[StBernard] Quote of the Day

[Westley Annis]

"The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus,
but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at
all. When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted
without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows
formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle
creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for
vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and directly or indirectly sold
his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the republic was at hand,
and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the
people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing."
 
- President Theodore Roosevelt, who sadly was the first Progressive to
occupy the White House. Roosevelt, for all his virtues, set the country on
the same course as the ill-fated Roman Republic the above quote eulogizes.