Is That Legal?

The doctrine that describes constitutional evolution is called "Anacyclosis."

According to F. W. Walbank, the first recorded exposition of the doctrine was by Polybius, in Book VI of The Histories. Polybius' description of the cycle was later mentioned by Cicero (On The Republic), and appeared paraphrased in Machiavelli (The Discourses).

The specific cycle runs through a series of constitutional forms, from a state of nature, into a neutral monarchy, then a good monarchy, then degenerating into a bad one, overthrown by a good oligarchy, then degenerating into a bad one, overthrown by a good democracy, then degenerating into a bad one. The beginning and end of political evolution is marked by, in Walbank's words, "beastlike behavior." And then state of nature again. (Incidentally, remember what Einstein said about WWIII and WW IV?)

Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and many others would then argue that the government of demagogues--they used the word tyrants--would issue from this last phase. As the story goes, the people are so free and promote equality and freedom to such a degree that the democracy degenerates into an ochlocracy, and eventually a sort of omniarchy in which the state is one big gigantic charlie foxtrot. The people are then fish in a barrel for the demagogues who assume the mantle of tyranny and herd the people like the sheep into which they have made themselves.

Kierkeegard's essay "The Crowd is Untruth" is informative of the attitude that demagogues harbor toward the people, which they regard essentially as human cattle:

"There is therefore no one who has more contempt for what it is to be a human being than those who make it their profession to lead the crowd."

Historically, the specific constitutional forms have not evolved as Polybius anticipated.

But the general principles that animate political development have. Political development has been marked by increasing numbers of political participants.

And maybe some bold and audacious person would even suggest, certainly one who is not a lover of liberty, that people are a little more degenerate.

So, to Santayana, I would say that knowing about the past won't do anything. History repeating itself is inevitable. Everything that was, will be again. Same story, but maybe different characters.

Eric, I think that Isaacson does indeed attribute the quip to book's author. In the next paragraph of the review, Isaacson writes: "In his provocative and lively 'Are We Rome?' Cullen Murphy provides these requisite caveats as he engages in a serious effort to draw lessons from a comparison of America’s situation today with that of imperial Rome." In my reading, the Santayana quip is among the "requisite caveats" that Isaacson says Murphy "provides." To be sure, the attribution could be clearer, but I doubt that Isaacson was deliberately swiping the witticism to pass it off as his own.

ELM: Fair enough. I read it a bit differently; Isaacson's phrasing of the Santayana caveat is so clearly designed as an reader's-attention-capturing witticism that to my eye, it was clearly Isaacson's and not Murphy's. That is, I do read Isaacson as passing the witticism off as his own. But I recognize that other readers' mileage may vary.

Sorry, never heard of Santayana... always took the concept, "what's past is prologue" from Shakespeare: Antonio, The Tempest, Act II, Sc. i:

"We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge."