"What have we?" an onlooker asked of Ben Franklin when the work was done. "A republic or a monarchy?"
"A republic, Madam, if we can keep it."
Many believed, and time seems to have proved, that the Philadelphia Constitution was the most perfect instrument of government ever devised by mankind. Certainly, it brought relative peace and absolute prosperity, and endured practically unchanged for generations; in fact, until the present.
This generation has seen more fundamental change in the nature of our Republic than any previous one. We have come a long way from the mixed Republic, and a long way toward a pure democracy. We have changed from a public philosophy of reliance on individual responsibility to a preference for collectivism. We have not so much disparaged liberty, but we have made security, not liberty, the highest goal of the state.
"Those who would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety," Franklin warned us. We have come perilously close to doing that.
"The state was the great gainer of the twentieth century, and the central failure. Up to 1914, it was rare for the public sector to embrace more than 10 percent of the economy. By the 1970s, even in liberal countries, the state took up to 45 percent of the GNP. But whereas, at the time of the Versailles Treaty, most intelligent people believed that an enlarged stage could increase the sum total of human happiness, by the 1980s, the view was held by no one outside a small, diminishing, and dispirited band of zealots. The experiment had been tried in innumerable ways, and it had failed in nearly all of them. The state had proven itself to be an insatiable spender, an unrivaled waster. Indeed, in the twentieth century, it had proven itself the great killer of all time. By the 1980s, state action had been responsible for the violent or unnatural deaths of over 100 million people—more perhaps than it had hitherto succeeded in destroying during the whole of human history up to 1900. Its inhuman malevolence had more than kept pace with its growing size and expanding means.
"What was not clear was whether the fall from grace of the state would likewise discredit its agents, the activist politicians, whose phenomenal rise in numbers and authority was the most important development of modern times. As we have noted, by the turn of the century, politics was replacing religion as the chief form of zealotry. To archetypes of the new class, such as Lenin, Hitler, and Mao Tse-tung, politics—by which they meant the engineering of society for lofty purposes—was the one legitimate form of moral activity, the only sure means of improving humanity. This view, which would have struck an earlier age as fantastic, became to some extent the orthodoxy everywhere . . ."
—Paul Johnson, Modern Times
In 1940, the people of the United States believed in individual responsibility. They might look to government for a helping hand, even for temporary assistance to get past a crisis, but the notion that the government might be responsible for feeding and clothing and housing the citizens would have been rejected as socialism. Today, things are a bit different.
In 1945, the forces of freedom and liberty held dominant power over the world. The Republic of the United States had a monopoly on nuclear weapons, an enormous army in Europe and another in Japan, and a war economy. We might have imposed imperial rule over the world. Instead, we dismantled our army, brought the soldiers home, and used our economy to help our former enemies. We were given the choice between republic and empire, and we opted to remain true to our republican heritage.
Five years later, we were engaged in war in Korea—war that somehow, for all our might, we couldn't win. Within a generation, a president who had pledged to bear any burden and fight any foe stood below the Berlin Wall and could do no more than shout defiance. Within two generations, more than half the people of the world lived under tyranny, and we were still not done.
"In the days that followed Brezhnev's death in November 1982, the multitude of British and American Sovietologists and political figures interviewed from morning to night by the media urged that we "seize the opportunity" to give the Soviet Union proof of our good will. Most of them specifically recommended that the Americans immediately lift their embargo on technological transfers to the U.S.S.R.—even those with possible military applications (this was done at once)—and that we postpone for one year the deployment of the Euromissiles that were to comprise Western Europe's counterweight to the intermediate-range SS-20s Russia had already positioned on its Western frontiers.
"Just what was this 'opportunity' to be seized? The death of one leader and his replacement by another do not necessarily mean the country's policy will change. Only the new man's actions can show if he has taken a different tack. In the seven years preceding Brezhnev's death, it was Soviet foreign policy that was aggressive, not the West's. So it was up to Moscow to take the first step, not the West. There was no sign in Andropov's past of liberalism or pacifism. So why offer him unilateral concessions before he had given the slightest indication of his good will or uttered a single word that sounded conciliatory?
"Why? Because deep down, whatever they may say and write to the contrary, Westerners accept the Soviet Union's idea of them. They very nearly agree that they are at fault for the collapse of detente. We see ourselves through Moscow's eyes, we accept the myth of the Communists' desire for peace, and acknowledge that it is we who are guilty of aggressivity endangering the world's stability."
—Jean-Francois Revel,
How Democracies Perish
Democracies endure until the citizens care more for what the state can give them than for its ability to defend rich and poor alike; until they care more for their privileges than their responsibilities; until they learn they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury and use the state as an instrument for plundering, first, those who have wealth, then those who create it.
The American people seem to be learning that fatal lesson. The last forty years have seen the United States reject the temptations of empire, but nearly succumb to the seductions of democracy. We have reached the abyss, but not yet taken the last step over it. The survival of freedom itself is at stake, and that future is by no means certain.
Herewith, stories of republic and empire in the near and far future.
Editor's Introduction To:
Outward Bound
Norman Spinrad
Norman Spinrad lives just up the hill from me, but we don't see each other nearly as often as we'd like. Writing can be a lonely business.
Spinrad was once considered a "new wave" writer, but since I haven't any notion of what that means, I can't comment. I do know that he pays attention to character as well as technical detail, but then, so do a lot of writers who aren't thought "new wave" at all. One thing is certain. He can tell stories that you'll remember a while.
In conventional thought, Democracies are preferable to Empires, because they are more humane and ethical, and more likely to adhere to the rule of law. The facts are different. Polities conventionally described as Republics have had imperial ambitions, and have often enforced their imperial rule over others. The Athenians converted from Republic to Democracy, but continued to act as colonial masters over their former allies in the Aegean. And as C. Northcote Parkinson points out, they enforced their rule with a cynical ferocity matched only by the most ruthless of dictators.
On one occasion, Mytilene wished to withdraw from the alliance and cease paying tribute to Athens. The Athenians blockaded the city and brought about its surrender, after which Cleon got the popular assembly to decree that the entire military-age population of Mytilene should be massacred, and everyone else sold into slavery. A galley was dispatched to deliver the order to the Athenian military commander at Mytilene.
The issue was debated again the next day. When Diodotus called for mercy, Cleon demanded justice: he warned the Athenians that the maintenance of empire demanded that the subjects be kept in a constant state of fear, and the empire would pass away if the Athenians were guided by compassion.
The moderates won, and another
ship was dispatched to rescind the orders of the first. On that happy occasion, the first ship, bearing the dreadful news, was slow, while the second was rowed by men eager to arrive on time.
Athens was hardly the last state, republic or empire, to sacrifice principle to expediency. For all the power of the state, though, the decrees of Republic and Empire alike must be carried out by men.
Outward Bound
Norman Spinrad
Captain Peter Reed floated closer to the big central viewport of the conning globe.
Before him, filling half his field of vision, was the planet Maxwell, green continents and blue seas reminding him of Earth.
He shook his white-haired head. Earth was fifty light-years off, or to put it another way, seventy years ago, or in another way, only four months.
Reed shrugged, not an easy task for a seventy-year-old man in free fall. Or to put it another way, an eight-hundred-year-old man.
Reed could not help laughing aloud. Fifty subjective years in space, he thought, eight hundred years in objective time, and still it has its wonder for me.
As he watched, a mote of light detached itself from the disk of Maxwell, and arced upward.
That would be Director Horvath's ship, thought Reed. Last time the Outward Bound was at Maxwell, it had been ruled by a hereditary king. But that was three hundred years ago. King La Farge, thought Reed sadly, dead and gone three hundred years.
This Lazlo Horvath, now. He seems to be a different proposition. Ambitious, dangerous.
Reed smiled wryly. If he keeps up this way, he may soon be honored by a visit from Jacob ben Ezra.
The captain spoke into the communicator. "Rog, get the reception room ready. Our customer's on the way."
He paddled awkwardly to the rear of the conning globe, grabbed a guard rail, and pulled himself through the rotating doorway, into the main cylinder of the Outward Bound.
Immediately, he felt the tug of gravity. The Outward Bound was an untidy collection of cylinders and globes, held together by spars. While in orbit, the whole conglomeration spun about a central axis, creating an artificial gravity. But, of course, it was necessary that the conning globe be stationary, so it hung in front of the main cylinder, mounted on frictionless bearings, so that it alone did not share the ship's rotation.
Captain Reed made his way to the reception room. Lazlo Horvath should be an eager customer. The last tradeship to hit Maxwell had been the Stargod, one hundred years ago, and that was still in the days of the Kingdom.
Director Horvath was new and ambitious, and like all planetary leaders, he chafed under the yoke of Earth. An ideal customer.
Roger Reed was already in the reception room when his father arrived. There was some family resemblance. He had his father's large frame, but on him it was well-muscled, not hung with loose flesh. His hair was a flamboyant red, and he was going through one of his periods of experimentation with mustaches. This one was only a week old, and its ultimate nature could not yet be discerned.
"Horvath's on board, Dad," he said.
"Please, Roger," said the old man, with a weariness born of endless repetition, "at least when there is a customer aboard, don't call me 'Dad'."
"Sorry, sir."
Captain Reed looked about the reception room. It was the one area of calculated ostentation on the ship. It was paneled in real knotty pine. A genuine wool carpet lined it from wall to wall. The captain sat behind a huge mahogany desk, on a genuine red leather covered chair. Three other such chairs were scattered about the room. A viewer was built into one wall.
The room always made Peter Reed feel uncomfortable.
"Well, Roger," said the captain, "do you think this'll be a good haul?"
"Don't see why not, da . . . sir. The Directory of Maxwell seems to be at that stage when they think that with a little help, they can break the Terran hegemony. They ought to go quite high for the force field, for instance."
The old man sighed. "They never learn, do they?" he said. "No doubt Horvath will think that the force field is an ultimate weapon. He'll never stop to realize that on Earth, it's already seventy years old."
"Why so glum, captain?" said the younger Reed. "After all, it's our stock in trade."
"So it is, so it is."
An orderly appeared at the door. "Captain Peter Reed," he said formally, "it is my honor to present Lazlo Horvath, Director of Maxwell."
A short, squat man, of about fifty, stalked into the room. He was dressed in a black uniform, with gold trim, encircled by a wide Sam Browne belt. He wore heavy black boots.
Oh, no, thought Peter Reed, not one of them!
Nevertheless, he rose politely, wryly aware of the plainness of his simple light-green coveralls. "Director Horvath."
"Captain Reed."
"My second, Roger Reed."
"Mr. Reed."
"Sit down, Director," said the captain. Horvath perched himself on the edge of one of the chairs.
"It has been a while since a star ship visited Maxwell," he said. His voice was deep and crisp.
"Yes, I know. The trader Stargod, one hundred years ago."
For a moment, there was a flicker of puzzlement on Horvath's tough face. "Ah, yes, the Stargod," he said smoothly. "Well, Captain Reed, what have you to offer?"
"Several new concepts," said Peter Reed, studying the Director. It was obvious that the man had let something slip. But what?
"Such as?"
"For one thing, an amusing new concept in drinks. Roger, the refreshments."
Roger Reed waved his hand, and a panel slid aside, revealing a pitcher of red liquid, and three glasses on a tray. He poured the drinks.
Captain Reed smiled as he saw the perplexed look on Horvath's face. The drink was made up of two different wines, one hot, one cold, kept separate by a new chemical technique so that one tasted alternately hot and cold liquid. It was a strange feeling.
"Very amusing, Captain Reed," said Norvath. "But surely you don't expect Maxwell to pay good radioactives for such a parlor trick."
Reed grinned. The hot-and-cold liquid technique was just a come-on, of course. The really big commodity he had to sell was the force field.
"Director," he said, "as you know, traders don't sell products, except radioactives, at times. What we sell is science, knowledge, techniques. Now the drink may be a parlor trick, but there can be practical applications for the technique."
"Perhaps, perhaps," said Horvath shortly, "but what else do you have? Perhaps . . . perhaps you at last have the secret of Overdrive?"
Peter Reed laughed. "Maybe I have the Philosopher's Stone, as well?" He saw that Horvath was not amused. "I'm sorry, Director," he said. "It's just that we've never made port on any planet, in the eight hundred years that the Outward Bound has been in space, where they didn't ask that question. No, we don't have the secret of Overdrive. It is my opinion that there never will be an Overdrive. Man will never travel faster than light. It's a chimera, a schizophrenic compulsion to leave the limiting realm of the real universe, to find a never-never land called Hyperspace, or what have you, where reality is suspended, and the Galaxy belongs to Man."
Horvath frowned. "A very pretty little speech," he said. "So easy for you to say. But then, you are not under the heel of Earth. You starmen are by nature free agents. But we, we colonials, we know what it is to suffer the tyranny of time. Maxwell is fifty light-years from Earth. Therefore, since we were settled from Earth, from an Earth that was already sixty years ahead of us when we emerged from Deep Sleep, we will always be sixty years behind Earth, just as the outer ring will always be two hundred years behind. To you, an Overdrive would be just one more thing to peddle, although it would bring the best price in history. To us, an Overdrive would mean freedom."
"Of course, you are right, Director," said Captain Reed. "Nevertheless, that doesn't make Overdrive any more possible. However"—he noticed Horvath's anticipation with satisfaction—"we do have something new, something big. I suppose they've been looking for
this as long as they've been looking for an Overdrive—a force field."
Horvath's eyes widened. "A force field?"
"Ah, you are interested."
"Of course. It would be idiotic to try and hide it. This, Maxwell wants."
"And what have you to offer?" asked Peter Reed softly.
"One ton of thorium."
"Oh really, Director!" said Reed. "That's all right for the hot-cold technique, but—"
"Two tons!"
"Come, come, Mr. Horvath. A force field is the ultimate defensive weapon, after all. Two measly tons—"
"Ten tons!"
Imperial Stars 2-Republic and Empire Page 2
