I try to avoid general political issues here, since that's not the topic of this blog, but some doofus named Christopher Cook has issued a call to arms against liberals and stinky evil people based on what appears to be too many hours spent watching 300.
Some choice comments:
As I noted in my review here, Sparta is about the last place you would look for the foundations of modern liberal democracy. With a strict hierarchy of classes based on birth, slavery for most of the population, militarism, religious superstition, lack of interest in the outside world, and no scientific achievements to speak of, Sparta was the wart on the backside of Greek civilization. Not to mention that if Xerxes' invasion had succeeded, the effect on Roman political development would have been minimal, since Rome became a Republic in 509 B.C. (or thereabouts; that is the conventional date), nearly 30 years before Thermopylae.
These Greek city-states are showing the first stirrings of real democratic governance. A much greater percentage of people in Greece enjoy true freedom than in any of the neighboring lands. And it is about to fall under the yoke of a dictatorship.
What happens if Leonides fails? Does the Grecian experiment in democracy fail too, as Greece is trampled under by Xerxes and his army of slaves?
If the Greek cradle of democracy had fallen, Rome would not have absorbed its ideals.
If Rome hadn't taken those ideals and spread them into the Western world, where would those ideals be today? How far along would the ideas of representative governance be?
Without the Roman example, what would Great Britain have become? Would she have produced the Magna Carta? Would she have produced us, or any of the other nations of the Anglosphere—the freest nations in human history?
4 comments:
Sorry, but I don't think you can mislead those lucky enough to know The Truth with mere facts.
This person makes a fine argument by appealing to the example of history, and the fact that his example is an highly distorted of the already-spotty history we know of the events won't make a difference to many, much less the flimsiness of the connexion he makes between modern America and ancient Greece.
His comparison is designed to get the blood pumping, and for him and his admirers that's superior to sissified, rational, thought.
I think your comments against the conservative blog are spurious and generally missing the point. True the Roman Republic began before the Spartan battle against Xerxes. But his argument it that Sparta played a role, a significant role in stabilizing the region, in the same way that the U.S. stabilizes the world. And that there are many more Xerxes in this world waiting to follow in the original's footsteps. That the difference between stability and freedom, and subjugation is the willingness to stand for freedom, and choose leaders wisely. The great irony of the 20th century is that Mao was the truest philosopher of modern statehood - All Power Flows From The Barrel Of A Gun. It always has been the case that there are those in this world who will use force, and the only solution is to be prepared to use it in return. We just saw this with Russia. It was not peace that turned their tanks - it was U.S. Advisers in the Georgian front lines, and the realization of what killing a U.S. Soldier would mean. Clearly, one party is not prepared to face the Xerxes of this world, and without that there is no ecological stability, no economical stability, no scientific stability, and no true freedom. Just ask the 20 archaeologists that were murdered in Nicaragua when the Sandinistas took power in 79 - yet a liberal president did nothing. Our world needs order and stability, and that was the point of the Call To Arms.
Yes but Sparta was not a democracy it was an aristocratic oligarchy that made several attempts to lead Athenian aristocrats creat an oligarchy in Athens as well in the 5th century. Sparta did not stabilize the entire Aegean, because right after the Persian threat dissappeared, Greek city states went right back to fighting each other with destabilizing results such as Attica being ruined after the Peloponnsian war. Also where was Sparta when Athens and Thebes tried to make it's last stand to defend Greek freedom form Phillip of Macedon in the 4th century? By the way the contras funded by the administration after the liberal in 79 were far more dangerous, ruthless and barbaric then the Sandinistas, go ask any Nicaraguan.
Go Xenophon go!
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