i actually sat through that whole little civics lesson, and found nothing in it i fundamentally disagreed with. however, the devil is always in the details, implementation, emphasis and interpretation, and here is where the lesson fails, and its true ideological origin revealed.

i won't deconstruct the whole thing, but the historical look at ancient rome was deliberately slanted to push that hidden agenda, that a republic is superior to a democracy (.i.e., Republicans are superior to Democrats; yes, it's that obvious). ancient rome was a republic in name only, it was always an oligarchy, a tiny aristocracy ruling over a huge mass of workers. eventually, the workers were replaced by slaves, but the oligarchy, remained. and guess who owned the slaves?

The roman senate was essentially a private club of rich landowners from the great families and tribes who agreed to follow the much vaunted roman law out of practicality, to avoid conflict amongst themselves and to keep out the competition by restricting membership to the status quo. the senate was a essentially a truce between gang lords. it was this oligarchy that introduced slavery on a mass scale and led to the eventual ruination of the country and its collapse into civil war and empire. all the evils mentioned in the clip, the welfare state, the bread and circuses, the unemployment, and the eventual civil war, empire, corruption and collapse, were the direct result of the oligarchy's power struggles and its desperate attempt to hold things together so business could proceed as usual. sound familiar? there was no takeover of private property by the state, it was more like rival mafia lords muscling into each other's territory (or to use modern terminology, corporate takeovers). and of course, both in the republic and the empire, constant warfare and conquest was necessary to provide the endless quantity of fresh slaves the oligarchy required to run their farms and build their monuments. it wasn't the mob that brought rome down, it was the private sector.

julius caesar was murdered in the senate because he was appealing to the unemployed roman plebes, bribing them with welfare spending in order to challenge the great landowners; he was a severe threat to that oligarchy. back then, like today, they were very sensitive to class traitors.