As the GOP sabotage and sedition continues, the US appears to be going the way of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth (P-LC) rather than the way of the Roman Empire.
If you know your history, this is not an insult; but, rather, a tragedy in progress. The P-LC was a powerful and progressive state during the early Reformation era, reaching its Golden Age in about 1575.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth became a counterpoint to the absolute monarchies gaining power in Europe. Its quasi-democratic political system of Golden Liberty, albeit limited to nobility, was mostly unprecedented in the history of Europe. In itself, it constituted a fundamental precedent for the later development of European constitutional monarchies.
However the series of power struggles between the lesser nobility (szlachta), the higher nobility (magnates), and elected kings, undermined citizenship values and gradually eroded the government's authority, ability to function and provide for national defense. The infamous liberum veto procedure was used to paralyze parliamentary proceedings beginning in the second half of the 17th century.
- Wikipedia P-LC
The failure of the P-LC flavor of democracy used to be taught to schoolchildren in civics class (what's that?) as a cautionary tale. Clearly, the US has reached the "doomed to relive it" part of Santayana's dictum on history.
Just to be clear about what is going down in America today: A billionaire "magnate" sits in the gallery of Congress while his hired stooges ($1M contributed to Tom Cotton's campaign by some Jewish "emergency" committee run by Bill Kristol) violate two hundred years of protocol and further show their disrespect for the President. The HoR has interfered in foreign affairs by inviting a hostile-to-the-President politician, who is another lying neanderthal heavily funded by the same billionaire - Sheldon Adelson.
Come below the fold to see the disturbing parallels between the P-LC's demise and the billionaire-sponsored death spiral of US democracy.
1. Political culture of the P-LC
Before you can appreciate the parallels to today's situation in the US, I need to begin by explaining the uniqueness of the P-LC social/political culture, because it caused both the strengths and the weaknesses of the P-LC government.
The Polish nobility differed in many respects from the nobility of other countries. The most important difference was that, while in most European countries the nobility lost power as the ruler strove for absolute monarchy, in Poland the reverse process occurred: the nobility actually gained power at the expense of the king, and the political system evolved into an oligarchy.
Poland's nobility were also more numerous than those of all other European countries, constituting some 10–12% of the total population of historic P-LC also some 10–12% among ethnic Poles on ethnic Polish lands (part of Commonwealth), while in some poorer regions (e.g., Mazowsze, the area centred on Warsaw) nearly 30%.
- Wikipedia, Szlachta
The foundation of the Commonwealth's political system, the "Golden Liberty" included:
- the election of the king by all nobles
- the king was required to hold a parliament (Sejm) every two years
- the king was bound to "agreed-to agreements" including a bill of rights derived from the earlier King Henry's Articles
- rokosz (insurrection), the right of szlachta to form a legal rebellion against a king who violated their guaranteed freedoms;
- religious freedom guaranteed by Warsaw Confederation Act 1573
- liberum veto (Latin), the right of an individual land envoy to oppose a decision by the majority in a Sejm session; the voicing of such a "free veto" nullified all the legislation that had been passed at that session;
- Wikipedia, Golden Liberty
The most tragic thing about the P-LC's demise is that,
for its time, it gave an amazingly high percentage of the population a vote. As for the rights of those voters, there were some good things (bill of rights, religious freedom), and some bad (liberum veto, right of rebellion). But they were inseparably mixed together, and strongly supported as a package deal by the nobility. In the end, the bad parts destroyed the good parts. Here is where the parallels to the US come in:
The szlachta citizens of the Commonwealth praised the right of resistance, the social contract, the liberty of the individual, the principle of government by consent, the value of self-reliance ― all widespread concepts found in the modern, liberal democracies. Just as liberal democrats of the 19th and 20th century, the Polish noblemen were concerned about the power of the state. The Polish noblemen were strongly opposed to the very concept of the authoritarian state.
Perhaps the closest parallels to Poland's 'Noble Democracy' can be found outside Europe altogether ― in America ― among the slave-owning aristocracy of The South.
In its extreme the Golden Liberty has been criticized as being responsible for "civil wars and invasions, national weakness, irresolution, and poverty of spirit"...With the majority of the szlachta believing that they lived in the perfect state, too few questioned the Golden Liberty and the Sarmatism philosophy, until it was too late.
- Wikipedia, Golden Liberty
2. How did Golden Liberty undermine the P-LC? What are the US parallels?
For starters, the nobles behaved like nobles, by reducing everyone they could to serfs tied to the land with minimal rights:
...the nobility tightened their control of the production, trade and other economic activities,... limited the rights of the cities and pushed most of the peasants into serfdom. Such practices were increasingly sanctioned by the law. ...Polish towns, lacking national representation protecting their class interests, preserved some degree of self-government (city councils and jury courts), and the trades were able to organize and form guilds. The nobility soon excused themselves from their principal duty – mandatory military service in case of war.
...As the peasants, the townspeople and ordinary szlachta each lost their economic base, the magnate class had become the only social group capable of significant economic and political activity, which led to their more total domination of what was left of the Commonwealth politics....The masses of ordinary szlachta competed or tried to compete against the uppermost rank of their class, the magnates, for the duration of Poland's independent existence.
- Wikipedia
This is the exact same process that has been going on as our "magnates" have destroyed the middle class over the last 35 years. And what were the social and political consequences?
..war and economic pressures intensified the already present fragmentation processes and class conflicts between the social classes and within each of them. Xenophobia and intolerance became prevalent...The nation building efforts of Renaissance era reformers was undone.
The fragmentation of szlachta deepened the decentralizing tendencies in the large state...The magnates established networks of szlachta supporters and national loyalty was being replaced with loyalty based on regional ties, as for the nobility the weak state institutions provided neither attractive career opportunities, nor sufficient protection.
The magnate control over the lesser or petty szlachta (szlachta zaściankowa), a group whose members possessed little or no property and were poorly educated, has long been recognized. The lesser szlachta was useful, as it provided crowds of armed men able to influence various public events, such as...elections, according to directions given.
- Wikipedia, P-LC
The consequences were the same as today: xenophobia, conflict, armed mobs threatening people and politicians at the behest of magnates. But, worse than that, the pressure on the non-magnate nobles induced the kind of ghost-dance purity that is often seen among marginalized groups - such as US small businessmen.
The prevalent ideology of the szlachta became "Sarmatism", named after the Sarmatians, alleged ancestors of the Poles.This belief system was an important part of the szlachta's culture, penetrating all aspects of its life. Sarmatism enshrined equality among szlachta, horseback riding, tradition, provincial rural life, peace and pacifism;... and served to integrate the multi-ethnic nobility by creating an almost nationalistic sense of unity and of pride in the szlachta's Golden Freedoms.[56]
In its early, idealistic form, Sarmatism represented a positive cultural movement: it supported religious belief, honesty, national pride, courage, equality and freedom. In time, however, it became distorted. Late extreme Sarmatism turned belief into bigotry, honesty into political naïveté, pride into arrogance, courage into stubbornness and freedom into anarchy. The faults of Sarmatism were blamed for the demise of the country from the late 18th century onwards.
The lack of legal distinction among various ranks of the nobility gave many noblemen a false sense of equality and opportunity...
- Wikipedia, P-LC
Are we seeing the parallels yet? Belief into bigotry. Pride into arrogance. Freedom into anarchy. Chosen nation. No nonconformity. Just like then, white folk cling to their "noble" status, lionizing the magnates, even though the magnates continue to loot them.
The next step in this tragedy is the impact these attitudes had on education:
After the triumph of the Counter-Reformation, the Jesuits and other Catholic educators lost incentives to provide competitive high quality education. The backward mentality and close-mindedness of the szlachta masses has become proverbial, and as the nation experienced its greatest decline, the typically uniform szlachta indulged in the sarmatism ideology of a chosen nation and contempt for everything foreign. Nonconformity was not tolerated, corruption was at its highest, while public morale at the lowest...
The predominance of Sarmatism and Counter-Reformation and the weak cultural development of the Commonwealth were closely related to the lowered, in comparison with the previous period, level of general education...
And an impact on the national "mission"
From the early 17th century, the culture of Polish Baroque was ideologically based on Sarmatism and Counter-Reformation, which during that century were fused into one powerful current of Catholic national mission. The Polish, Lithuanian and Ruthenian nobilities were thus reduced to one messianic "nation" of common origin, whose calling was the defense of Christianity and freedom in Europe. ...The practical byproducts of this supposedly civic-minded, self-elevating point of view were parochialism, xenophobia, stagnation and intolerance.
Gee, stagnation, parochialism, and intolerance. Who would have expected that? Oh, and it seems to have been a neoliberal/old-fashioned feudalism paradise too, complete with the skilled trying to weasel their way into the nobility:
Nationwide the urban classes had become marginalized...Most cities were private, as opposed to "royal" or public, with their inhabitants accordingly subjected to arbitrary obligations imposed by feudal owners. In the 18th century royal city of Kraków, 55% of the grounds within the city walls belonged to the Church, 17% to nobility interests and only the rest to the actual city folks. The degradation of towns was recognized as one of the leading factors contributing to national decline by the more enlightened of szlachta publicist...
The most enterprising and successful of burghers were able to join the ranks of nobility, thus leaving the urban occupations or introducing additional tensions within cities.
In the end, the system simply was reduced to greedy assholes fighting for spoils while their country was dismembered.
Janusz Radziwiłł, the most powerful magnate of Lithuania, is credited with being responsible for the first instance of the liberum veto act, which was used to break the deliberations of the sejm of 1652. This widely abused practice eventually led to a paralysis of most of significant legislative activity
In the first half of the 18th century, it became increasingly common for Sejm sessions to be broken up by liberum veto, as the Commonwealth's neighbours – chiefly Russia and Prussia — found this a useful tool to frustrate attempts at reforming and strengthening the Commonwealth. By bribing deputies to exercise their vetoes, Poland's neighbours could derail any measures not to their liking. The Commonwealth deteriorated from a European power into a state of anarchy...For a period of 30 years(1734–1763)...only one session was able to pass legislation. The government was near collapse, giving rise to the term "Polish anarchy", and the country was managed by provincial assemblies and magnates.
- Wikipedia, Liberum Veto
And if this behavior - bribing deputies to exercise their vetoes...(to) derail any measures not to their liking. - of Mr. Adelson and Netanyahu is not rejected across the board, then our democracy is already demonstrably over. The US will have obviously become captive of magnates and foreigners, just like the P-LC.
The US will not become Rome; it will become Poland-Lithuania. Like the P-LC, we will go out with a proud, arrogant, ignorant, greedy whimper.
