The legion would drag the species back 2000 years plus in the name of foward progress.
One could argue that it was the nuclear holocaust that did that very thing already, not Caesar. Caesar's Legion and the NCR and all of Fallout exists in a world
without civilization just as we did in the real world 2000 years ago. If our world ended as we know it today, not a one of us would be able to rebuild it as it was yesterday. We would be starting from scratch just as the inhabitants of the world of Fallout were forced to
I just do not see how using (since the world has gone up in nuclear fire) failed ideas of the past, (basing a civlization) on what has for all intents and purposes failed already. To expect that a repeat of the Roman experience will yield different result is by definition insanity, as the definition of insanity is to do something again and expect a different result . . . The legion offers nothing more than a repeat of past mistakes, and by doing so destroys the future that everyone is so desperate to save.
this is where the difficulty comes in as one must decide whether or not to separate the world of Fallout from our own. In Fallout, the ideals of democracy and rights and so on were the very ideals that led to the nuclear exchange so to use your own words it is the NCR, who seeks to reestablish those ideals in a state in Fallout, who is repeating the mistakes of the past expecting something different to happen: insanity. Your last sentence in the above quote could easily read, "The [NCR] offers nothing more than a repeat of past mistakes, and by doing so destroys the future that everyone is so desperate to save." Ofcourse, this is looking at it from the Fallout perspective of the future. In our own world of today in 2011 things seem to work more or less pretty well. There has been no nuclear exchange thankfully and no end to civilization for the most part since the collapse of Imperial Rome (a point that I will not go into further here) so the anology breaks. But again, looking at solely the conext of Fallout, the NCR is guilty too, and by extension of that so too would any group seeking to institute prewar ideals in a postwar world
The future needs to be based upon something so radically different, it will require free thought, the will to support that free thought, and a system of government willing to accept the change . . . but as our society advanced we through greater leisure time allowed some folks to sit back and ponder the mysteries of the universe. By the patronage of those with means they allowed art and philosophy to flourish, they allowed an individual to sit idle and ask "what if ?".
and it took a lot of blood and sweat and tears, and even more blood, to get society to that point, a point that the post-war world of Fallout is simply not at. Again I could use your argument that the real world evolved from barbarism to enlightenment only after it was able to overcome survival, food, education etc. Could not Caesar's Legion move the world to that same end point after stabilzing society just as our real world did ?
Caesar wants to take the species back beyond that development, through radical assimilation of the tribes they conquor, very much like the Spanish conquistadors destroyed the Aztec, Myan and Incan civilizations, and any culture they may have developed because they never took the time to try and understand it, this is also the Legion way.
I will only say that democracies of the past in the real world have caused as many assimilations and brutality against other peoples without bothering to "understand" them making the point of calling it, "the legion way" a mistake
the above aside, I find your support of Mister House the most compelling as he is not much different from Caesar: one man trying to apply his vision of the perfect future onto society no matter the cost and to the detriment of many
» Fri Jun 04, 2010 3:40 pm 
