In readiness for an article I’m currently working on regarding the disparate divide between the governed and the government, I have revived, with slight edits, a piece I wrote in 2024 on the need to return to the beginning of a thing in the hope of restoring its essence and resurrection from the ashes of destruction.

Niccolo Machiavelli wrote that if a republic is to live long, it is necessary to draw it back often toward its beginning.

“For all the beginning of sects, republics, and kingdoms must have some goodness in them, by means of which they may regain their first reputation and their first increase. Because in the process of time, that goodness is corrupted, unless something intervenes to lead it back to the mark, it of necessity kills the body.”

It is now time for Australia, and all modern western democracies, to be led back to the starting point, less necessity kills our body politic.

Interestingly, there is lately talk of the end of France’s Fifth Republic, with commentators on social media suggesting that France could return to a monarchy under the leadership of Louis de Bourbon, descendent of Saint Louis IX, who is quoted as saying, “If France calls upon me, I will be at its service.”

Closer to home in Australia, there are calls to encourage the people to go on strike on 10 December to reclaim power back, peacefully, from an overreaching government.

Such rebellion will be the subject of my next article with its genesis in early Ancient Rome, what historians refer to as Conflict of the Orders or Secession of the Plebs.

Now, the concept of going “back” will raise the ire of progressives. It could even unnerve libertarians, the thinking being that any hint of the status quo or traditionalism is the sole purview of conservatives. But I would remind them of what Thomas Paine said, that when government “operates to create an increased wretchedness in any of the parts of society, it is on a wrong system, and reformation is necessary.” It is in effect, a breaking of the Social Contract, an issue I wrote on recently for Liberty Itch.

We could argue over the difference between Paine’s reform and Machiavelli’s drawing back to the beginning, but as a historian, I stand by the view that unless one contemplates how a thing starts, the solution to improving it can be neither understood nor solved.

It is not new, this thing known as recovery of freedom. In 509 BC, Lucius Junius Brutus rescued Rome from the corruption and pride of kings gone bad. After two hundred years the monarchy had degenerated into vileness at the hands of one man vested with too much power.

It is not a stretch to draw parallels with life in Australia from 2020 – 2022 under the direction of Scott Morrison as Prime Minister, who set up an unconstitutional National Cabinet, continued to this day by current leader, Anthony Albanese; and who allowed unrestricted power to state premiers for carte blanche hard-line rule over their populations. Daniel Andrews’ iron fist in Victoria demonstrates that it is all too easy for one man to think himself a god. Though he was not alone in his authoritarian bent, he was by far the most brutal of all the state’s leaders.

We can ruminate on our demise, or we can each do something to regain the goodness which has been corrupted by time. This is a process in itself – documenting what is wrong by looking back to what provided the foundation upon which democracy was built. And it does not require the commanding presence of public figures.

In Cicero’s dialogues between past heroes of the Roman Republic, Scipio Africanus said of Lucius Brutus:

“No one is a mere private citizen when the liberty of his fellows needs protection.”

No political system has ever been immune to corruptible processes. With frequent marches taking place across western nations against oppressive state surveillance and excessive immigration, it is indicative of citizens’ attempts to reclaim some power back from their overreaching governments, and pressure them to listen more to the voices of their own people before enacting dictates which lack true democratic authority to do so.

It behoves us all to heed more wise words from Cicero, who it could be argued spoke against the woke mind virus before it became a thing in the post-modern era:

Totius autem iniustitiae nulla capitalior quam eorum, qui tum, cum maxime fallunt, id agunt, ut viri boni esse videantur.

“But of all forms of injustice, none is more flagrant than that of the hypocrite who, at the very moment when he is most false, makes it his business to appear virtuous.”

- On Duties, Book I, 41

Once again, all roads lead back to Rome!