Teach Andrew About Tacitus!

It's not just me anymore, friends: Andrew Sullivan is now quoting Roman historians. However, I put it to you that, while his quote from Livy is suitable for his purpose of discussing democratization, he misses the mark in not employing Tacitus to discuss the nature of the Bush Administration.

What grist for his mill would be found in that historian's work! Allow me to cite a the passage in which Tacitus offers his purpose for writing history in the first place:

I do not intend to publish motions [of the Senate], save those notable for their forthrightness or of a notable shamefulness, which I think is the chief duty of the Annales: namely that virtues not hold their tongue and there may be a fear of future infamy for vile deeds and words.

And then, his application of that credo to the time period:

However, that infamous age was so infected and rife with adulation that not only the chiefs of state - who had to protect their fame with abasement - but every former consul, a great many of those who had been praetors, and even the low-ranking senators rose up and advocated foul and excessive things. Whenever Tiberius was leaving the Senate, so the story goes, he commonly said "O men prepared for slavery!" in Greek. Even one who rejected common freedom found such long-winded abasement of slaves to be tedious!

I think Andrew could have quite a lot of fun with Tacitus, don't you?