What do Americans (Republicans/Trump supporters) mean when they talk about defending America from "Socialism"/"Communism"?

The fall of the Roman Republic has nothing to do with the “grain dole”, which continued well into the Republic. The main factors were their absurd military system whereby soldiers were paid form the coffers of individual generals rather than the state—this meant that soldiers were loyal to their leaders (like Caesar) and not the Senate. On top of that you had a built in tendency towards autocracy, up to and including an official office of “Dictator” which Caesar took advantage of. And you also had the normalization of political violence stemming from the deaths of the brothers Gracchi and Sulla’s proscriptions—a major moving of the goalposts regarding abuse of Dictatorial powers for political gain, and no doubt an inspiration for the later Julius Ceaser.

/r/AskAnAmerican Thread Parent