I think its a mistake to view "rule of law" having a "won" state. Like an Empire (another thing Rome and Britain have in common), rule of law is something you have -- as long as you can manage to actively maintain it. When you fail, its gone, and not easy to get back. And even the best efforts toward maintaining it don't have a 100% guarantee, so, over an infinite time horizon, gambler's ruin is a real concern.

Rome had rule of law, until it didn't. England has rule of law, until it doesn't.

England isn't the first to have had it, and England hasn't achieved some state where it is automatically self-maintaining and no longer a matter of concern.

> I don't see why that's so difficult to grasp.

Its not difficult to grasp, its just wrong.

This seems reasonable, but I don't believe this to be correct. As I outlined in the other thread continuation, it's not just about political machinations. It's also about the rest of society and the economy and the judiciary.

If you analyze those in turn, you can see why England succeeded and Rome failed. You don't have to limit your analysis just to certain select states that we consider to have it, you can also look at countries where the rule of law is non-existent or weak and see how those get threatened as well. You can look at countries where it looked strong from the outside then crumbled, and find out where the weaknesses were.

The main Anglosphere nations, in my view, have broken through to a critical point and no tyranny is possible according to current understandings. People can complain about how Obama or Bush or whoever is a fascist, but analyzed, the events complained about will bear no real semblance to the historical events they're trying to draw similarities with.

We could drill down, look at the fundamentals, connect all the dots to each other, I do this all the time in my spare time, but if you're holding on to an existing ideological viewpoint, it won't matter whether we do or don't.