The New Yorker reported on January 4, 2024: “Biden makes saving democracy the center of his campaign.”
The first so-called democracy was Athens, Greece. One of its top leaders in the 5th century was Pericles. His main political opponent was Cimon, who was a wealthy member of the aristocracy.
These two men in history seem to be an amazing parallel of Biden and Trump today.
During the Greco-Persian Wars, Cimon won famous battles. He wanted to make Athens great. He said, “I love enriching our nation, with the booty of our victories."
Cimon was good at business and organizing. He personally funded building and construction projects in the city of Athens, helping making Athens the great city of the world.
But with proud resentment Pericles began to weaponize the legal system against Cimon, his political opponent. In his lawfare he began to make public accusation against Cimon, saying that he had been colluding with their nation’s enemy, not Russia this time but Macedonia.
Pericles then proceeded to get Cimon ostracized by impeachment, which would end his political career.
Despite Pericles’ efforts, Cimon was actually acquitted.
However, Pericles did not stop there. He continued to give speeches and started proclaim his great devotion for democracy, while at the same time he was clandestinely getting rich politically and usurping more and more power for himself.
Pericles and his political party would outwardly express sympathy for the poor and condemn the influence of the wealthy, despite Pericles himself becoming rich through his political corruptions while being in office.
Pericles and his political party let large numbers of noncitizens into Athens and then extended voting rights to them to help keep them in political power.
Pericles also successfully used the media-entertainment of his days, which were the theater plays, to advance his agenda. And then he had the state subsidize the poor to go to the Greek theater. The politically charged plays were aimed at maligning his political opponent.
However, Cimon sought to keep Athens out of war with Sparta through negotiations. Nonetheless, in time Pericles was able to set up another second impeachment against Cimon. This time in 461 BC, Pericles won, and Cimon was permanently banished from political office.
Pericles carried on putting Athens into great debt with his government infrastructure policies.
But corruption began to finally surface implicating Pericles and he was accused of maladministration of public money. His associate, Phidias, was accused of impiety and embezzlement of money meant for building projects.
Finally, it was revealed that Pericles’s own family was caught in corruption.
Ultimately more people became aware of how abusive Pericles was in his political power.
A grassroots movement spread for invoking ostracism to Pericles, what Pericles feared most. Pericles’ popularity dropped.
Plato described in his Republic, 380 BC:
“Last of all comes ... the tyrant ... In the early days of his power, he is full of smiles, and he salutes everyone whom he meets ...
How then does a protector begin to change into a tyrant? ... when he begins to grow unpopular …
The protector ... is ... the overthrower of many, standing up in the chariot of state with the reins in his hand, no longer protector, but tyrant absolute.”
Instead of Pericles stepping out of office, he became more defiant in staying in power. He gave a speech in support of the Megarian Decree, where many city-states agreed to cut off trade with Megara, an ally of Sparta. It was a NATO-style foreign entanglement treaty, where an attack on one is an attack on all.
But instead of the decree isolating Megara and punishing Sparta, it caused a realignment of Mediterranean alliances, with more city-states siding with Sparta.
This was not too dissimilar from Biden’s foreign policy with Russia, having pushed Russia and more nations now into the BRICS alliance, replacing the U.S. Dollar for international trade. This could forever destroy America as it did Athens.
Historians Plutarch and Karl Beloch explained that Pericles seems to have deliberately let Athens be pulled into a needless Peloponnesian War with Sparta to divert criticism away from himself.
This is familiar behavior for leaders unpopular at home, hoping they get pulled into a foreign war to save them politically. This was the story line of the movie Wag the Dog, starring Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman.
And once the war with Sparta was imminent, the voices that talked of ostracizing Pericles for usurping power, were suddenly replaced with voices declaring his strength for war time.
But to Athens’ surprise, Spartans war on land was superior on Athens' homeland. Sparta quickly conquered the Greek countryside, resulting in thousands of immigrant refugees flooding into Athens.
Overcrowded conditions caused a pandemic to break out with thousands dying. Pericles’ sons died, then in 429 BC, Pericles died, and with him the Athenian Golden Age.
In the end, the politics of Pericles, namely, professing devotion to democracy while consolidating personal power, led to Athens’ decline, from which it never regained its world influence and grandeur.
President William Harrison described this in his Inaugural Address in1841:
“This is the old trick of those who would usurp the government of their country. In the name of democracy they speak, warning the people against the influence of wealth and the danger of aristocracy.
History, ancient and modern, is full of such examples … Caesar became the master of the Roman people … under the pretense of supporting the democratic claims …”
But none of our founding Fathers were in favor of a “democracy”, they actually called it a “mobocracy”.
It’s only in recent years that the left has started always using the term “democracy” and glorifying it. Now many on the right have unwittingly started saying the same.
But our founding Fathers did not declare we have a democracy but rather a “constitutional republic”. A “democracy” is dramatically different.
Most people don’t realize, and even most Christians, that what God established in the Bible with His Mosaic civil Law, was in principle a “constitutional republic”. That being – God’s Law (Ten Commandments, Statutes, Judgments) and representative judges, righteous judges carrying out God’s Law.
However, if a nation does not use God’s “perfect law of liberty”, as the Bible calls it, all other man-made laws will always be changing under “mobocracy”.
The colonial and even the early statehood constitutions used God’s Mosaic civil law. However, the federal constitution veered from this. As a result, since 1789, there have been added to the federal law over 30,000 new statutes.
The colonial and even early state constitutions were far more biblical in their law and constitutions than the federal constitution, resulting in part for so much of our demise today. How, you may ask… we’ll have to look at that in a future Christian History.
