Allow me to express my appreciation to the many people, living and dead, who assisted or inspired me during the course of the 3½ decades it took to compose this book.  Many will remain unnamed; indeed they might be unaware of the debt of gratitude I owe them.  Thank you, O God, for sending them my way.

First, my late mother, Francis Ruth Struble.  Widowed three years earlier, she welcomed me back to Seattle in 1970 after my college years in San Diego.  She provided me with living quarters and an office where I produced the first (albeit short) draft.  Thanks also to Columbia University Press for what I later realized was the favor of rejecting the manuscript.  Thanks also to my cousin, Susan Spooner, who had typed it on a manual typewriter (no computers in those days), and Bill Drew who had it printed and bound.  As it turned out, this 1971 draft was like an embryonic mustard seed with a life of its own, growing and maturing into the present book.

I wish also to thank the library staffs where I did much of my research over many years, including Seattle Public library; the University of Washington, Seattle; Suffolk University, Boston; Harvard’s Langdell Law Library, Cambridge; and Boston College, Chestnut Hill.

Thanks to the University of Notre Dame Press, for rejecting in 1975 what was still an immature and incomplete concept.  Sometimes tough love mandates that a young man’s hopes be negated, at least for a time.

Also my gratitude to former U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate, Eugene McCarthy.  Some ten years ago he wrote a thousand word foreword for the online version.[*]  By then the book had grown considerably, and was, I can safely say, far advanced over the versions composed before I had reached a third of a century in age.

Thanks also to the Rev. Robert Grothe for posting the entire manuscript on his web site, March 1996. This internet project was valuable, as it turned out, in securing popular input prior to a final rewriting.  To those who did respond, thank you for the feedback and constructive input.  I closed the online project after three years, having gleaned a great deal in terms of modifying and expanding the book’s content.  Thanks to everyone involved with this early experiment in literary “skywriting.”[†]

Thank you to Bob Bricco for his help with the online edition; to my former student, John Campbell, for assistance in creating the book's interactive Table of Contents; to Larry Bennett and family, for help in designing the logo for the dedication; to my wife’s parents, Vern and Laurel Redecker, for enabling me to transcribe the Twelve Lights Anthem; and to Terry Enyeart for recording my piano, providing the bass, and helping Jeryl and Katie with the vocals.

Thanks also to a relative who prefers to remain anonymous.  This fine fellow facilitated my work with invaluable technical advice and other kindly forms of assistance, including better lighting for my office.

For audio-visual assistance thanks to Emmy award winning Jeff Tassin for the 2005 video introducing the interactive book, to Duffy Williams for the nine audio segments, and to Jarrod Roth and his family for key support roles in those productions; also to Mike Connor for rendering video archives from 2004 and earlier.  Thanks also to the Bremerton Public Library for allowing us to film indoors, and to Bremerton High School for permitting us their grounds and stadium for filming.  (BTW, my Chuck Semancic memorial brick flatters me by a year, in that the Blanchet / West-Bremerton game was played midway through the 1960 season, not in 1961).

Finally, let me thank my wife, Jeryl Struble, and our three children – Katie, Daniel and Michael – who have put up with my preoccupation and have endured (usually cheerfully) the graveyard hours I kept for the sake of seclusion and quiet concentration during the final months of composition and editing.  Without their love, encouragement and forbearance, this work would not have been possible.

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            I hereby acknowledge the numerous quotations and photographs which are included in the present edition, sometimes downloaded from the internet without the author’s or photographer’s authorization.  Please pardon the trespasses; nothing in this book is for the author’s financial gain.  If forgiveness is not to be had, however, do send a request and I will look to removing the offending quotes or photos from further editions that are still under my control.  I do wish to make specific acknowledgement of and thanks for the following materials:

•Boston Tea Party, painting by Robert Reid, 1904, hangs in Nurses Hall in the Massachusetts State House, Boston.

[*] Foreword to the Internet Edition, Redeeming U.S. Democracy, 1996.

By Eugene McCarthy,

Author, Economist, Poet, Congressman, 1949-1959, U.S. Senator, 1959-1971.

With the threat of war with the Soviet Union gone, and our pre-occupation with Communism as a threat to democratic ideas and governments ended, the danger that we are likely to perish, or even decline because of external military forces is minimal.  The threat to our society, our institutions, our stability and to our position of leadership and example to the world is internal.  History never repeats itself, but there are lessons to be learned from the past.  It may be later than we think, but it is not too late for us to look to the warning signs.

Sallust, a Roman historian of the first century B.C., reported on the Roman society of his time.  He noted that the army had become a permanent, mercenary, professional body, made up of people of little or no wealth, rather than a citizens' army representing in its composition, the classes of society.  There were many poor, living on free grain distributions.  The rural areas were being depopulated as people from the rural areas of Italy and from the provinces moved to Rome or other Italian cities.  Farmers and business men were in great debt.  Serious work was being performed principally by slave labor.  The burden of veterans' benefits was oppressive.  The cost of wars and of maintaining an excessively large military establishment was a great burden.  Taxes generally were oppressive.  The wealthy were indifferent to the conditions of the country.  Politicians and demagogues proposed equality of all as the goal of political action.

Tacitus, writing a century later in the first century A.D., described a society marked by unrest, violence, intrigue, corruption, decline of morals, cultural confusion and disregard for the law.  The Roman senate was distinguished by wrangling.  Assassinations were frequent.  Greed was the mark of business and commerce, usury the rule of finance, and, as Fletcher Pratt observed in his book, Hail Caesar, written in 1936: "The supply of trained leaders began to run out just at the moment when the Republic by virtue of its imperial position was most in need of administrators with minds large enough to embrace the problems of millions and long enough to envisage the problem of decades."

The processions after Roman triumphs were most popular with the populace.  The procession was generally led by public officials, followed by trumpeters, spoils of victory, painting or models of conquered countries or cities, slogans on tablets--the most famous surviving one being the "veni, vidi, vici" of Caesar after his triumph over Pontus.  Captured arms were displayed as well as hostages and prisoners in chains.  The general, his army and chariots followed.  The general did not stand alone in his chariot but was surrounded by family and relatives.  After the procession, the chief captives were killed--in the early years of the "triumphs" by being beheaded, but in later, more humane times by being hanged.

How does the United States of today compare with the Rome of Sallust and of Tacitus and of Polybius?

There has been a massive movement of workers from rural areas, and from other countries, into the cities of the United States.  Approximately seven percent, nearly eight million potential workers in the United States, are unemployed.  According to a recent report, more than 25 million persons, one out of every 10 Americans, are receiving food stamps, the bread of Rome, with television-watching the substitute for circuses, and special celebrations of military victories as added entertainment or distraction.

While unemployment and under-employment mount, more and more work is performed by a modern equivalent of slave labor — robots and automated equipment, migrant workers, legal and illegal, and by new immigrants and by low paid workers, child labor, and even prison labor of other countries.

Veteran pensions and other pensions absorb a significant amount of national income.  A military establishment, working with financial and industrial powers of the country, operates on a budget of approximately $300 billion a year.  Presidential wars are initiated with almost automatic approval by Congress – Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf (at least the part of that war that went beyond protecting Saudi Arabian oil supplies, the original and defensible justification for our involvement).

The parade of victory following Desert Storm did not quite match the processions of the Roman triumphs, but it came close.  The generals were there, with families nearby.  The troops and the armor were there.  There was music, trumpets, banners.  Soldiers of past wars who were not returned to "triumphs," were included.  Booty was not on display, an element which might have been represented by including a fleet of oil and gas trucks....

Wars and military actions are now carried out by a volunteer army, which is in effect a mercenary army, with citizens generally exempted from military service.  Powerful institutions, principally major corporations – national, international and multinational, operate beyond social or governmental control.  Major governmental agencies, notably the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission, disregard basic constitutional liberties, rights and guarantees.

There is public indifference to politics, as indicated by the fact that in presidential elections, nearly one-half of the eligible voters do not participate.  There is great disparity of wealth, with the upper ten percent holding an estimated 70 percent of the personally held wealth, while the remaining 90 percent of the people hold 30 percent.  The burden of debt, both private and public, is overwhelming, with federal government debt approaching five trillion dollars, which, assuming 100 million potential taxpayers, would put a debt burden for federal alone of $40,000 dollars per taxpayer.

Corruption in the business and financial institutions is widespread, and usury is common.

Our culture is agitated by demands for multiculturalism and bilingualism and multilingualism, and language is under attack from the deconstructionists.  The media more and more emphasize the immediate and the sensational.....

Albert Schweitzer and others have warned that if a people fail to foresee and forestall trouble, whether in the natural order or in the political and social order, they are headed for trouble.

It is against this background and in the context of the state of confusion, contradictions, and entropy, that Robert Struble's book should be not only read, and studied, but applied.

Eugene J. McCarthy, October, 1994

[†] Included with the 1996 internet edition was the following statement:

Why publish this book on the internet prior to its publication on paper?  One objective is to solicit additional input from internet users and thus bring the general public directly into the process of this book's composition.  It seems fitting that the citizenry provide ideas and proofreading before the next draft, the final draft,…because the ultimate authority in this country in regard to constitutional change was intended by the Framers to reside with the people.  Also the proposed reforms are designed to be especially favorable to ordinary citizens, so why not consult beforehand with as many Americans as possible?

Another reason for publishing electronically … is to maintain consistency with what I have tried to do during the years of revision and research followed by more revision that have already gone into this book.  Scripture puts it best, [1 Thessalonians 5:21]: "test everything; hold fast what is good."  The internet enables you, the reader, to test the mettle of this book and help temper it by giving the manuscript a critical examination, then informing me of your findings….

In the past my manuscripts in political science and economics have been tested by professorial and often critical proofreaders under the evaluation process that academic journals employ to screen submitted articles, or to suggest improvements before an article is even accepted for publication.  Parts of this book have already passed such scrutiny and been published in article form.  I know the quality of my work improved as a result of undergoing such procedures….

Fortunately a way of testing this book exists that was technologically beyond reach until recently.  On the internet there are exponentially more pre-readers, at least potentially, than academic journals could ever hope to recruit for the purpose, unless they begin to use, as Stevan Harnad proposes, “scholarly skywriting” online as a supplement to the traditional peer review process.  Moreover, the spectrum of people on the internet is probably a lot more representative of the general reading public than the academics who do anonymous reviews for scholarly articles.

The sort of ideas welcomed from internet users would include: [1] recommendations in regard to the content of a chapter's text, [2] additional citations and sources that I should add to the endnotes, [3] constructive criticisms or suggestions about the specific reforms …, and [4] general comments….