What Demosthenes could whisper to Reagan.

THE UNITED STATES is suffering from an ancient disease. The first known case was recorded in Greece about 2,300 years ago. The Athenian orator Demosthenes, who had the greatest practical experience in treating the malady, called it "democratic lethargy." Ronald Reagan diagnosed this same ailment in the American body politic and began therapy during his first term. However, a complete cure has eluded the President, perhaps partly because from the start he has been receiving second opinions suggesting his diagnosis was incorrect. To complete the treatment, Reagan needs some moral support during his second term. Is there a Demosthenes in the White House?

The President can check the Cabinet and look around the White House offices, but don't be surprised if he has to make a trip to the library to find his alter ego. Historical analogies often are abused even more egregiously than extended metaphors, and yet if used discriminatingly they can be illuminating. Reagan and Demosthenes held the same beliefs and values, defined their environments similarly, and set identical political goals for their nations. Demosthenes' career parallels Reagan's so closely that it can be used to illuminate the remaining half of Reagan's historical mission.

Like Reagan, Demosthenes was religious, eloquently championed traditional values, and acquired a reputation as a "great communicator." When Democrats groaned about Reagan's well-prepared appeals to patriotism this past election, they were echoing those opponents of Demosthenes who complained that he "comes forward when it suits him, and . . . before he has finished he has carried us off our feet and made us swell with pride."

Both men achieved political prominence not by accommodating themselves to current opinion, but by reiterating their beliefs until circumstances and popular sentiment merged in favor of their political programs. Each entered the public arena at a time when his country was recuperating from a debilitating war that had polarized domestic politics and alienated citizens from the state, when citizen soldiers were being replaced by paid professionals even as overall defense spending was in decline, and when the bulk of national wealth was being transferred to social welfare programs. Each noted that his country, while more prosperous than ever before, was failing to live up to past records of civic duty and sacrifice. Most important, according to Reagan and Demosthenes, this decline in public virtue coincided with and contributed to a period of unprecedented external danger. Each believed the foreign peril originated in one great implacable enemy: respectively, the USSR and Philip of Macedon.

The specific parallels between Demosthenes' and Reagan's historical settings are most interesting. Macedonia and the USSR both began their climbs to world prominence as second-rate regional powers. Involving itself in an intra-Greek struggle, Macedonia bounced back from an initial defeat to obtain a decisive victory. Philip used the subsequent Peace of Philocrates (read: Helsinki Accords) to formally secure his wartime gains and establish the legitimacy of Macedonian involvement in Greek (European) affairs. Initially Demosthenes thought the treaty might be designed to constrain Philip, but it soon became clear that it would go the other way and allow Philip new opportunities. Demosthenes then described the treaty as a sellout, claimed the enemy routinely violated treaties, and advised against further treaties with a power that could not be trusted (which sums up Reagan's record, if not his recent rhetoric, on treaties with the USSR). With all the bluntness of Reagan's "evil empire" speech, Demosthenes warned Athens unequivocally that there was "no safety for free states in such overfamiliarity with dictators."

Demosthenes' candor was offensive to some Athenians. They claimed he "obstructed Philip's friendly intentions." However, when Demosthenes' skepticism was borne out by events following the Peace of Philocrates, and the majority of Athenians decided that indeed Athens had been out-maneuvered in negotiations, Demosthenes reminded them of the arguments used by "the bearers of Philip's promises which induced you to accept the Peace." In support of the treaty they had

then declared that I was a man . . . bound to be awkward and difficult, whereas Philip, once past Thermopylae, would do everything we wanted, fortify Thespiae and Plataea, check Theban misdemeanors, dig a canal though the Chersonese at his own expense, [etc.]. These were all statements made on the platform, as I am sure you remember, reluctant though you may be to recall your own injuries. The most shameful thing of all is that in your optimism you voted that the same terms should be binding on a future generation.

Gullible America's wish list is just as extensive--hopes of free elections in occupied Eastern Europe and expectations of reciprocity in post-Vietnam defense-spending cuts, for starters.

Philip's lack of voluntary restraint was an embarrassment to his supporters in Athens. Naturally they took their frustration out on Demosthenes, not Philip. Rather than abandon hopeful assessments of Philip's intentions, they found it more convenient to continue blaming Demosthenes for Philip's behavior. Understandably, this irritated Demosthenes (apparently more than it does Reagan today). "What is the reason," he asked,

why a leader who is openly in arms in contravention of right, and seizing towns, is never stated to be at war, while statesmen who urge that he should not be given liberty to do so are accused of making war?

Focusing on his principal political opponent, Demosthenes criticized him for "always considering arguments against his country and not for it" and then defending himself as "though being accused of making peace."

Demosthenes worked at convincing Athenians that Philip was no malleable barbarian to be alternately ignored and educated to appreciate Athenian good will. The first prerequisite for Athenian safety, he said,

is to assume that [Philip] is an irreconcilable enemy to free and democratic institutions. If we are not convinced in our hearts of this, we shall not be prepared to take action on it in reality. Secondly, we must clearly understand that his every practice and manipulation is a deign upon this country. . . . No one is naive enough to suppose that dismal holes in Thrace--what else could one call them? --like Drongilus and Cabyle and Masteira, which he is now engaged in reducing, form an attraction whose capture is worth the effort . . . while the harbors and dockyards and warships of Athens, her silver works and her income, are nothing to him; and that he will leave all this to us. . . . Of course not.

Tactfully, Reagan has never referred to, say, Yemen and Guyana as "dismal holes."

As Philip's military operations grew increasingly bold, his protestations of peaceful intentions rang more hollow, yet his threats grew more credible, and this ensured a heated debate between those Athenians who supported peace through strength and those who supported peace through accommodation. Demosthenes scoffed at his opponents' definition of peace:

If a pretense of peace is what you want, as he does, I will not argue with you. But any idea that peace is a situation in which Philip holds the rest of the Greek world with the intention of proceeding against Athens is first of all insane and secondly means peace enjoyed by Philip and not by Athens.

When Philip destroyed the city of Phocis, angry Athens withdrew its delegation from the Pythian games, which Philip, as a by-product of the Peace of Philocrates, was chairing that year (Afghanistan and the Olympic boycott). When Philip struck closer to the vital Hellespont Strait (Panama Canal), through which Athenian food supplies flowed, Demosthenes' policies gained a wider following. Yet there was still much domestic opposition to his encouragement of indigenous (but Athenian-led and -coordinated) guerrilla warfare against Philip's forces in the Hellespont area (the Contras and Nicaragua). Demosthenes' opponents argued that such actions constituted undeclared war (U.S. debate over the mining of Nicaraguan ports), to which Demosthenes retorted that Philip was already conducting an undeclared war on Athens:

In all the designs which his power activates, he is breaking the peace and is at war with Athens--unless you are prepared to say that to erect siege artillery is a peaceful occupation, until it is set in action against the walls. No, no. A man whose actions and calculations are designed for my capture is at war with me before he discharges a weapon.

Besides, adds Demosthenes, does anyone seriously expect an open declaration of war from Philip?

It would be unparalleled folly on his part if without any complaint from his victims, but an actual tendency to blame some of our own number, he were to dissolve internal differences and rivalries of ours and warn us against himself.

Demothenes traveled to other Greek states and enjoined them to resist the siren call of Macedonian propaganda, which he claimed was too freely disseminated and too readily believed by Greeks. So successful was Philip at diplomatic manipulation that Demosthenes declared distrust must be the Greek's first line of defense:

There are numerous contrivances for the safety and protection of states; there are palisades, fortifications, field works, and the rest. These are the work of men's hands, and a drain on wealth. There is one safeguard alone which is afforded by the nature of human wisdom, and brings safety and protection to all. What is this? Distrust.

Distrust is the defining characteristic of Reagan's policy toward the Soviet Union, although, like Demosthenes, he hasn't found this quality widely appreciated among his allies.

Demosthenes also bade his fellow Greeks compare Philip's words and deeds, and to recall how cities such as Pherae and "the unfortunate city of Oreus" (Czeschoslovakia and Afghanistan) came under Philip's control:

Philip stated that he had sent his force as a benevolent measure of surveillance. He had heard that they were in a state of trouble and dissension. and it was a matter of genuine friendship on the part of an ally to assist at such a time [Brezhnev Doctrine].

Despite his respect for Philip's capabilities, Demosthenes asserted that the problem was not Philip per se. When the happy rumor swept Athens that Philip had died, Demosthenes chided his compatriots' false optimism by arguing: "Athens, in her present frame of mind, will soon create another Philip." Reagan, unconcerned with who inhabits the Kremlin, similarly asserts that weak democracies create aggressors.

Demosthenes lamented how Philip "gets the better of democractic hesitation, deliberation, and inquiry," and how Athens passes its time in "procrastination, in optimism, in recrimination, condemnation, and yet more optimism." Demosthenes told Athens its recent record suggested it was incapable of distinguishing friends from enemies (which alone might have earned him a Reagan appointment to the United Nations) and said it must learn to be present on the scene as Philip always was, instead of arriving too late and losing allies who felt they could no longer rely on Athens (the opinion of numerous pro-Western Third World leaders deposed during the 1960s and 1970s).

With peril drawing near, Demosthenes denounced his opponents' policy of accommodation as tantamount to national surrender, and argued there was no alternative to resistance:

We have no choice. We are left with the one most just and unavoidable course, which speakers like this deliberately overlook. What is that? Resistance to aggression. Unless it is meant that if Philip holds off Attica and the Peiraeus [read: if the USSR refrains from invading Texas], no wrong is being done, no act of war committed. If this is the boundary whereby rights are laid down and peace defined, it is universally clear how wrong, how intolerable, how dangerous an idea this is.

In summary, both Reagan and Demosthenes labored mightily against the self-destructive trends that often emerge in liberal democracies confronted by determined external threats (trends amply detailed in Jean-Francois Revel's highly acclaimed book How Democracies Perish). The significance of Reagan's and Demosthenes' essentially identical assessments of their nations' precarious security positions is that they were both left with the same twofold task. First, they had to rally lagging public spirit and alert fellow citizens to the external danger. Both men substantially accomplished this goal. Second, rearmament on the scale these leaders considered necessary meant they had to translate renewed patriotism and support for a strong national defense into a commitment to restructure domestic spending priorities--a most formidable task.

According to Demosthenes, whenever he publicly raised the issue of spending priorities, "the cry is at once heard of the benefits of peace and the difficulty of maintaining a large force." So like Reagan today, who has pledged resistance to cuts in Social Security and other "entitlement" programs, Demosthenes approached the social-spending issue very circumspectly.

The athenian social-welfare fund (called the theorikon) began with Pericles (FDR), the most popular and trusted democratic leader in Athenian history. Pericles initiated the practice of distributing a small payment to the poorest citizens to enable them to attend the theater at public festivals, which was considered an important part of the democracy's political socialization process. Until Eubulus became steward of the treasury in 354 B.C. the theorikon was never more than a gratuity whose distribution was dependent upon a surplus in the treasury. Eubulus made the theorikon a permanent item in the budget, and it quickly grew to encompass such a large percentage of Athenian resources that the demagogue Demades, an ally of the more sober Eubulus, referred to it as the "cement" of the democracy, while Demosthenes, with an eye to rearmament, called it "a source of revenue unparalleled in the world."

To counter a defense of government largesse as the cement of democracy, Demosthenes broadened the scope of his inquiry into the origins of public and private virtue:

I invite any man present to tell me here and now what other source there is of Philip's power than ourselves. "Well," I am told, "that may be very unfortunate, but at home, at least, we are better off." What is the evidence of this? Plaster on the battlements, new streets, water supplies. These are trivialities. Turn your eyes on the pursuers of these political ends. They have risen from beggary to riches, from obscurity to prominence, and in some cases have houses which outshine the public buildings themselves. . . . What is the reason for all this? . . . Why is so much amiss? [When, formerly,] the people of Athens had the courage to act and to serve in person, the people were the master of the politicians and the controller of all assets. . . . Now the opposite is true. It is the politicians who control assets, and through whose agency all action is taken. We, the people, are enervated and our revenues and allies are whittled away. We are incidental, subsidiary, content to be allowed a little from the theorikon.

Reagan heartily shares Demosthenes' disdain of bureaucrats and welfare services that simultaneously rob and enervate the citizenry.

Four years after Eubulus took control of the treasury, his party not only defeated a proposal to use the theorikon for the stratiotikon (the strategic fund), it succeeded in obtaining the equivalent of an unbalanced-budget amendment by passing a law that made it high treason ever to renew the proposal. Consequently, Demosthenes approached the issue extremely carefully. First he pointed out that the theorikon could easily satisfy all Athens' defense needs, but he made no concrete proposal that would expose him to prosecution. He asked rhetorically, "Am I proposing that these moneys should be used for military purposes? Good Lord, Not I!" (As in: "Raise taxes? Over my dead body!" "Touch Social Security? Never!")

However, Demosthenes immediately began lobbying for the repeal of the prohibition of proposals to draw funds from the theorikon. (A preliminary step, like asking Peter Grace to study ways to make government more efficient.) Demosthenes asserted that no progress could be made until this was done, and he encouraged Athens to make the hard but inevitable choice circumstances demanded:

It is not so easy to make a choice when affairs of state are put before you for consideration; then you must take the best course in place of the pleasant, if you cannot take both together. "But," someone might say, "if anyone can both leave the theorikon alone and propose for us other ways and means for our military expenses, surely he is a better counselor?" I quite agree, men of Athens, if this is possible! But I wonder whether anyone at all, after spending his resources on unnecessary things, ever has been or ever will be in a position to make provision for necessities from what he no longer has.

There is no need to wonder any more; 2,300 years later, Demosthenes' assumption still holds true.

Finally, when circumstances would allow no further delay, Demosthenes defied his political opponents and forced the issue:

This is our last chance to rid ourselves of such habits, . . . and say good-bye to these petty doles. They resemble diets imposed by doctors, which neither bring strength to the sick man nor let him die. The distributions we receive are not enough to bring any satisfying benefit, nor do they allow us to turn our back on them and look elsewhere. They merely serve to encourage individual inaction. Do i imply their appropriation to the army? Yes, I do.

After years of prodding, Demosthenes asked Athens to make its historic decision; lethargy and largesse finally proved incompatible with liberty.

The value in noting the similarities between Reagan's career and Demosthenes' is not to be found in rhetorical incantations about history repeating itself, but rather in the illumination of the choices and tasks that inescapably follow from their common belief systems. Reagan must proceed to the second half of his self-appointed historic mission and clearly present the necessary choice that follows from his premises and prescriptions. He must tell America that it cannot defend itself and manage the deficit by economic growth alone, nor by slashing the fraction of the federal budget that is still "discretionary," nor by tax reforms that disguise higher taxes and depress the economy, nor through arms control, which has never significantly reduced defense spending in the past. In short, assuming the President remains true to his long-articulated beliefs, and unless he is prepared to explain why the Soviet threat is suddenly less dire, he must ask America to make choices between its theorikon and its stratiotikon.

Athens made its choice too late. Demosthenes' observation that "emergency armaments never succeed," and his belief that "for a pitched battle [Philip] is better trained than we are," proved correct. In the closely contested battle of Chaeronea, Greek freedom passed away into the history books. Today Demosthenes is generally remembered only for the way he practiced his speeches while standing in front of the roaring surf with pebbles while standing in front of the roaring surf with pebbles stuffed in his mouth. In contrast, Philip, who laid waste great cities and sold his captives to his next victims, is lionized as a great engineer of historic change. Those wo do consider Demosthenes' career against the broad backdrop of history often see his efforts as a gallant but vain, even pathetic, attempt to hold back the tide of history.

Demosthenes would, and did, reject such ready acceptance of despotism as inevitable progress. Even as Philip's power continued to grow, Demosthenes repeatedly assured Athens that there was nothing irresistible about Macedonia's forward march. In fact, ten years before the battle of Chaeronea, Demosthenes predicted the brief duration of Macedonian power. In a speech designed to raise Athenian assistance for the city of Olynthus, then under attack by Philip, Demosthenes encouraged Athens not to cede the struggle prematurely:

Never, gentlemen, never can a lasting power be founded on broken promises and lying words. Such empires stand for one short hour. They may blossom with fair hopes, but time finds them out, and they fade and die. In a house, in a ship, in any structure, it is the foundation which most needs strength. So it is with the actions of men's lives, which must be founded on truth and justice. And this is not true of the achievements of Macedon.

As he predicted, the Macedonian empire, inspired by Greek culture and Alexander's military genius, passed away after its great leaders died. Demosthenes saw more clearly into the future than many moderns see into the past.

Demosthenes saw that it was not a matter of inexorable growth in Macedonian power, but rather a question of the inevitability of democratic enervation. In one of his later speeches, expressing his exasperation, Demosthenes asked his countrymen:

When shall we be ready to do what is required of us? I suppose, when necessity compels us. What free men would call necessity is not merely upon us now, it is long past. And the necessity of slaves we must hope may not come to us. What is the difference? The free man's greatest necessity is his shame at what takes place around him. Greater than that probably does not exist. The slave's necessity is the whip, and physical torture, which I hope may be as remote from our experience as it is intolerable in imagination.

Is America ready to do what necessity requires? The longer it waits to decide, the less pleasant the choices become.

Great men straddle a fine line between freedom and necessity. If two thousand years from now the United States is not free, and anyone at all is left to do so, many will portray Reagan as a man bound by historical circumstances, just as Demosthenes appears to many today. But Demosthenes was not then, nor is Reagan now, a man enslaved by history. If President Reagan will seize the moment and lead his countrymen to an historic decision, then whatever America's future may be, posterity will have to say we were free to choose.