Chavez to propose constitutional reforms

[Darth InSidious]

@SS: You gotta be kidding. Sulla was responsible for massed murders of any and all political opponents.

 

@topic: Interestingly, this comes just a couple of weeks after Chavez called Honduran Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga an 'imperialist clown' for criticising what he perceived to be increasing authoritarianism in Chavez' government...it seems the Cardinal was right. A pity, but not surprising news.

[Achilles]

A pity, but not surprising news.

Indeed. I doubt there are very many that didn't see something like this coming.

[Totenkopf]

Well, what can anyone expect from a man who's trying to become the next Castro? It would only be a surprise if he actually liberalized his government and loosened his grip on the reins of power.

 

Maybe we could call it "United Nations" or something like that

 

Dunno, maybe the UN should even have to give up it's claim to that name in the interests of "truth in advertising". perhaps the Disunited Nations or the Selectively United Nations....

[Darth InSidious]

Perhaps an appropriate name might be 'Look, America is paying the most for this enormous white elephant, now fall into line or we stop paying for your pointless-but-immensely-lucrative sinecures'?

[Totenkopf]

Well, we did w/hold $$ once, but it doesn't seemed to have done much good in the long run. Perhaps they could move the UN to Davos or Brussels. If America actually left the UN, I doubt it would take long for it to fall apart. Wouldn't take too much to make it more irrelevant than it already is anyway.

[SilentScope001]

@SS: You gotta be kidding. Sulla was responsible for massed murders of any and all political opponents.

 

DI: But he did it all for the Roman Senate! He may be a bad violator of Human Rights (as, say, the rest of the Roman Republic), but he did not do it for Power, and he was not an idiot. He did it all to safeguard Rome.

 

Hey, at least I like arguing about the state of the Roman Senate than I do about Veneuzala.

[Darth InSidious]

@SS: He did kill a lot of people he simply didn't like or opposed him. He also didn't give much of a damn about international relations, and Chrysogonus, who was bound up in the case of Sextus Roscius (excellent speech by Cicero - much better than his later waffle) was one of his henchmen. He appropriate property, IIRC, for no good reason, and held Rome in a grip of terror. Please understand, this is all from (rather dusty) memory...

 

Also, wasn't Marius a dictator? Or did he draw the line at seven (eight?) consulates?

[SilentScope001]

@SS: He did kill a lot of people he simply didn't like or opposed him. He also didn't give much of a damn about international relations, and Chrysogonus, who was bound up in the case of Sextus Roscius (excellent speech by Cicero - much better than his later waffle) was one of his henchmen. He appropriate property, IIRC, for no good reason, and held Rome in a grip of terror. Please understand, this is all from (rather dusty) memory...

 

Also, wasn't Marius a dictator? Or did he draw the line at seven (eight?) consulates?

 

Ah, I can see. Now that my memory is getting, ahem, not that dusty, I can understand that Sulla was alleged to do stuff that wasn't that...um...savoury.

 

However, Sulla did all that because of Marius, who was probraly much more a dictator. Mostly Sulla wanted to protect the power of the traditional Roman Senate, because it offers a sort of stability, rather than Marius and his armed forces, who could easily seize control over Rome just by marching inside and taking over. It's quite understandable to decide not to go and fight a war against an barbarian king when the Roman Senate, taken over by Marius' goons, declared Sulla a traitor and called for his execution.

 

Sulla's actions did cause a regin of terror, but I personally believe that it was all done to crack down on Marius' followers, and to protect the Roman Senate's Oligarch faction. The main argument I have that Sulla is not that evil is the fact that after 2 years of gaining the Consul for Life title, he resigned to his estate and gave up all power. That's not something a power-hungry person would do.

 

To each their own though. This is what I love about history.

[Darth InSidious]

That is a difficult supposition to prove. It does not take a ten-year reign of terror in which no-one was safe to purge one man's cronies. And anyone who put their head above the parapet got dealt with in a terminal manner...

[Fredi]

Yeah yeah talk bad about him but the thing is that dude really knows how to govern, military tactics (he is a general) and how to control their economy.... the only thing I don’t like is that he is messing too much with Colombia. He thinks that he is Bolivar, he wants to unite Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador together again like Bolivar did.

[Darth InSidious]

Other leaders in the past century have had similar accolades granted them while they acquired power for themselves, too...

[SilentScope001]

That is a difficult supposition to prove. It does not take a ten-year reign of terror in which no-one was safe to purge one man's cronies. And anyone who put their head above the parapet got dealt with in a terminal manner...

 

Sulla stayed as dictator for 3 years, so his regin of terror was in fact 3 years. The regin of terror he did might be condemned, but it is also noted that his opponent, Marius, also pulled off a reign of terror, killing off all his enemies as well.

 

Sulla did do the proscriptions for one reason, to pay the troops. Once the person is killed off, the property can be seized and used to pay the troops. Many people in the Roman army were poor volunteers who joined up in order to get paid and get a job. If they don't have any money, they'll dessert, or worse, betray their commanders. So, the proscriptions were necessary to keep Sulla in power.

 

Please note that Marius also used the same idea too...recruiting poor men and promising them lots of money to do so, and also purged his own enemies of the state. It is a civil war, where people kill off other people. So, in the end, Sulla wanted to peserve the Republic, and protect it from what he saw as those who wish to undermine the Republic and threaten the traditional order.

 

And to showcase his reforms that Sulla did, here's a quote from this website: http://www.roman-empire.net/republic/sulla.html

 

After the damaging conflicts with the Gracchi brothers and their infamous use of other assemblies, the senate was now reaffirmed as the highest body, entitled to veto any decision reached by another assembly.The power held by the Tribunes of the People was virtually abolished, as they now no longer possessed the power to challenge the senate.

Membership to the senate was roughly doubled, many equestrians and magistrates of other cities being added to their ranks.

Further he introduced a law by which any new member to be admitted to the senate had at least to have held the position of quaestor beforehand. This was no doubt to assure the senate remained a body of political and administrative experience.

Also, in order to prevent the re-emergence of serial office holders like the Gracchi, Sulla restored the ten year waiting period before one could hold the same public office a second time.

Additional to this, perhaps to prevent any meteoric rise to power by people like the Gracchi brothers, he introduced a rule by which anyone holding office would have to wait at least two years before he could be nominated for the next higher office.

 

Sulla also instituted legal reforms, which created new courts for particular types of crime. Also his reforms highlighted between civil and criminal legal procedures. Here, too, the senate found its authority strengthened, as Sulla's reforms allowed only senior senators to sit as judges.

[Darth InSidious]

I could have sworn it was ten years...my memory is playing tricks on me, evidently. Fair enough, I bow to your more recent investigation of the subject.