About the Livyjr Files

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thelivyjr
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About the Livyjr Files

Post by thelivyjr »

Hello, everyone, and good day to you all!

And welcome to The Livyjr Files, which is an internet reading room, like an old-fashioned library.

And my name is Livyjr.

I started my blogging career as an American citizen on the former John Kerry forum in 2004, which I thought revolutionized communications between ordinary citizens in America in ways unseen or likely unheard of since the Forum of Rome, back in the days of my namesake, Titus Livius, or plain Livy, some two thousand years ago in the Republic of Rome, and then in the ensuing Empire under Augustus, son of Julius Caesar.

From there, I went to a forum called CommonGroundCommonSense, and then to InvisionFree, and finally to Zetaboards, which is no more.

That convinced me that I would spend no more time on group forums where I had no control over the protection and integrity of my intellectual property.

The basis for this site is based on a 1919 opinion of United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis that suppression of ideas worked a great hardship on society, which happens to be all of us in America, regardless of race, color, creed or national origin.

Another well-respected Supreme Court Justice at that time named Oliver Wendell Holmes rested his First Amendment views on what he called the “marketplace of ideas,” reasoning that because we cannot know immediately which ideas are good and true and useful and which are not, we must let them vie against one another in the faith that after full exposure and discussion, the truth will win out, which is the motive behind my blogging efforts.

Supreme Court Justice Brandeis saw free speech as an essential aspect of citizenship in America.

According to his view, men and women in America both had the duty in a democracy such as ours is supposed to be to be good citizens, which means being informed on the issues confronting us.

Mused the Justice, how can individuals make intelligent decisions about those issues without having basic information about them?

How can citizens, which means all of us, judge which side has the better argument unless we can hear both sides of an argument and then join in the debate with facts?

Justice Brandeis thus provided a positive justification for protection of speech, that being the necessity for the citizenry, which happens to be all of us here in the United States of America, to be fully informed about issues and to be aware of all viewpoints.

Hence this site, which should be likened to the library in ancient Alexandria in Egypt - a repository of knowledge.

So why Livyjr?

Well, for the context, mainly, because despite the passage of two millennia, we are so much alike.

And who was Livy?

While a short biography of Livy follows, the fact is that Livy was around at the end of the Roman Republic, the time when Julius Caesar was killed, or assassinated, depending on your point of view, and Livy talked about or chronicled that time for us in the future to read about, and I am of a similar bent, only in here, talking about these days of our Republic of America, rather than the Forum of Rome.

What is history?

History is what we are doing in here right now, and what we are doing each and every minute of our collective days.

That is history!

We are history!

In Livy's day, 59 BC to 17 AD, simple people in Rome and Italy, for that matter, did not get to write history, and even come into the record by name.

The lives of the common man and woman of that era are largely lost to us two thousand years later in 2004.

Not so with us today, however, at least as long as these computer forums continue to exist, and a record continues to be made of the days of our passing, here in our America.

On the John Kerry Forum, there were people dropping by from European countries, and probably many other places in the world as well, to read about our daily lives, because the world is a very large place, and it is very difficult for any of us to know much of what is happening around us just ten miles down the road, anymore, let alone across the great nation of America, which is over 3,000 miles from coast to coast, or across the world, for that matter.

When peoples of other nations can hear our own thoughts directly, without any filters imposed, then they learn about us as people, rather than a perceived ideology, and they see that in many ways, we are just like them.

This is good, because it serves to promote peace and harmony throughout the world in ways that our established governments seem totally unable to do.

Never before have we been able to have such a speedy dialogue across such great distances.

In 1969, for example, I was in Viet Nam, as a soldier, and then, it took over a week for any news from home to reach me, so that what I was reading was already old news!

If someone had been sick, or had died, it was long since over by the time that I read about it over there.

Now, all these years later, I am communicating almost instantaneously with people across America and around the world.

To an older American like me, who was born into an era in America where there still were no telephones and televisions in many or most rural American homes, this instant internet communications is like a miracle!

So then the question is how to use the miracle and keep it as such!

Hence this forum!

Biography of Titus Livius (Livy), c. 59 BC - AD 17.

Not many details are known about Livy's life.

He was born about 59 BC in Patavium (modern Padua) in Northern Italy, where he spent the early part of his life.

He is said to have written philosophical dialogues in his youth (Elder Seneca, Controversiae 10 Praef. 2), but his fame rests on his 142 book history of Rome, called Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City), which he began to write around 29 BC, after he had moved to Rome.

As far as we know, Livy never held public office nor played a role in public life.

Livy was acquainted with the emperor Augustus, but scholars debate the extent to which they shared common goals.

The later Roman historian Tacitus (Annals 4. 34) reports that Augustus called Livy a "Pompeian", i.e. thought that he had Republican sympathies.

We also hear that Livy encouraged the future emperor Claudius in his historical studies (Suetonius, Life of Claudius 41).

He published his history of Rome in installments, working on it for most of his life.

He lived three years longer than Augustus, dying in AD 17 in his native Patavium.
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