Kneeling before the conqueror

As part of an occasional series of previously published and unpublished writings, here is an unpublished article of mine from 1990. In this piece, I find in Livy’s History of Rome a distant mirror of America’s genuflection before the altar of Nelson Mandela and the forces of racial political correctness. Chronicles turned this piece down.

America’s self-abasement:
Nelson Mandela and the story of Decius Magius
Lawrence Auster
August 1990

The flag wasn’t the only national symbol that was devalued this past June. During the same week that the House of Representatives decided that what the American flag symbolizes is the right to burn it, the Empire State Building—symbol of the swiftly fading capital of the West—was lit up in lavender to honor homosexual pride, while two of our nation’s highest tributes, a ticker tape parade up Broadway and an invitation to address a joint session of Congress, were given to Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress.

Apartheid is not the issue here; I have no intention to minimize the cruelty of South Africa’s racial system, nor to deny Nelson Mandela’s extraordinary personal character; but surely it was a surrender of our national principles, not to mention our pride, to grant such high honors to a man of Mandela’s political character. He is, after all, the head of a terrorist/authoritarian party and the friend of some of our worst enemies. Considering his importance, a respectful official greeting was in order—not an apotheosis.

The depressing sight of American officialdom falling at the feet of a charismatic foreign leader with a sinister international agenda and a dubious devotion to liberty was eerily reminiscent of an event that is recounted in Livy’s history of ancient Rome. Livy’s books are filled with stirring examples of virtue and vice, of wisdom and folly, that are as meaningful in our day as they were in his. One can only say that our present leaders, in the extreme solicitude they showed Nelson Mandela, were earnestly seeking not to emulate the example of a brave Capuan aristocrat by the name of Decius Magius.

After Hannibal and his Carthaginians had miraculously crossed the Alps and annihilated the Roman army at the battle of Canae, the people of Capua, thinking that Rome was on the verge of destruction, broke their alliance with the Romans and made a treaty with Hannibal. Under the terms of the treaty Hannibal could post a garrison in Capua, but he would have no jurisdiction over the Capuans, whose liberty was thus thought to be assured. Alone among his fellow citizens, Decius Magius denounced the treaty and urged the Capuans to return to their allegiance with Rome. Livy continues:

Marius [a Capuan leader] called a meeting of the people and ordered them to go in a body with their wives and children to meet Hannibal. So enthusiastic was the crowd, and so eager to go and see a general famous for so many victories, that the order was obeyed by everyone with the greatest good will. Decius Magius neither joined the crowd nor shut himself up at home, as that might have indicated an uneasy conscience; he strolled in the forum at his ease with his son and a few dependents, while the rest of the town was going mad with excitement at the prospect of seeing and entertaining the great Carthaginian.

After a day of festivities and sight-seeing, Hannibal addressed the Capuan Senate and promised that Capua would soon replace Rome as the capital of Italy.

He went on to say that there was one man who had no share in the friendship of Carthage or in the treaty with himself—one man who deserved neither to be nor to be called a Campanian: and his name was Decius Magius. “I require,” he ended, “that he should be delivered into my hands. His case must be discussed, and the senate’s decree pronounced, in my presence.”

To this demand the senate unanimously assented, in spite of the fact that many members felt that Decius did not deserve so fearful a punishment, and also that their liberties were being significantly infringed at the very start.

Magius, his spirit by no means crushed, was still vigorously asserting that there was nothing in the terms of the treaty to justify this act of violence, when chains were thrown upon him and the order was given to take him, followed by a lictor, to Hannibal’s headquarters. Large crowds gathered and he harangued them in loud and bitter words as he was marched off: “So you’ve got the liberty you wanted,” he shouted. “Here am I—in the forum, in daylight, before your eyes—I, second to none in this city of ours—dragged off in chains to my death. Could an enemy do worse if Capua had fallen? Go to meet Hannibal, put out more flags, make his coming a holiday, that you may enjoy the spectacle of this triumph over your fellow-citizen!” Till now, Magius was bareheaded; but when it seemed that his words were not without effect on the crowd, his guards covered his head and face and he was hurried more quickly out through the city gate.

In this searing image of national self-betrayal do we not find a likeness of our present shame? Previously only two private foreign citizens have addressed a joint session of Congress: American’s great friend the Marquis de Lafayette and Lech Walesa, hero of the defeat of Communism in eastern Europe. But now we extend those same laurels to the leader of a Communist-allied party, the self-proclaimed “comrade at arms” of Third-World dictators and terrorists—including the Puerto Rican nationalists who shot up the House of Representatives in 1954. Yet all that is swept under the rug in the rush to greet the “conquering hero.” For Nelson Mandela is riding the wave of a cultural Canae. To Americans, he is a symbol, a wonderfully convenient icon, of the emergent forces of radical egalitarianism; and his extravagant reception here proclaims America’s surrender to those forces. The surrender takes the form of a racial double standard that is transforming American life: affirmative action; race and sex quotas; the elimination of individual morality by a race morality which blames all black crime and failure on white oppression; the banning of the discussion of race differences except as the favored minority group wishes them to be discussed; the downgrading of the West along with a shameless romanticizing of minority history; a Third-World immigration policy; and a redefinition of (American) patriotism as a love of all humanity. As this movement sweeps through American institutions, its leaders speak the words equality, justice and freedom, but woe to the man who speaks the truth about it or fails to show the proper respect. Like Decius, he is dragged off in chains in broad daylight. For the real name of the game is not equality or justice, but power—as Winnie Mandela kept reminding us with her dythrambic “Amandla” (power) chant and her clenched-fist salute that she displayed everywhere she went, even at the White House.

The racial injustice of the apartheid system that Nelson Mandela has spent his life fighting provided a moral umbrella under which American blacks could vent their own racial passions, worshipping their African god-king and shouting “Amandla” while the media commented approvingly on the “intensity” of their feelings—the relativist’s substitute for righteousness. What else but an eager fawning before power could explain the utter official and media unanimity, the near hysteria, of the Mandela greeting?

Meanwhile, to help increase our comfort level with our new hero, the blow-dried boys at the Ministry of Truth altered Mandela’s record, telling us over and over that Mandela was jailed for 27 years as a “prisoner of conscience.” Not once during Mandela’s three day visit to New York did I hear anyone on New York local television speak the simple truth—that Mandela was convicted for engaging in a campaign of sabotage, not for his “views.” In this regard, Mandela is more honest, and a thousand times more courageous, than his Orwellian lackeys in the American news media.

Decius Magius, by the way, escaped his fate. Sent by sea to Carthage (Hannibal thought it would be too provoking to kill him in his native city), Decius was saved when a storm threw his boat off course and carried him to Egypt, where he fell under the protection of Ptolemy Philopater. When Ptolemy gave him a choice of returning either to Capua or to Rome, Decius declined both options, replying that “there was nowhere he would rather live than in the realm of a king who had given him his liberty and was willing to defend it.” Decius may have been luckier than we. As the new equalitarian despotism swallows up the West, where will there be left for us to flee?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 09, 2004 07:40 PM | Send