The wages of permanent war. (Insider Report).

"A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative--that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville. The neoconservatives in charge of the Bush administration's foreign policy envision a prolonged war, against an ever-expanding roster of targets, which may last for decades--thereby placing America squarely in the predicament sagely described by Toqueville.

Writing in the April issue of Ideas on Liberty, Professor Harold Jones of Mercer University points out that while Toqueville's warning was inspired by Rome's descent from republican liberty into the tyranny of empire, it also applies "to the dangers in Mr. Bush's Department of Homeland security?" When Roman Emperor Diocletian assumed power in 285 A.D., he inherited an empire besieged from without and rotting from within. The much-vaunted Roman military was a shell of its former self; Rome was riddled with moral corruption, plagued by civic unrest, and tottered on fiscal collapse. Accordingly, Diocletian embarked on a "plan for homeland security [based on] systematic centralization," recalls Jones.

The empire was divided into a series of regional units, "each with its own civil and military rulers," Jones explains. "Every official received his appointment directly from the Emperor. A vast bureaucracy stretched out to choke anything around which it could get its tentacles." This meant, among other things, abolishing any remnant of local control and public accountability. Historian Will Durant pointed out that this was justified by invoking "the needs of actual or imminent war."

Heavy tax burdens suffocated Rome's economic life, and a special force of "revenue police was organized to examine every citizen's financial resources. Slaves, wives, and children were tortured in the attempt to determine every household's finances." The imperial bureaucracy centralized control over all industries. Wages and price controls were imposed. Diocletian debased the currency, destroying Rome's productive middle class. Rome's agricultural economy was ruined, grass grew in its abandoned streets and roads, and its commercial life was destroyed. "The barbarians did not so much conquer Rome as take over a polity that had lost the will to live," concludes Jones.

Diocletian described his imperial regime as the "watchful parents of the whole human race"; President Bush and his neoconservative courtiers unabashedly seek "benevolent global hegemony." As historian Garet Garrett pointed out, there is no security "at the top of the world"; pursuing global hegemony is the road to national ruin. The best strategy for homeland security is to avoid foreign entanglements abroad and restore limited government at home.