World War I Germany. Germany went from the monarchy of Bismarck to Wiemar Republic, which evolved into a Democracy to the tyranny of the Nazi Third Reich. Another example and in fact the classic one that Socrates based his concept was Athens itself. Athens started out as a monarchy, moved to republican reform of government, then moved to pure democracy and than tyranny. Socrates saw this cycle in his own lifetime as it move back and forth from tyranny to democracy and back again.

Why is this so important a topic for me? Simply because we are seeing a repeat of this cycle here in our own country. Obviously the cycle is not absolute and can be changed as it was for Athens and even Germany. So being aware of the tendency to move in this pattern is necessary to keep it from happening in the manner of other great cultures, including that of Rome, another example of “The Kyklos”.

Here is the problem though, most people when asked today what form of government we have they will tell you quite proudly “a democracy”, when in fact that is NOT what the founding fathers had in mind for our system of government. The 13 original colonies, which each became independent states, were joined in union as one nation each with its own representation within a SMALL federal government, controlled by a strict set of rules designated in the constitution as a REPUBLIC.

As with the Athenian and Roman models above, the United States of America started out under a monarchy, from there we became a republic, and as of the early part of the twentieth century we moved toward being a democracy and moving ever so steadily toward tyranny.

Time has changed some of the physical conditions of the nation, such as the addition of thirty-seven more states as well as transportation and communication technologies making distances, societal interaction and commerce more available. And the argument for those that have promoted the evolution of our Constitutional Republic to a Democracy has been that these changes have “required” like changes in government.

Under the guise of “for the public good” the federal government has grown not just in bureaucracy but also in power. Few people recognize that until 1913 we had no Federal Income tax, we were not tied to a pseudo private banking conglomerate that has the same economic result as being under the control of a banking oligarchy. We have so many “investigative” branches that when uttered in full they are reminiscent of alphabet soup, CIA, FBI, NSA, NCIS, DEA, and on and on. Now all of these are supposedly under the control of one agency, Home Land Security. Just yesterday our new president put a cap on the wages of corporate CEO’s ushering in the age of New Socialist America. Some politicians, including Obama, have already told us that the constitution is effectively out of date and needs revamping. In other words they want to erase the limitations of federal government that our forefathers expressly put in there to keep us from being a democracy and eventually a tyranny.

I have often used the quote from George Santayana and I will once again remind everyone because it rings so true, “Those that cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” God help us if we as a society refuse to see the warning signals and keep in the direction we are going, for if we do, your children and grandchildren will be living in a despotic government, with little or no concern for individual rights, but only that of the state.