Why Caesar's Legion Is Probably, and Regrettably, the Best Choice for the Mojave

I don't think I'd wanna live under the Legion, but then again, I don't think I'd wanna live in a nuclear wasteland to begin with. And therein lies the big question. We could go on and on about the barbarity of the Legion, and of course, almost every single action they perform will appear as, at the very least, offensive to our sensibilities, and at worst, as a complete nightmare. However, that is something essentially seen from our modern perspective, a time when, compared to the utter violence of the past, we have it pretty good. It's not perfect, no time in human history ever was or ever will be, but we can count our blessings in that we don't really have to worry about running into radscorpions or deathclaws whenever we go to the supermarket. So, in a nutshell, why do I consider the Legion to be the right choice? Because, as Caesar says, when the bombs fell, society's progress was effectively set back to zero, and as such we need to rebuild by going all the way back to before the war, to before what we knew of the old world blues, whether real or imagined, we need to go all the way back to even before the middle ages. In a word, we need to go back to Rome.

The problem with the other choices is precisely the opposite of the Legion's ideological basis, it's that they don't go back far enough. Both Mr. House and the NCR are trying to rebuild society by clinging to pre-war values that simply don't translate to the wasteland as a whole. Mr. House has taken a group of raiders and cannibals and forced them to become 1950's style mobsters. The Chairmen and the Omertas seem to have settled into their roles more or less, but Benny was planning to take over, and the Omertas were sneaking around with Vulpes Inculta. Meanwhile, the White Glove Society was planning, or at least seriously reconsidering, a return to cannibalism. So while Mr. House can take the mobsters out of the wasteland, he can't take the wasteland out of the mobsters. And the reasons for that aren't as simplistic as money or comfort, because all of the members of the three families seem to have a pretty easygoing life, perpetually enjoying the lavish, and often immoral, lifestyle of the Strip. The problem is that they have no loyalty to Mr. House himself, so while they can respect his genius and they can even share some of his love for Vegas, they certainly don't have any love for the man-machine himself, nor for any of his teachings. Benny may love Vegas, but only on his own terms, and the others may enjoy playing mobster but they don't quite realize why. However, the same cannot be said for any of the legionnaires, because to them Caesar himself is the Legion, and the Legion is more important than any of their own lives. To obey Caesar isn't a mere job or way of life – it's their true purpose.

Likewise with the NCR, no such purpose exists. Soldiers often join as anyone else would when hoping for a steady career, and some of the generals, like Oliver himself, have a decidedly careerist and opportunistic view of their life's work, failing to draw any kind of loyalty from their soldiers. And then as a whole, the NCR is hoping to bring about concepts like democracy, the rule of law and, if I may be so bold, human rights, all of them recycled from the past and thrust into a wasteland where everyone can be killed on a whim, whether by beast or by man... There just seems to be too much of a disconnect between one and the other, it's impossible to convince someone of the benefits of a truly democratic and free society, as well as of the inherent value of each human life, when nobody really cares about anything anymore. You can't get there with reason because those concepts are no longer existing, if they can even be said to exist at all, nor is the world of Fallout built in such a way that they can be possible. In his own strange mind, Caesar is building the framework for higher values by first forcefully removing the wasteland from itself. Maybe the Legion is slavery, but the wasteland isn't freedom, it's chaos. Caesar, and perhaps even Lanius, need to first control that chaos before anything of true value can arise. The Legion needs to kill the wasteland and then over time, it needs to fracture, break, and reform from within.

To recap my point, the Legion is needed because their ideology strips away any old world pretensions, everything about it is undertaken for the good of the Legion itself, not for the individual, not for any vague ideas of democracy, not even for the ghost of an old city of singers and gamblers. All of that has been thoroughly destroyed when the bombs fell, and whatever survived afterwards is no different than any other kind of radiated mutation. They have all become illusions, mere ideas with no corresponding reality, philosophical or otherwise. Humanity has descended so far in the Maslow's pyramid that the goals and ambitions of the NCR have become entirely vain, they are simply sounds that no longer make any sense. Edward Sallow understood this, he saw through the losing struggle that is rebuilding society on the ruins of the old world. Although somewhat ironically, when crowing himself Caesar, he chose an even older world, he chose to follow the model of a distant and foreign empire, an empire which essentially created the basis for the world as we now know it. Rome conquered everyone and everything that stood in her path, absorbing other tribes and cultures, thereby expanding not only in militaristic terms, but cultural as well. And as the empire grew, so did its infrastructure, which spread out into a vast network of roads, all of which led to Rome, to whom the whole land was subjected. The wasteland needs the very same, they need to first be united under the concept of Rome itself, or in this case, Vegas.

But you might well argue that Rome did fall. She conquered everything in her path, she became stronger than she could handle and she collapsed, as all great empires do. So Caesar has decided to build his entire life's work on a bad example. If Rome is anything to go by, then the Legion will fall. But like the man himself says – It's hegelian dialectics, not personal animosity. The best choice for the Mojave would be that the Legion conquers it, that it brings about perfect stability through the sword by eliminating the vicious creatures of the wasteland, as well as the raiders, fiends and the like. In a word, the lawlessness of the Mojave has to be replaced by the self-righteousness of the legionnaires. In doing so, safety will be returned unto the world, and then the civilians, which the Legion sees as pertaining to a lower status than soldiers, can grow crops and create trade lines. On that note, Rose of Sharon Cassidy, though she despises the Legion, says so as much, she talks about how trading in Legion territory is entirely safe because they know how to handle caravan robbers. While the NCR has to do a whole song and dance before they can punish the culprits, the Legion can just swiftly eliminate them. And while that song and dance is what we call justice in our world, in the wasteland it's something completely pointless.

If Caesar is victorious, if he manages to conquer Vegas, and perhaps even California, he could see his empire grow into a strange kind of peace, a pax romana of the wasteland. It would be, as Lanius puts it, purchased by blood, blood I wouldn't be willing to shed nor appreciate if it was shed from my own body, but the sad state of affairs is that human development appears to function in that manner, it appears to move around in strange paradigms. Progress is never a staircase, it's more of a spiral. Ideally then, the peace brought about by the Legion would soon stagnate, life would be good and peaceful for a little while, but then it would become so boring, and that's good because it's from that boredom that values like those of the NCR can arise. You simply can't have citizens worried about human rights when they are constantly worried about a violent and senseless death which could come at any point for any reason. And thus, in being larger than life, Caesar has managed to offer his men a value higher than life, he has offered them a belief in the future. No one in the NCR has the same attachment to their ideology, or to the generals, or even to California itself, whereas Caesar's men will follow their lord even unto death. If it sounds like a dictatorship it's because it is one, but the people of the Mojave need to be united under a cause larger than themselves in order to find meaning in their lives, in order to find a cause seriously worth fighting for. The NCR doesn't offer any of that, it doesn't even come close, and its soldiers are a pessimistic and disillusioned bunch for precisely that reason. Each ranger feels like the whole thing is a waste of time whereas each legionnaire feels his purpose being fulfilled in the world, regardless of what it is Caesar asks of them.

The catch with all this is that Caesar isn't a good man. To paraphrase the the sad, yet strangely beautiful words of Marcus Aurelius, at least the one from Gladiator, Caesar is not a moral man. The problem with the Legion is that they are essentially immoral, but the problem with the wasteland is that morality no longer seems to apply. Justice has become whatever the strongest are capable of doing, and the Legion is certainly capable of a whole lot. The NCR could well be trying its best to bring peace to the wasteland, but doing so with their method is a losing struggle. It would appear that humanity cannot have the good without first having gone through the bad. Human rights and true meaning in life don't emerge from good times, they emerge from absolute chaos. And order out of that chaos can only emerge after being forged in steel. In terms we can understand, we cannot have the new without first having had the old. And if those words are clear enough, you realize my argument now brings me to none other than Joshua Graham.

For my dead money, Joshua is the best character in New Vegas, and that's saying something. I think in essence, Joshua symbolizes true hope for the Mojave. He began as the right-hand man to Edward Sallow, loyally accompanying him in intellectual expeditions, but when he witnessed his friend's honest heart emerge, he stood by his side, eventually becoming his first legate. We can only wonder how ruthless Joshua was in those days, capable of violence equal to that of Lanius. But after falling from Caesar's good graces due to a miserable defeat at Boulder City, Joshua was lit in fire and thrown off the Grand Canyon. Though miraculously, he survived... My personal interpretation of these events is thus the following – the nuclear apocalypse symbolizes the fall of mankind from Eden, the ensuing violence and bloodshed symbolizes the atrocities of the Old Testament, the birth of the Legion, this ruthless tribe that conquers the world through an iron fist, obviously symbolizes Rome, and so, if all that makes sense, then Joshua symbolizes Jesus Christ.

I don't know much about the Old Testament, but the biblical Joshua was a prophet who inherited the legacy of Moses and thus was commanded to fight and to conquer the land of Canaan for his people. However, and oddly enough, his name is very similar to Yeshua, the hebrew version of the name Jesus. So in essence, violence and love, judgment and grace, they are simply two sides of the same coin. And though Joshua was baptized in water unto his first name, he was thereafter baptized in flame unto the second.

Caesar's legacy of violence, though perhaps with a chance at redemption

So why is all of this important? Well, I think that would be because it mirrors our real world. Regardless of your personal beliefs, it appears to be the case that christianity played a crucial role in the birth of human rights. We went from a conquering mentality, from an empire that organized fights to the death as sources of amusement, to a mentality according to which every single person is held as inherently important due to their nature as God's creation. It's hard to believe in a strange thing like human rights otherwise, our justification for it has to be greater than our mere self-interest or rationality. I suppose we could get by on rationality for a while, but when rationality fails, as it often does, what will you rely on? When civilization as a whole crumbles, human rights become wind. Edward Sallow was a man who understood this and began to see the NCR as a hopeless failure. He saw the NCR was trying to rebuild the world on sand, and as you may have heard, you ought to build your house on a rock.

For the time being, that rock is Caesar's Legion. However, Caesar himself is doomed to fail. He sees the world according to dialectics, and yet he appears ignorant of the fact that, when he conquers Vegas, or even California, his Legion will become the new status quo, the synthesis will become the new thesis. And then an antithesis will come along and destroy the Legion. However, and hopefully, by the time that happens there will be some civilization to rebuild on, a civilization ruthlessly built by Caesar. Otherwise it's all vain, and even Joshua Graham, having come to a profound belief in God, can still stumble and fall should he be persuaded to punish the Salt-Upon-Wounds by his own hand. However, he can be made to find forgiveness and to accept that, if a man with his past, a monster of Caesar who committed countless atrocities, if someone as wicked as himself can be redeemed and saved by God, then so can anyone else in the wasteland.

Caesar's Legion is probably the best immediate answer for the Mojave, and by extension, to the wasteland. However, Caesar is just a man and as such, though he can give his legionnaires a strong meaning in their lives, he can't give them any true meaning. For true meaning to arise, the Legion has to be temporary, and the shift has to be a change in the absolute value they follow. The one true goal everyone follows cannot be Caesar, nor can it be the idea of the Legion itself... No, the true goal for the people to follow has to be something beyond all the vanities of this world, and because for the time being in this alternate universe, Joshua Graham is the only firm believer in it, it is he who holds the keys for the future of humanity.

I suppose even if we lack a belief in God we can somehow still see the war as a punishment for mankind's sins. And as such, first comes judgment, and only then, mercy. Thus, the wasteland is hell, but also purgatory... Joshua feels its flames closer to his skin than most men, and because he has found true redemption after being forged within the Legion, salvation can come from him. For if the Burned Man still has a chance at redemption, then so does the wasteland.