Political rhetoric is probably about as old as man, once he began to gather in groups, or tribes. Fred Bauer looks to Rome to speak to some of the political rhetoric we see today. Has it really changed all that much? The case can be made for, no, not at all.
In such a time of decline, the people come to look upon government---and, as time goes on, the particular officers of government---as a force for mere provision. Instead of seeing the republic as a common enterprise that requires a common effort for its maintenance, the citizens come to view it as a sort of vague deity, which rewards supplication and submission with daily bread and circuses (it's no wonder many of the Roman emperors were deified). The people would accept the at-first comfortable fetters of servitude, whose velvet veneer soon rubs away in the toiling years ahead. But, once the locks have closed, they are so hard to open. The vase of the free republic, once shattered, remains a fragmented challenge for recovery.
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