Free Republic

Through a series of lessons arranged in three Books, the thrust of Niccolo’ Machiavelli‘s Discourses on Livy deals with how nations in general, and republics in particular, can design, keep, and if necessary, restore free-government. The media for this exercise are the experiences, trials, successes and failures of the Roman Republic as related by Titus Livius (59BC – 17AD).J.G.A. Pocock, an historian at Washington University in St. Louis Missouri, coined the term “Machiavellian Moment” to identify the commencement of clear thinking in which civil society realizes that unless it takes corrective action, the corruption into which the nation has fallen...

Samantha | Age 22 | Old Bridge, New Jersey | Last Voted: 2016 2016 was such a disillusioning experience. Going into the election, I was so proud to be in this country at this moment, so proud to be voting for Hillary Clinton. I had my Clinton sweatshirt on all day. I was on Twitter telling people that if they didn’t vote they were dead to me — like the whole thing. Watching the results come in, it was just disheartening. My faith in the whole system was crushed pretty quickly. That was the first general election I could vote...

Need Help on Roman History Reading List....

    Tastes and interests change in literature. Different themes, different styles, indeed whole different genres come in and out of being depending on the spirit of the age.     Nevertheless, there is something to be said for a “classical” style—not in a restricted sense as the style of Greco-Roman antiquity, nor any later genre which took inspiration from it—but rather a super-cultural literary style that rises up above its own genre and belongs as much to the ages as its own time period.     This is the old concept of the “Republic of Letters”—a community not of time and space...