Neoconservatism differs from true conservatism and is correctly called pseudo-conservatism because true conservatism appertains to the theory and practice of true liberty; that is, liberty based on proven moral worth, on what is right, rather than on brute might and its idol, material wealth. True conservatives would conserve liberty - that is their prime directive - but true liberty is not anarchic; i.e. without ruling principle (arche) or rational leaders (archons). True conservatism is an historical or timeless concept appertaining to the moral conservation of the principle of liberty, to freedom in order. Such an order is natural to man, whose special nature as the human species is moral - a term that until recently denoted the operations of the rational mind including the regulation of the human spirit of liberty by virtuous mores of the highest order.

Marcus Cato was the best practitioner of true conservatism in Roman times. He aimed to conserve morality as well as personal property. He was mild-mannered in private but severe in the exercise of his public duties; a frugal man and the only Roman official whom could be fully trusted with the public treasury, a treasury he once filled by diplomatic means instead of the militant means beloved by Caesar and Pompey. Pompey bragged about the twenty talents of gold and silver in spoils he had contributed to the treasury; but Cato bragged that, without horses or men, he had brought in, through diplomatic means, far more money, seven-thousand talents of gold and silver, than Pompey had contributed via all his conquests. Of course if we count the lands, peoples, animals, and goods, and the expected additional revenue of fifty to eighty-five million dinarii a year listed on Pompey's tablets - set up because a two-day procession was inadequate to display all the spoils - we think Pompey had more to brag about.

In any case, Cato's true conservatism differed in important respects from the amoral or immoral principles of today's neoconservatives, who identify morality with the limitation of murder to perceived enemies, with the heterosexual deployment of genitalia, and with the ownership of women, wombs and other forms of wealth. The economic objective of neoconservatives and neoliberals, who idolize Competition and who tend to speak of gigantic nodules of the corporate oligopoly as if they were mom and pop stores, is to restrain production and competition and trade, that false shortages and cheap labor might be fully exploited. Their unrestrained lust, greed, prevarication and hypocrisy indicate that they have been, in a word, corrupted by the very sin some of them claim is original to the human race.

Cato, in marked contrast to Julius Caesar and President Bush, was devoted to curbing corruption and thwarting usurpation by preserving the laws constituting the traditional republic. But our neoconservatives identify ’democracy’ with publicly unregulated, privately regulated capitalism, controlled by an unelected executive elite. They overlook or condone the squandering of public and private trusts by corporate trustees. They admire robber barons and bemoan the arrest and imprisonment of such ruthless and unsavory leaders of enterprise as Michail B. Khodorkovsky, the Russian business oligarch and founder of the Yukos oil company who was awarded public property in rigged auctions for pennies on the dollar.

Neoconservatives praised Mr. Khodorkovsky as a visionary entrepreneur, a business genius who made a huge profit off of the assembled public assets and who wound up rubbing shoulders with the Western political elite and oil company magnates; they bemoaned the multi-billionaire's conviction by a Russian court, a conviction they perceive as a serious blow to "democracy" and the "free" market - meaning an unregulated oligarchic market in the hands of an unelected business elite. On one point the neoconservatives are right: the prosecution of Mr. Khodorkovsky was "politically motivated" and selective; the prosecution and conviction orchestrated by Vladimir Putin, the most powerful crook in Russia, was a violation of the socialist and democratic privileges available to the neofascist elite, a travesty of the honor ideally had among the top thieves, members of The Thing, whose crimes are preferably legalized by bribed legislators.

French and Dutch voters rejected that kind of democracy, waging a "democratic intifada" against the unaccountable and irresponsible power elite behind the anti-democratic European constitution. The party elite on both left and right (as if the polity still had two wings) held hands but lost their bid to get the "free" market or "neoliberal" constitution sanctified by the people. The gap between the elite and the people is one of credibility - the people no longer believe the elite because the evidence has proven them to be pathological liars. The invisible Hand supposedly guiding the free market casino is a filthy and stingy hand: Mammon gave the Hand a license to steal; the truly devout people would cut it off. Not that the people abhor fair trade, which is available in a two-handed market. IF the purportedly obsolete principles of liberal economics can still be the great boon as advertised, THEN let the product be fairly distributed, sayeth the voice of social good, the voice traditionally associated with ethical Good if not God. Now is not the time to preach reduced benefits and less protection of labor to wage slaves in the name of false democracy.

The "free" market neoliberals and neoconservatives alike are appalled by the upset of their united European gilded apple cart. The antisocial regressives share an essential predilection for the unrestrained accumulation of capital in a few hands. Wherefore they share as well a prejudice against providing for the social welfare. It is the very nature of neoconservative puritanism to create a dire need for charity.

Back in the United States, President Bush nominated Christopher Cox, a devotee of Ayn Rand, the high priestess of unrestrained greed and gilded individualism, to the chairmanship of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Cox worked in the Reagan White House during the good old corrupt days. Congressman Cox has had his main financial support from big business, lawyers and accountants. He fought against accounting rules designed to curb corruption; he was a sponsor of the bill that made it easier for the crooks presiding over the likes of Enron and Worldcom to bilk investors out of billions of dollars. He is expected to do whatever he can to gut security regulations once his nomination is confirmed. He will replace the Republican "traitor" who dared to vote with Democrats to do the right things: William H. Donaldson. Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama senator who heads the Senate Banking Committee expected to confirm Cox, expects Cox to unite the SEC so that the right-wing neoconservatives who lead the Republican Party can get their way. Shelby does not realize that a democratic consensus moves to the truth and not with the Republican neoconservative party line.

"I have long thought that the lack of consensus on a number of big issues was very troubling, with 3-2 votes, and especially with a Republican chairman skipping form the two other Republicans on several big votes,”“ said Senator Shelby.

President Bush, whom we distrust for the good reason that he is a politician of the worst sort, a professional liar and hypocrite, declared: "As a champion of the free-enterprise system in Congress, Chris Cox knows that a free economy is built on trust." Now he would trust the security of the Social Security trust funds to his trusted colleagues, who comprise one of the greatest legally organized gangs of thieves the country has ever known.

Despite the apparent difference between the major parties today, despite the occasional resort to ideological rhetoric, the leaders of the parties have the same objectives: power in all its forms. In reality the power elite are anti-ideological or "pragmatic." A few ideological speeches are made by politicians to get the vote. But to take office they must take the hypocritical oath and forswear practicing the principles they professed to get elected.

Everybody knew that in the first place; yes, people who voted had high hopes for a few days, until the promises were broken yet again according to business as usual. And then they did not want to hear their candidate called a mass murderer and a liar and a fool, for acceptance of such castigations as true would imply that they too were, at the very least, morons (fools). Their candidate was for states rights, but he immediately runs to a federal court to contest a state election; he was against nation building, but he immediate proceeded to build nations; he was for free trade, but he immediate proceeded to restrain trade; he was for Jesus Christ, but he immediately rushed to war - indeed, he was groomed for war by his father and his father's ministers; that was actually the only plank in his platform. And he was very popular because he rushed to war. Hail Caesar! He can do no wrong nor will he admit wrong. Hair Caesar! With him in office, who needs a god? Hail Caesar! But the war is not going well, and the evidence can no longer be ignored even by the ignorant. The god is unmasked of the mask projected by fear and mass delusion.

Oh, it was all a game, really, a real illusion, and the people were deceived again. Forgive the people for creating a moronic public monster; after all, the people had very little say in selecting the candidates that they were privileged or allowed to vote for, and they have been trained to allow experts to decide what is best for them so they can work all day, and attend to their families, sports and other idle entertainments on weekends. Who kills whom and how the reproductive organs are employed are the main political considerations. Yes, the "democratic" election was just a game; a political ritual presided over by the power elite. And the neoconservative faction is the most cynical political game-player of all. First of all, its intellectual proponents embrace lying as necessary to move the masses. The neoconservatives have lied so much that they have become pathological liars who are prone to lying about their intentions and deeds even when they have good intentions and are doing good deeds. Some neoconservative leaders have made Hitler's famous fatal mistake: they have lied so often that they believe their lies.

The neoconservative lies go unnoticed and we hear "Hail Caesars!" all around. Journalists who must rehash the termitic pap of their colleagues, meet current deadlines, and keep their speaking engagements have no time to immerse themselves once again in the study of ancient Roman history and the Second and Third German Reichs: they have difficulty understanding the classical underpinnings of what is going on today, for the imperial presidency has no ideology. For instance, Knight Ridder's Washington correspondent, Steven Thomma, writes:

"Bush's vision defies ideology and makes labeling it difficulty. He sounds like a traditional conservative when he talks about the military or partially privatizing Social Security. But he would also expand government powers and send budget deficits soaring, and this is what conservatives and liberals find abhorrent."

If only "conservatives" and "liberals" themselves really knew the meaning or meaninglessness of their labels today. What the professional journalist does not recognize, because the very thought seems politically incorrect and insulting to his class, therefore revolutionary to him, is that President Bush is a neo-fascist, a neo-Roman imperialist. Indeed, an important difference between Julius Caesar and President Bush is that assistants carrying the fascist fasces that bind the dark forces of corporate board tribalism precede President Bush. Mind you that the neofascist neoconservatives are generous among themselves but stingy with the working majority and downright hostile to the poor. Julius Caesar was not only generous to his aristocratic friends; he was generous to the commoners as well. Of course the reason for Caesar's magnanimity to the plebs and their aspiring leaders may be attributed to their alleged disposition to rebel against the republican senate - an inclination today's Americans need to actually cultivate forthwith. The conservative majority in the Roman senate, under the leadership of the true conservative, Marcus Cato, would have blocked Caesar's climb to power, wherefore Caesar used the disaffected plebs to advance his interests. Alas, when the United States became Untied Hates of American rushing to its neoconservative disgrace, America had a Cato Institute but no Cato in the U.S. Senate to stand up to the popular tyrant.

We find the same anti-ideological and irrational primitive thinking of neoconservatism in the convenient arguments of Mussolini and Hitler. There really is no such thing as a consistent fascist philosophy or ideology. Whatever is convenient to the moment may be said; as long as the masses are marched around in circles to music and absurd slogans, as long as they have some bread and circus and think they are going somewhere, all is well for the power elite.  If it were not for the fact that President Bush's popularity derives from a voting majority whose circumstances are relatively comfortable, he is a perfect candidate for postmodern ceasaristic dictator. Of course his popularity is waning; the canard is now a lame duck; fortunately, the U.S. Constitution provides for the virtual assassination of caesars.

Whether the neoconservative faction spreading the forces of darkness of corporate board tribalism over America will soon be a dead duck remains to be seen. Something had better change pretty soon or the living shall see hell surface on earth again. We cannot depend on the divine providence of an invisible hand: Cato remarked on the unreliability of divine providence: "Pompey, when he did not thing wisely or honestly, was always successful; and now that he would preserve his country, and defend her liberty, he is altogether unfortunate."

Nonetheless, the Stoic must do his duty in the face of that fickle fortune called divine providence by arbitrary men, who would do anything to get what they want. Only good persons who do their duty are truly free: the wicked, who are possessed by their irrational passions, are slaves. There will be hell to pay if the neoconservative movement is not thwarted at once. Otherwise, the process is likely to accelerate until the middle class is gutted out and the United States becomes just another American republic with an enormous gap between rich and poor, beset by revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements, governed by dictatorial presidents and military juntas and the like.

The liberals in fact if not in theory joined the neoconservative intellectual and moral decline some time ago. Those who dare call themselves liberals today are most often wolves in sheep's clothing. High ideals are ritually stated but deeds do not match the words. Authorities on both sides of the aisle are undemocratic and impudent. Pathological liars preside over the nation, over its business, political, military and religious institutions. Professional liberals cling to faith, not works; to advertising, not news; to form, not content; to images, not facts; to illusions, not realities. The writing is truly on the wall. But it seems that the people have been rendered illiterate by the trivial partisanship.

Partisan ideology has been reduced to rhetorical cover for the pragmatic pursuit of that happiness which is associated with the vast accumulation of power in its various form; the predominant form today is economic wealth, measured by units of monetary exchange.  When examining neoconservative behavior today, we should keep its Roman origins in mind. Today President Bush is wrongly associated with Marcus Cato in the popular mind, while Julius Caesar is deemed to be a liberal democrat, in large part because of Ted Turner's well meaning movie, Caesar, wherein the politics of the leading men, especially Cato's views, were misrepresented. In point of fact, we find a much greater similarity in political disposition between President Bush and the emperor. Cato stands apart as the true conservative, the conservator of political liberty: in fact, Cato was the last man who defended the Roman Republic from popular tyranny.

Notwithstanding the personal differences between Julius Caesar and George W. Bush, Jr. and their different social and political circumstances, the 'neoconservative' presidency of George W. Bush, Jr. is a quasi-caesaristic 'democratic' dictatorship of popular greed and militarism rooted in the imperial aspirations of the populist dictators of the Roman Empire. The irrational spirit of the First Reich of the Roman Empire was revived by the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. Popular imperialism, as modified by the "barbarians", has been ably represented in modern times by Kaiser Wilhelm II of the Second Reich and Adolph Hitler of the Third Reich.  President Bush is today's Anglo-American-Saxon neoconservative representative of caesaristic dictatorship. Postmodern neoconservative thought is a branch of the anti-ideological thinking derived from the "New Conservatism" of Germany. Students of neoconservatism may find various aspects of the subject illuminated in the works of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Hobbes, Nicolo Machiavelli, Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Heinrich von Treitzschke, Max Weber, General von Bernhardi, Friedrich Meinecke, Carl Schmidt, Wilhelm II, Adolph Hitler, Leo Strauss, Newt Gingrich, Paul Wolfowitz, and Condoleezza Rice among others.

Carl Schmitt's works are particularly instructive. Schmitt is best known for his friend-foe political theory to the effect that politics is for finding out who your enemies are so you can kill them; in his own words: "Political thought and political instinct prove themselves theoretically and practically in the ability to distinguish friend and enemy. The high points of politics are simultaneously the moments, in which the enemy is, in concrete clarity, recognized as the enemy." Schmitt provided the "totalitarian” jurisprudential justification for Hitler's suspension of the Weimar Republic’s democratic constitution. Der Fuehrer, The Father of the Third Reich, conceived himself at the time as the democratic embodiment of the German people: in one speech, Hitler even claimed to be the most democratic of all democratic leaders because he actually exercised the will of the people. During times of crisis, Hitler was, like the Kaisers, Tsars and Caesars before him, moved to take extraordinary emergency measures to protect the empire from liberalism. Unlike the earlier Roman dictators, whose term and power was strictly limiter, Hitler made the crisis perpetual, asserting one pretext after another in order to unite the folk in hate, in hate-others based self-love; wherefore the democratic-republican Weimar constitution would never be restored.

Carl Schmitt indoctrinated Leo Strauss, who, in turn, immigrated to America and indoctrinated Paul Wolfowitz, President Bush's former assistant secretary of defense. Wolfowitz's role in justifying the pre-emptive, second Bush War on Iraq gained him the presidency of the World Bank, where he is pressing the free-market reforms responsible for the further impoverishment of peoples and the destruction of their national and ethnic cultures. Their new president outraged the staff at World Bank; he is apparently re-engineering the staff - downsizing them. Wolfowitz got into prestigious colleges, dodged the draft, buried himself in bureaucracy, got himself a political post, and proved himself to be generally incompetent. More recently, Wolfowitz responsible for the 46-page war plan, 'Defense Planning Guidance', the plan that President Bush used for the second Bush War on Iraq. The plan contradicts the conservative principle of political pluralism and repudiates democratic ideals.

For instance, the Four Freedoms outlined by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his January 6, 1941 speech: freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from fear and want.  Now the plan to destroy the four freedoms has been implemented: the Establishment's press and other media hides the truth under a basket and sells neoconservative packs of lies - the liberal editors and journalists have become wolves in sheep's clothing. And with the help of its media, the Establishment propagates fear and intimidation while gutting out the middle class and augmenting poverty throughout the land.  As for religion, despite the rhetoric to the contrary, the United States of America is a born-again, fundamentalist "Christian nation", with all the hatred and bigotry that the history of hate-based love implies, including the fervent wish that all non-Christians roast eternally on spits in hell's fires - the neoconservative or pseudoconservative religion is pseudo-Christianity. However that may be, we should heed well the following words from Roosevelt's speech when we behold America's temporary kaiser:

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Yes, Paul Wolfowitz was in charge of justifying President Bush's mad policy of world provocation. Post-Cold-War pluralism was to be replaced with the arrogant world domination of a sole superpower - the United States of American - an attack on which was an attack on civilization itself. Wherefore that great nation soon became the Untied Hates of America. World power was equated with oil: Oil = Power. The objective was no longer to "deter" or to "contain" rivals, but to impose a "new order" that would make it impossible for any other country to "generate global power." The born-again neoconservative president in the name of his god and holy father, the absolute power, the incomprehensible origin of the leadership principle, would do that. Like the National Socialists and Nazis of German empire and Reich, any and all effective means to achieve world domination are righteous - might is right. Hence the ideals of Western Civilization - Humanity, Law, Progress - are repudiated. According to the underlying pragmatic "philosophy" of the Wolfowitz plan, truth is irrelevant: lies may be used as instruments. The plain objective is to destroy inferior economic and national life. To that end, the mighty have a right and a duty to strike pre-emptively.

No, Paul Wolfowitz and his Hobbesian, Machiavellian, neoconservative company are not true conservatives. And neither was Caesar. Although Caesar had a traditional background, he was more "pragmatic" than Cato. Caesar wanted to be a priest; he believed he was descended from a goddess. Caesar, like President Bush, viewed the state as his divinely given instrument, the laws of which he would gladly suspend in crises that he might rule as a popular dictator. Thus was Caesar more flexible, non-ideological, and amoral than Cato, who was a Stoic backbencher in the senate until he rose to debate Caesar and win the execution of the five Cataline terrorists. Cato's personal mission was integrity: an uncompromising adherence to a rational moral code based on the natural law, a code dominated by such concepts as justice, equality, simplicity, frugality.

The ancient philosophers put justice before the other virtues. Plato put the ideal in the mouth of his Protagoras, who related the word of god (Zeus), that a person without a sense of justice should be put to death. Plato's Protagoras argued that every person has a right to discuss justice, for everyone competent has a sense of justice no matter what his status might be. Plutarch, when noting how the nobles hated Cato for his exercise of justice, said, "There is no virtue, honour and credit for which procures a man more odium than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people." And it acquires authority for this reason: "A man has it in his power to be just, if he have the will to be so, and therefore injustice is thought the most dishonourable, because it is least excusable." A man of great integrity would necessarily be just.

Neoconservatives and other political and economic primitives represented by President Bush believe personal loyalty to self, family, clan and The Thing is the sine qua non of integrity, to the disregard of rational moral virtues - they identify their gang as the only patriotic gang: "Those who are not for us are against us." President Bush prefers to reward his friends for their loyalty despite of and even because of their ruinous conduct. Caesar rewarded his friends too, but he as well as Pompey and Cato brought enormous sums into the public treasury - President Bush has virtually bankrupted his nation. Of course there are remarkable differences between "great" political men, most often adjudged "great" according to their victories and the number of people killed; for instance, Stalin's photos and statues are being dusted off: the majority of Russians have reconsidered the elite dictator of the democratic proletariat, and they have voluntarily adjudged him to be a "great" man.  Ironically, Ataturk, who resorted to pogroms killing hundreds of thousands of people to unite Turkey, is a great hero idolized by Turkey's Western allies, while hit-man Saddam Hussein, who united Iraq, is denounced as a despicable little Iraqi in underwear - yet the might of the United States has done worse to his people and still have not united them.

Unlike President Bush, a man who must leans on his father's ministers and refer to an unknown god as the source of his critical decisions, an anti-intellectual whose pronouncements are so absurd that they are published as entertaining books, Caesar was truly his own man, had a brilliant intellect, was a crafty, eloquent speaker and a literary man. Furthermore, Caesar, Cato and other brave military leaders actually marched on foot with the troops and fought beside them, unlike President Bush and his intellectual hawk Paul Wolfowitz - Wolfowitz was white as a ghost and he trembled like a leaf after he got a small taste of the war he had fomented - a little rocket attack on his hotel in Iraq. Furthermore, Cato, once he went to war refrained from pompous celebrations and false smiles. When Caesar advanced on Rome and Pompey, short of troops, left the city to consolidate his forces, Cato soon followed him: "From that day," writers Plutarch, "he never cut his hair, nor shaved his beard, nor wore a garland, but was always full of sadness, grief, and dejection for the calamities of his country, and continually showed the same feeling to the last, whatever party had misfortune or success."  Undoubtedly a civil war is due cause for a true conservative's grief, particularly when he knows that the winner will take all and the history of the republic will therefore end - Pompey did not trust ally and general because he knew Cato would resist his own tyranny if he won the war.

We shall face a similar situation of violent civil discord in the near future if the neoconservative fraction is allowed to continue to pervert and dismantle the progressive consensus of liberty. The greatest danger to the world today is President Bush and his court of misleaders, who are now being amply rewarded with key posts for their malfeasance and vicious conduct. The president, however, is not the greatest threat to democracy: the chief dangers to democracy that he perpetuates are ignorance, war, and social injustice. Someone else of the same neofascist faction will try to occupy the highest post in the land when President Bush vacates: ignorance, blood lust, and greed will do its best to elect that man. In other words, the real enemy is US, particularly the comfortable lot of Have's who tend to vote from fear of losing their gains instead of from courage of traditional principles they are no longer aware of.

Both Caesar and President Bush lusted for war; Caesar believed Rome had a right and a duty to wage pre-emptive war. His affection for violent aggrandizement, to be had through the conquering of inferior enemies by a purportedly superior Roman culture, was attractive to the populace that craved power, especially to those persons who had little of it and thought they might get a great deal more. By the way, the thirst for power today is in part slaked by the possession of oil reserves, a powerful energy resource - Cato's energy resource was the Stoic Fire.  Both Caesar and President Bush have been blamed for war crimes. We may take some comfort that the alleged war crimes of the United States under its Commander-in-Chief are much more civilized than Caesar's: perhaps 300,000 Muslims have been killed in a civilized manner during the Second Bush War on Iraq. Caesar's troops brutally massacred 300,000 barbarians.

As for Cato, he objected to and desisted from war crimes. When the senate moved to declare public thanksgiving for Caesar's slaying of the Germans, Cato thanked god for sparing the republic and its army from destruction for Caesar's misdeeds, madness, and folly. He said Caesar should be turned over to the Germans for the just expiation of his crimes. He warned the senators that Rome need not fear the Britons or the Gauls, but should fear Caesar himself. Several years later, after Cato was proved correct, and decided to side with Pompey against Caesar, Scipio took command of Pompey's army in Africa and wanted to slay the inhabitants of Utica who had sided with Caesar. Cato protested in council and saved them from death. He later took his own life rather than be spared by Caesar and subjected to his tyranny; the Uticans concluded that the only free and undefeated man, their savior, was dead. America, where is your Cato?

Someone has noted that pro-life President Bush is pro-death penalty, and has claimed that Caesar, on the other hand, was opposed to the death penalty. We do recall that during the presidential debates prior to his first term, President Bush bragged with a gleam in his eye and a smile on his face that he had shown no mercy on condemned prisoners while governor of Texas, although the legal extent of his mercy would be to give them a few more days of life to make final appeals. He said elsewhere that his political hero was Jesus Christ, who was subjected to the ultimate penalty by the Romans at the behest of the Jews, whose ancient history and ambivalent deity the fundamentalist U.S. president, a frustrated Old Testament Hebrew, admires so much and relies on to make his critical decisions.

As for the status of the death penalty sixty years before Jesus was born (the Jews may have already abolished it), we recall that in one famous case Cicero, the Roman consul, argued that five Cataline terrorists be put to death in accordance with the senate's historical right to act as a virtual dictator in extreme circumstances, instead of offering them their constitutional right to exile - a most important civil right. Caesar's brilliant counter-argument against the death penalty - that death provides relief from life and that brutal life imprisonment without possibility of parole would be the ultimate penalty because it would be worse than death - was not a merciful argument at all; it was posed for political and personal reasons: to subvert the republic and gain more power and glory for himself. Cato stepped up and provided an equally eloquent argument for the death penalty in that particular case, and the conspirators were put to death. Cato put justice before mercy and charity and fine arguments, so that the most evil deed of all, an attempt to destroy the republic itself, might not be rewarded.

Not that Cato was cruel or insensitive to the common people's needs. Cato had food justly distributed to the poor. He did not object to some of Caesar's distributions as such. Caesar certainly was more than compassionate to the poor than President Bush is today. Cato, a staunch opponent of vote-buying and -selling and the leading proponent of campaign finance reforms, objected to the fact that Caesar's bribes were designed to subvert the laws of the republic, to destroy it and establish an absolute dictatorship over what we might term today a populist totalitarian or caesaristic state, aspects of which are admired by neofascists to this day.

As we know, President Bush is fond of lavish galas for wealthy supporters to boost his image while waging war and creating huge deficits so social benefits can be cut. Caesar was vainglorious, rejoiced in war, and he was a big spender as well. Cato, on the other hand, was not given to vain pursuits; he was no party pooper, but he insisted that cheap entertainments were as amusing as lavish ones -  those who attended his parties agreed. Caesar, the Son of Venus and pontifex maximus (chief bridge-builder, high priest, pope) worshiped power and covertly adhered to the doctrine that puts might before right and the arbitrary Almighty before rational righteousness.  President Bush, a son of god and a Son of Reagan, is big spender who denounces big government while enlarging it and running up the largest deficit in history. Despite his talk about democracy and his willingness to impose his version of democracy on the world whether the peoples of the world likes his version or not.  He is not a democrat. Nor is he a true conservative. A positive comparison of President Bush with either Thomas Jefferson or Marcus Cato insults Jefferson or Cato. An analysis of the big corporate and wealthy personal interests the president over-represents reveals him as a neo-roman neofascist.

Finally, President Bush is a neoconservative, a pseudoconservative.  Neoconservatism is pseudoconservatism.