Liberals Always Dream New Gracchi

                                 "In those years only the dead smiled,
                                  Glad to be at rest:
                                  And Leningrad city swayed like
                                  A needless appendix to its prisons."
                                     ---Akhmatova, Requiem, Prologue.





1: Historical Background

Cornelia Africana bore two sons as martyrs to Republican Rome. They attempted to legally end iniquitous land distribution as Tribunes of the Plebes. Wealthy Romans(mostly Patricians) were buying up enormous tracts of lands and evicting peasants from their small holder farms. The dispossessed peasantry poured into the city as a "classical" version of a trouble making and unsightly lumpen-proletariat.

Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were part of the establishment. Their father was a Censor, a scion of the Sempronia line. Mother was the daughter of Scipio Africanus.

In the struggle against iniquitous land distribution and urban blight they both exploited the sacrosanctity of the Office of Tribune of the Plebes to pass legislation favorable to small landowners. Their efforts were rewarded with assassination. They became martyrs to a cause that was merely reformist and only attacked a symptom of inequality while leaving the true institutional malady untouched. Such is the fate of most reformists.

After their deaths Rome quickly descended into an increasingly overt violent Oligarchy fostering Civil Wars against slaves, local Italian towns, and finally ending with concentration of all power in military leaders as Consuls(Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar). The Gracchi served as martyrs in the propaganda of populist Imperators like Marius and Caesar. Sulla and Pompey upheld the Senatorial Oligarchy. Caesar vanquished Pompey in their struggle and the Oligarchy surrendered itself, and the Senate, to Patristic Fascism. Caesar was assassinated before he had a chance to fully implement his Tyranny. It took his nephew Octavian, as Caesar Augustus, after defeating Marc Antony, to assume the title Princeps Senatus and use the facade of the Senate to mask his absolute rule.

2: Contemporary Application of Model

Liberals often dream one of their class will take up the mantle of dispossessed peoples. Only they can rescue them by reforming hallowed institutions of Democracy corrupted by evil doers(Partisans point at the other side). A new Lex Hortensia based upon an arcane precedent(like the Licinian Law)must be passed. They believe individual actors, if brilliant enough and divinely favored, can work wonders within powerful Institutions. Their call for "real" leadership in contemporary protests begs the masses to adopt new Gracchi as leaders. Read establishment Liberals on the Occupy Wall Street protests. Always the same tepid support anchored by "serious reservations".  

These pedantic pipe-dreamers forget the Gracchi, though heroic and with "their hearts in the right place", were assassinated by representatives of the Institution they attempted to reform. Furthermore, their martyrdom was exploited by Fascists to create populist support for Dictatorship as an antidote to unjust Oligarchy.

Perhaps the modern Liberal secretly hopes a few of their own sacrificed for the change he or she, deep in the shady copses of their heart, desires is "worth it"? Only then will the masses demand an "effective Leader" who can "cut through" bureaucracy and "get things done"?

This is a recurring dream of "enlightened" minds throughout history. It is also an enduring nightmare for those who can't afford the luxury of dreaming.

I do not believe contemporary Liberals, as a type, actually think much, if at all, about the Gracchi. I am using the Gracchi's failed reform efforts as a timeless model Liberals always propose to escape the horrors of social unrest and reinstate their disturbed repose.