Posted on 04/10/2017 2:31:13 AM PDT by Jacquerie
In Part I, we found that nearly eight hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, Lycurgus toured the various governments of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Combining their best features, he established a republican governing form in Sparta that lasted almost six hundred years. Such was the admiration of our Founding generation, their speeches and writings in the 1776-1788 period were peppered with references to Lycurgus and lessons to be drawn from the ancient Greeks.
Where Lycurgus made an actual tour of contemporary governments, James Madison and John Adams took literary tours of dozens of governments as related by the Bible, Livy, Polybius, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and the 17th and 18th century Enlightenment writers and philosophers. Our Framers knew that taken together, they stood as Lycurgus. As lawgivers, both Lycurgus and our Framers intended to leave behind long-lasting republican institutions suitable for a free people. Lycurgus was successful. What of our Framers’ bequest?
Features of Sparta and Spartan Government.
1. Sparta was a small city-state.
2. Citizens shared a common religion and traditions.
3. An Oath rendered Sparta’s governing form static.
4. All citizens were equal in society and before the law.
5. Separation of powers.
6. Bicameral legislature.
1. & 2. In his Spirit of the Laws, Charles De Montesquieu found that to remain stable, democratic and representative republics must be limited to small territories. Here, the people will share common traditions and religion. How else could self-government endure but among a single people united in their views, habits, religion, and outlooks? Didn’t history and current observation show that expansive empires of competing and diverse peoples were only suitable for authoritarian emperors, caliphs, and czars? The Anti-Federalists of 1787-1788 didn’t adequately latch on to this concept to argue that a nation . . .
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