THE COMING CAESARS

Culture is a pulsating organism, endowed with flexibility, in a state
of constant growth.  Civilization is rigid crystallization, the unavoid-
able horizontal step on history's stairway, the repose of a society
spiritually exhausted by its cultural growth, seeking to digest and dis-
tribute mechanically the output of its parent Culture....                                                p. 274

The soul of America is essentially old and mature .. Yet, in another
sense, America is young with the the youth of physical dynamism
and vigor .. But this youth applies to largely to the economic sphere,
where development was purchased at the price of virtual petrifaction
in most other domains....                                                                                           p. 275-6.

    This maturity is the source of America's basic conservatism--once
again, in all matters save economic development--which is often
masked by a taste for superficial change and a restlessness that has
little in common with revolutionary transformation...

It is this fundamental conservatism that gives Americans in the
modern world a position almost identical with that of the Romans,
a conservatism bolstered by the complete ascendancy of the
conservative-minded sex--women. A Civilization can be secured
only on conservative foundations, even though its economic
development may have revolutionary repercussions in the alien
societies that are exposed to it.
    Very much like the Romans, the Americans are remarkably unin-
dividualized. Group consciousness among them is paramount, with
its attendant worship of quantity, masses, collective impulses, with
generalized stereotypes such as the "man in the street" or the "com-
mon man."  This implies not an advanced but on the contrary an early
stage of development, since individualized stages in history evolve
out of this primitive phase with the growth of Culture.  The dawn of
Civilization, therefore, represents a partial return to the unindivid-
ualized stage in which group consciousness and social concerns pre-
dominate, but on a far higher technical level.  Psychologically, it is
the primitive tribal collectivism blown up to mammoth dimensions...

   The  constant  emphasis  on  economic  well-being  and  standard  of
living has led many foreigners to refer to America's "materialism."
But it is a fundamental misconception. Americans have, unconsciously
and mostly out of sheer idealism, reduced man to an animal level,
although an animal in command of fabulous technical powers....

    The social repercussions of these psychological dispositions are far
reaching. Quantitative standards, along with social equality, have
given to the dollar sign a symbolic value it has nowhere else...                                   p. 278

The democratic habit of considering the verdict of a numerical ma-
jority as evidently the best has practically eliminated the notion that
the majority can be wrong after all, that an autonomous spirit can
have different claims.  In their wisdom, the Founding Fathers made
provision against such tyranny of the multitude because they still
lived in an aristocratic age when the feeling for differences in Being
was vivid. Today, however, the psychological pressure of conformity
is overwhelming and contributes to the degradation of activities
that are not strictly businesslike. As a consequence, the constitu-
tional safeguards of the Founding Fathers are being by-passed by the
increasing psychological standardization of the American people. The
fear of originality and nonconformity has become a far more power-
ful deterrent than any legal or political oppression, creating a psycho-
logical climate in which individual freedom is not destroyed from the
outside but effectively and voluntarily crippled from the inside. The
resulting type of society, to a foreigner, looks very much like that of
an ant heap...

    This is no sudden mutation in America but the result of long-term
development. More than a hundred years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville
had already remarked: "I know no country in which there is so little
independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in Amer-
ica."  And he added: "In that immense crowd which throngs the
avenues to power in the United States, I found very few men who
displayed that manly candor and masculine independence of opinion                          p. 279
which frequently distinguished the Americans in former times.... It
seems at first sight as if all the minds of the Americans were formed
upon one model, so accurately do they follow the same route."....                              p. 280

    Americans are socialists, psychological socialists... The average
American is, psychologically, the most disciplined man in the Western                        p. 281
world today--more fundamentally disciplined than the German,
who can always seek refuge in the absolute freedom of subjective
introspection. The extroverted American has no such refuge. He is
open to suggestion and willing to be bossed as no other. Mass
advertising is based on an unparalleled willingness to be guided,
directed, almost hypnotized....

This mental collectivism gives to American society an amazing strength
in that it simply ignores all the potential disrupting forces that tear other
societies apart in our century. There is no doubt that it helps them
to be better adjusted in a world dominated by economic forces....                              p. 282

    This is why culture in America has become largely the monopoly of
women and why feminine preservation of culture predominates to
such an extent over masculine creation.                                                                     p. 284

 The school has largely become a substitute for the family....

    The American teacher became the guide to the psychological land
of Americanism--even for the backward parents the fountainhead of
modem, scientific wisdom.  Most teachers were women and many
came from New England. It was through their agency that Puritanism
(its moralistic outlook rather than its religious undertone) came to
conquer the whole continent....                                                                                   p. 285

Nothing has made as telling a contribution to American conformity
and socialism as this pre-eminence of school life that teaches the
youngster to cultivate above all the arts of imitation, sociability, and
cooperation, that gives him as primary goal the attainment of popularity.
He is taught to repress his original personality and develop his social
being to the extreme limit....

    All this links up with the best-known characteristic of American
life: the hen-pecked nature of American men.  In the early days of
Puritanism and the southern Cavalier, America was a land of exceed-
ingly dominant men whose social "form" was a stern, almost Biblical
patriarchy.  No alteration has been as great as that which metamor-
phosed those self-reliant, iron-willed men into the contemporary
American male who is meekly subservient to mother and wife. As
fathers and husbands American men are not revered or looked up to.
They never appear to embody the superhuman strength and wisdom
that children have to look up to if their natural taste for hero worship
is to be gratified.  Of the two poles between which upbringing always
swings, the principle of loving intimacy of the mother and the principle
of respectful distance embodied in the father, only one rules, and the
childish desire for love that Americans display in their contacts
throughout the world is a direct consequence of the absolute pre-
dominance of the feminine principle.  American men remain basically
children and the only grownups are the women--mainly because they
are always born adults.
    Intimacy, familiarity, lack of reverence have become the dominant
themes of American life. Nothing leads more implacably to Caesarism
than these traits....                                                                                                       p. 286

American democracy, having proclaimed that all men are born
equal and that they differ not in their essence but in their practical
ability, left women out of the picture because the difference between
the sexes is the foremost example of difference in essence. With the
progress of democratic equality, the inevitable inclusion of women
could only lead to their rise to unquestioned preeminence.  The Amer-
ican woman simply "feels" superior because she is brought up to be-
lieve implicitly that she is superior.  From this growing feminine ascend-
ancy arose many of the great changes in twentieth-century America:
the steady bartering away of precarious freedom for security, the basic
conservatism, the idolization of the child, the instinct for the preser-
vation of property, the distrust of individual originality, the increasing
fear of personal risk, and the ideal of social respectability.  More than
ever, the strictly utilitarian, matter-of-fact atmosphere of America is
allied to the predominance of women--women always embodying
these traits against man's more creative and artistic temperament.  In
turn, this leads directly to women's monopoly of relations with
"human beings," leaving the American men full disposition of the
world of inanimate "things."  Business deals largely with the relations
between man and nature, raw materials, machines.  Even the con-
suming public is a raw material, a common, standardized field open
to the hypnotic suggestion of publicity and from which a precious
mineral--cash--can be extracted.
    The growing ascendancy of women always heralds the dawn of
Civilization, emphasizing preservation and security. There was no
greater revolution in Rome than the metamorphosis of women's social
position at the close of the Hellenistic Age. They became emanci-
pated in the second century B.C., not merely in an economic sense but
in every way.  They interfered in every department of life, "invaded
the realm of politics, attended political conferences," went into
business, and took as much liberty as men.  Divorces became out-
rageously frequent.  The former despotic authority of the pater familias
was shaken to its foundations and eventually swept away altogether.
"The meek and henpecked Roman husband was already a stock com-
edy figure in the great days of the Second Punic War."  It was left
to that old reactionary, Cato the Censor, to exclaim bitterly: "All                                 p. 288
other men rule over women; but we Romans, who rule all men, are
ruled by our women."'"
    Just the same, the days are gone in America when man's authority
was upheld by common law and by the Biblical patriarchy of early
Puritanism, the days when Blackstone's venerated legal authority
could claim:  "The husband and wife are one, and that one is the
husband."  And even though the trend toward complete equality
between the sexes was and is world-wide, women in Classical Greece
and in modern Europe remained and have remained far more subdued
than in Rome and America.
    Man's exclusive concern with the taming of nature in America
increased this process of feminine emancipation. From the very start,
women alone patronized a culture that became a means of social
distinction, not an imperative pursuit in itself. As early as the 1850's
they had acquired an almost complete monopoly over the determina-
tion of the style of living, social relations, churches, charity, art and
literature, and largely the press, steadily increasing their over-all
ownership of America until the present day when it exceeds 70 per
cent of all American assets. American public opinion has become
largely feminine and its profound impact on the political evolution of
the United States can never be overestimated. The disintegration of
republican institutions geared to a more patriarchal age and the
steady march toward Caesarism are largely their doing....                                               p. 289
 
 

The above text was taken from The Coming Caesars by Amaury de Riencourt,
Coward-McCann, Inc., New York, ©1957.

This text is copyrighted and is believed to be used in accordance with
"Fair use" limitation of the Copyright Act given below.  Since the guidelines are
not strict, and therefore subject to misapplication, I will make my case as follows:

(1) This copying is being done non commercially as part of a nonprofit
      gender studies series and for other purposes allowed in the "Fair use"
      limitation.

(2) This work was published long ago; partly from the passage of
      time, and partly because of the unpopular views expressed,
      this work is unknown to many, and by copying such excerpts
      it is believed that an interest or new interest in the work will be
      kindled.  Furthermore, a check for the year 1999 revealed this
      work out of print, which one would then think would give a
      greater latitude to its use as no commercial interest is being
      affected at this time.

 (3) The text used is about 4 2/3 pages out of a total work of 384 pages
      (including introduction and index) - or about 1.2 % of the entire
      work.

(4) Taking movie advertisements and book reviews as a clue,
      it appears that showing colorful clips and excerpts has the
      effect of causing people to want to take in the rest of the work
      (see also (2) above.)

I also wish to note that this copying is being done in the public's interest.
It is believed by some that what is frequently portrayed in the media as to
the relationship of the sexes in this country is false.  That such false information
assists the passage of discriminatory legislation aimed at the sex portrayed as
the oppressor class. The excerpts above are of such a contrary character
to what is given as the "truth" today that further comment by myself would
seem superfluous.
 
 

Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a
copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or
phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes
such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple
copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement
of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any
particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
 

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether
such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit
educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in
relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or
value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished
shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon
consideration of all the above factors.