From the book Thy Kingdom Comes
Chapter 6. Joshua’s Altar
Section 7. Socialization of Rome
Rome as a world power stayed on in the role of a peace keeping force and to assist if another dispute arose over who would be King in the land of Israel, now called Judea. It also sought to protect its own commercial interest in banking and trade which were increasing year by year as the citizens of Judea became more Hellenized and Romanized under the influence of these new and enticing ways.
With the centralization of power in the hands of the Commander in Chief of Rome, it had become the victim of its own crafty benevolence. All the citizenry contracted their way under the gratuitous Arch of Triumph. At one point almost half of Rome was fed directly out of the private treasury of the Emperor warranting a measure of loyalty. Many of the “free citizens” were idle, dissipated, and unproductive. Selfishness had replaced service, avarice replaced alms-giving and apathy supplanted advocacy. The civil power moved from the people and their families into the hands of the organized State where a vast Bureaucracy became king and tyrant according to the inevitable succession of history.1
There was little need for individual charity for there was the government dole bringing in 500,000,000 bushels of grain a year from Egypt alone. This grain was stockpiled and redistributed daily from warehouses along Trajan’s dock covering over 160 acres. With these massive giveaway program in place the local farmers needed to be subsidized.
There was a massive bureaucracy that administered these public works. Public offices to supplement the living standards of the average Roman were handed out like government contracts. The State as Father took care of and provided for its children but at the price of liberty and freedom and the virtue they produce.
People, who need the personal choice of charity to maintain a healthy and strong community, were manumitted from their God given responsibility into an enfranchised citizenry. Not everyone felt the sting of the whip with the population reaping such benefits. The poor worked the system, the rich were taxed to give them something to complain about but not so much that they stopped being the idle rich. The very rich could get around heavy taxes with bribes and lobbying new regulations and loopholes. Eventually the poor were resented because they were seen as the source of the dreaded tax collectors.
It was the honest hard working middle working class that were squeezed at both ends or some misguided weaker neighbor conquered. These systems never start out that way. At first the rich or defeated pay the bill or prosperity is simply borrowed against the future at usurious rates of interest. Inevitably the same adverse result prevail as the pig returns to its mire and the dog to its vomit.
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1“We must realize that today’s Establishment is the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution… the truth is that the vast bureaucracy now runs this country, irrespective of what party is in power.” William O. Douglas (page 95, page 54).
