In looking up an online source to give me a definition of the adjective “Byzantine,” I found the following at
oxforddictionaries.com : “(of a system or situation) excessively complicated, typically involving a great deal of administrative detail.”
It also gave this as a definition:
“Characterized by deviousness or underhand procedure”
Unfortunately, the same definitions could also be used in describing the Obama administration.
A heavily centralized government with a large bureaucratic apparatus in its heyday, Byzantium existed in some form or fashion for about 1000 years. Historians can argue whether the Byzantine empire of history gets a bad rap for its characterization of being so complicated and corrupt, but the term “byzantine” fits today’s federal government of the U.S. to a T.
Encyclopedia Britannica describes the Byzantine empire of the 10
th and 11
th centuries in this way: “
The administration in this period was ever more closely centralized in Constantinople, with an increasingly complex and numerous bureaucracy of officials who received their appointments and their salaries from the emperor.”
“…the guilds or colleges of craftsmen and retailers, whose legal rights and duties to the state were strictly circumscribed and supervised.”
The U.S. government has taken a similar course, as Congress has abrogated many of its responsibilities to the executive branch. And the Obama administration has taken full advantage of this, as the President proclaims “I’ve got a pen, I’ve got a phone” for taking unconstitutional executive action. Meanwhile, unelected bureaucrats appointed by the President pass regulation after regulation that has the force of law.
While the bureaucratic nature of the U.S. federal government took shape during the Franklin Roosevelt administration, the fundamental transformation of our constitutional system of government began years before, particularly when Woodrow Wilson was president.
The 16
th Amendment allowed the creation of the federal income tax and the 17
th Amendment gave us the direct election of U.S. Senators. Both of these Amendments were ratified in 1913, and both did much to begin the diminution of the role of states in, as the Declaration of Independence described it, “these United States.”
Continuing with the history of Byzantium in Encyclopedia Britannica: “The provinces in Europe and Asia were administered according to their territorial division into themes, which, by the 10th century, numbered more than 30….Their governors…were directly answerable to the emperor, who appointed them.”
”What [the philosopher and historian Psellus] and others like him failed to take into account was that their empire was more and more expending the resources and living on the reputation built up by the Macedonian emperors.”
While an imperial government may have seemed appropriate for Justinian and the other rulers of ancient Byzantium, the centralized structure that helped it to succeed would lead to its eventual decline.
As the empire grew, a greater bureaucracy was needed to sustain it. And to keep the entrenched bureaucracy going required greater taxation of the people of Byzantium. Rather than meeting the needs of its people, more and more was required of the people to maintain a corrupt, uncontrolled bureaucracy.
We see the same thing in the United States of today. Instead of a union of states and its people being served and coordinated by its national government, the states and the people are more and more required to serve the needs of an out-of-control bureaucracy.
Truly, those who ignore the lessons of history are destined to repeat them. But our Founding Fathers, in their wisdom and prayerful consideration, provided a means for turning around our government once it became an oppressive system ruling over us.
It says in Article V of the Constitution that
“...on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof.”
It is important that we contact our state legislators to show our support for them convening with the other states to pass constitutional Amendments that will help turn around our out-of-control federal government.
