George Lucas has been interviewed and quoted many times on his empire in the Star Wars series. He refers to
historical "democracies" that became empires or dictatorships, not through an external takeover, but through the
people voting an individual all power. Mr. Lucas cites Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Adolph Hitler as
examples of leaders given extraordinary powers to deal with their country's situations. In each situation, the
country was going through turbulent times. The people, in the infinite wisdom of the mob, didn't want to deal with
the responsibilities of being citizens any longer, so they decided it better to have someone else think and make
decisions for them, someone smarter than they who could act in quelling disturbances in "their best interest." Mr.
Lucas used this history in developing his story lines. His fictional republic develops into an empire with
Senator Palpatine making himself emperor. In the sixth episode of Lucas' continuing work, namely "The Return of
the Jedi", the Emperor is overthrown internally and a new republic emerges. Although his study of the transition
between democracy and dictatorship seems to have given him some insights, the latter transition back from
all-encompassing empire to republic is much less likely. Hollywood has to have it's heroic and upbeat ending,
after all.
So, you may ask, what does musty old history or the words of a Hollywood yarn spinner have to do with us? It
illustrates two points. The first is that Hollywood can mine the past for stories set in the future, just as
science fiction writers have been doing for decades. Second, it shows us that people really did not change from
the time of Caesar, closing in on 2,100 years ago, to the time of Hitler, less than a century ago. Looking around,
you can see more recent examples. Comments about the Taliban included praise for restoring order to a ravaged
country. Yes, Afghanistan had devolved from anything more than pretensions to democracy before the Taliban took
hold; still, the people were happy to see them restore order. Order is what a dictator is all about. Mussolini
made the trains run on time. People appreciate a good dictator if he can calm the winds of fate, the ravages of
war, and an unstable economy. So, it is plain that there are a few lessons we may yet learn from history.
Let us examine two particular lessons. Those being the likely course of democracies that change to dictatorships
and how they do turn back to democracy, and under what conditions there are differences.
What fate befell these political changelings? Are their fates relevant to us today? Since Afghanistan is most
recent, let's look at that example first. The results are still too fresh for a long-term view or understanding;
however, in the short-term the dictatorship was overthrown from without by a coalition of countries. So, let's
take a step back into last century and the Third Reich that the German people voted for themselves. This regime
was short-lived, coming and going in a dozen years. What happened to the German Reich? It was overthrown by
conquering armies. Afterwards, Germany was rebuilt by the conquerors and made into a new and stable republic. The
same happened with France in the nineteenth century. It was reconstituted to its former relatively innocuous
form. A pattern establishes itself. So how about those Romans? What happened to their empire? Did it die off
with its first dictator? Did other countries unite against it to crush it? Well, no. It went on for several
hundred years, slowly declining until it fell apart from within leaving no protection against armies from without.
So why was there a difference with Rome?
Perhaps Rome's main difference lies in its relative position in the world at the time as the dominant power within
its own knowledge of the world, dominant even while it was still nominally a republic, much as the United States
stands today. Germany had equals in Britain and the U. S. Napoleon's France had an equal in the coalition of
other European countries: Britain, Prussia, Russia, etc. By the time that Rome was coalesced into a dictatorship,
it had no equals. Carthage had already fallen. Greece had collapsed in on itself, and like most of today's Europe, was a group of has-been states.
This is a four-part series. In the subsequent columns, I will cover:
1. A theory of civilization life cycles developed by Arnold Toynbee in the middle of the last century,
2. Where our civilization stands today and the likely path of events in our future,
3. A question and answer dialogue about the transition between republics and dictatorships.
F. B. Knight is Curmudgeon-in-Residence at the Attila the Hun School of Management. He can be reached for questions at
fbk@attilathehunschool.net.
