Gingrich: “The Old Order is Dying”
In McKay Coppins’ profile in The Atlantic, Newt Gingrich observed that freedom around the world has produced “a very deep discontent that the system isn’t working.” And he thinks that’s not just a good thing but essential for the survival of western civilization. He seemed pleased when he said, “The old order is dying.”
According to Coppins, Gingrich is proud of his role in the decline of American democracy and a functioning government. It was Gingrich, Coppins writes, who “pioneered a style of partisan combat—replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism—that poisoned America’s political culture and plunged Washington into permanent dysfunction.”
Coppins likens Gingrich to a late-empire Roman senator – not the last time that comparisons with ancient Rome have been made. James Fallows wrote somewhat optimistically about the similarities between Rome and America in 2019. Over the next few years, he introduced condensed versions of three essays by governance analyst Edward Schnurer that examine in detail aspects of the Rome-America comparison. In his third essay, Schnurer expressed his great concern over the resemblance in our country to the “increasing hollowing out of the Roman state from a ‘common good’ into simply another form of private corporation benefiting the already-wealthy and powerful”.
On election day 2020, historian Tim Elliot wrote in Politico that America was retracing the steps of ancient Rome. The choice that day was between a Caesar-like figure (Donald Trump) who would discard democratic norms and a candidate (Joe Biden) who would make sure the country would continue to embrace its democracy.
Michael Anton, a national security adviser under Trump and writer associated with HIllsdale College and The Claremont Institute, and Charles Haywood, an entrepreneur and right-wing blogger and philosopher with a large following, both have written and talked of the need for a Caesar – a dictator – to step forward to save America in a post-Constitution America.
This is the logical end to the war for power that Gingrich declared in 1978. Democracy, which emphasizes the checks and balances among its institutions and in the process of decisionmaking, is not the objective in such a war.
Feature Image: Photo of Newt Gingrich by Gage Skidmore
