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Bipartisanship, Circa 410 AD
Finally, the divisive battle that has gripped our nation for months has
come to an end. There can no longer be any doubt of the ultimate result:
Alaric and his Visigoth horde have won, and the emperor, Flavius
Honorius, has lost.
Whether or not we supported Alaric in his campaign to sack Rome, it is
now our patriotic duty to rally behind him. Alaric is now the ruler of
ALL Romans, not just those who smear their faces with blood and smell
strongly of dung. We must all show the graciousness, good humor, and
dignity that Honorius demonstrated as he fled on horseback with his
servants in the dark of night.
If one thing has been proved by this battle, it is that our system
works. The Visigoths worked hard for this outcome: They pillaged our
temples, burned our crops,and carried off our women. As a result, they
now deserve our support, as well as our respect. Yes, some may continue
to question aspects of Alaric's campaign. We have previously noted our
concern about the Visigoths' strategy of stripping naked and running into
battle making high-pitched screaming sounds, as well as their
controversial decision to slay our elders and eat their entrails in the
Forum. The Visigoths' scorched-earth strategy--and again, we would have
preferred for them to have scorched only SOME of our earth--struck many
of us as overly aggressive. But, in the end, Alaric and his barbarian
horde were simply using every method available to them in a flawed and
often confusing process. No battle is perfect, and inevitably some
children are going to be impaled on stakes and their lifeless bodies
paraded through the streets. Those tactics don't make the result of this
contest any less legitimate.
Now that Honorius has conceded, it is time for Rome to look to the
future, not to the past. We should no longer define ourselves as either
Romans or barbarians. Now we are all barbarians.
For his part, Alaric must be prepared to govern from the vital center.
To begin, he needs to introduce himslef more fully to the public, to
allow us to see how he will lead when he is no longer wearing animal
skins, shouting gibberish, and swinging a flaming club full of metal
spikes. Though the battle was a close one, we must now be prepared to
give Alaric our trust and our prayers as he begins to implement his
stated platform: the complete destruction of our way of life and the
violent transformation of our society into a primitive tribe of nomadic
hunter-gatherers.
Let the healing begin.
********************************************
from The New Republic magazine of 1/22/2001
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