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Lessons on Political Violence from the Roman Republic: Part I – Political violence is a prologue to civil war

Lessons on Political Violence from the Roman Republic: Part I – Political violence is a prologue to civil war

The presidency of Donald Trump has renewed and heightened political violence in the United States.  American society has always been violent, particularly to people of color, women, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community.  So we want to be careful to suggest that the violence we are seeing is somehow new or unprecedented.  Yet we also want to be careful to suggest that this is merely the same as always and there is nothing to be alarmed at.  As I’ve written in…

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First Thoughts on the Failure of an Impeachment

First Thoughts on the Failure of an Impeachment

We all learn it well from early youth on up – there are three branches of government, and through a system of checks and balances none of them are able to dominate the others.  The idea of dividing up the power in a political system and then establishing ways for the constituent parts to restrain one another has a long history.  Thus, in the Roman Republic there were the people, the senate, and the magistrates, each of which was situated…

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