You know, I used to sit around a fire in the high Sierra, watching the sparks spiral into the stars, thinking about how it all stays the same. One moment, you’re sharing jerky with a neighbor and a common dream. The next, someone’s standing just a little taller, asking if you still believe in “shared sacrifice.” It’s a funny phrase—shines like old brass but always weighs heavier on some shoulders than others.

Now, I want to tell you a story of us. Of these United States, from the Founding to the forever war. Of citizen-soldiers and war cabinets, and how the campfires of our Republic may yet flicker into imperial flame if we don’t learn the old patterns.

Before we get to where we’re going, we ought to start with someone who knows where we’ve been. Dr. Bret Devereaux, a military historian steeped in the wars of the ancient Mediterranean, writes the exceptional blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (ACoup). With the dry wit of a classicist and the steady eye of a soldier’s scribe, he reminds us that empire isn’t always declared—it seeps.

In a recent post, Devereaux draws a quiet, damning parallel between ancient Rome and present-day America:

“The basic bargain of the American civil-military relationship—wherein civilians would largely defer to the military on military matters, but in return the military would strictly follow the policies set by elected civilians—is frayed, and may be breaking.”

It’s not broken all at once. It’s broken the way a ship does when the seams begin to whisper.

To understand what we’re living through, it helps to go back to the principate—the time when Rome kept the appearance of a republic but handed the keys to the commander with the most loyal legions. Augustus claimed to "restore the Republic," even as he made himself essential to its functioning. The Senate still sat. Laws were still passed. But more and more, true authority flowed from the palace.

In America, we find ourselves in a similar posture.

Congress—the people’s chamber—has not formally declared war since 1942. Yet we have fought in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and more. Each time, the legal justifications grow more creative, the authorizations more vague, the oversight more theatrical.

We now accept a state of perpetual undeclared war as normal.

Like the Roman Senate under Augustus, Congress has preserved the outward forms of authority while increasingly abdicating its constitutional responsibility. It funds wars without declaring them. It murmurs about oversight while blessing blank checks. The executive, like the princeps, carries on—first among equals in name only.

And the generals? They are no longer just battlefield commanders. They brief Congress. They shape policy. They are treated, in the public mind, as impartial oracles of national strength—above politics, yet profoundly political.

This is the danger Devereaux names: when the uniform becomes the last respected institution, it is not a far step from service to rule.

What then can rebind the citizen to the sword, the farmer to the forum?

One proposal, refreshingly old-fashioned, is a universal service year.

Not conscription. Not coercion. But commitment. A year where every young American—regardless of wealth or background—offers their labor to the common good. Civilian or military. Planting forests, repairing bridges, mapping coastlines, coding civic software, responding to floods, caring for the elderly.

Let there be many paths, but one principle: service before sovereignty.

Such a year would not just repair infrastructure—it would repair the republic. It would break down silos of class and geography. It would remind us that a nation is not a slogan but a shared labor.

And yes, it would re-contextualize military service. Place it alongside—not above—other forms of essential contribution. A republic is not healthy when it only honors those who carry rifles. It thrives when it honors those who carry responsibility.

Now here’s the twist. While much of our military-industrial horizon is aimed squarely at the Pacific—at deterring or outcompeting China—we may be missing the deeper shift beneath the tectonics of empire.

Rome and Persia, remember, were locked in a centuries-long contest. Fortress faced fortress, bureaucracy mirrored bureaucracy, power checked power. Until one day, not with siege towers or ships, but with belief—Islam swept the world.

It came from the margins. It moved through trade routes and campfires, not capitals. It was not a general’s campaign. It was an avalanche of humanity.

Today, while Pentagon planners run wargames and economic ministries speak of decoupling, a parallel digital frontier is opening—one of peer-to-peer coordination, trustless governance, and civic architectures built on chain and consensus.

The Notion post “The Digital Tsunami Upending Geopolitics” sketches this shift. The true challenge to empire may not be another empire. It may be a movement: a self-organizing, polycentric, protocol-governed commonwealth of communities.

If that’s so, the winner of the 21st century won’t be the state with the biggest aircraft carrier. It will be the one that best enables coordination among free citizens.

So why not both? A grounded service year that binds us to our place and people—and a soaring new civic stack that helps us collaborate across space and difference?

The alternative to imperial stagnation is not chaos. It is awakening.

Rome’s dominate came when the principate ceased to pretend. The general was no longer first among equals. He was simply lord. The Senate met, but its decrees were theater.

The danger now is not that our generals seize power. It is that we invite them to keep it—because we’ve forgotten how to hold it ourselves.

But the republic is not lost. It is waiting.

Waiting for a generation willing to serve.
Waiting for tools worthy of our shared sovereignty.
Waiting for citizens who refuse to bow to spectacle, but choose to build instead.

So gather round, citizens. The forge is hot. The chains of the past are not yet our future.

Light the flame. Choose the fork. Serve the republic—so it may serve us.

—Pioneer Pete
"Still tending the fire."