Tag: Thucydides

[Member Post]

 

The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools. ― Thucydides In Ancient Greece Socrates fought in the phalanx and Xenophon, a military leader wrote works of scholarship.  There was no separation between scholars and warriors.  Nor was there in Republican Rome. Cicero […]

⚠️ This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet's community of conservatives and be part of the conversation.

Join Ricochet for free.

Hoover Institute Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson sits down with our own Dave Carter to explore the similarities of today’s revolutionary zeal which seeks all encompassing power to dictate every phase of life with various events in history. In those who wan to dictate everything from our leisure activities to a newly-minted phraseology, our culture and statues, our approved political beliefs, Professor Hanson finds disturbing commonality with the Jacobin phase of the French Revolution in which culture and people were purged in what became known as the Reign of Terror. For that matter, there’s a whiff of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in the air, and the fear of baseless accusations that came to define the Salem Witch Trials.  It’s a fascinating discussion which culminates in Professor Hanson’s description of what lax immigration laws have done to the home and property of five generations of his family, the home from which Professor Hanson talked with Dave.

Dave also welcomes back onto the program Ricochet Member Jenna Stocker, whose recent piece, “Minneapolis Isn’t Lost – Yet,” describes what life is like among the “smoldering embers” of what she describes as a city, “…once at the threshold of vibrancy and decency and opportunity – now at the edge of the morass.”  The cameras have moved on from Minneapolis, leaving the residents to try and put life back together again. A native of Minneapolis, Jenna Stocker’s perspective is vital to understanding what happens when the platitudes of politicians give way to reality.

[Member Post]

 

In the year 431 B.C., at the conclusion of the first year of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles delivered an oration in honor of the Athenian war dead. What came to be known as Pericles’ Funeral Oration is a fine thing to contemplate on Memorial Day, and I highly recommend it. I first read Thucydides’ account […]

⚠️ This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet's community of conservatives and be part of the conversation.

Join Ricochet for free.

A Teachable Moment for Rand Paul?

 

We now have on our hands Barack Obama’s War, for our latest Middle Eastern war belongs entirely to him. And someone — let it be me! — should alert Sen. Rand Paul to this teachable moment, for Obama’s War (which Rand Paul supports) was brought on by the very policy of non-intervention that he, his father, and the Cato Institute all championed. As Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has testified in word and deed, there is essentially no difference on foreign affairs between left-wing Democratics and arch-libertarians who sometimes vote Republican.

This war might have been avoided. Had Obama taken the trouble to arrange for a few thousand American soldiers to remain in Iraq — as he easily could have — the Iraqi’s coalition government between Shia, Sunni, and Kurd would have held, despite Maliki’s perfidy. That, in turn, would have prevented al-Qaeda’s reemergence in the Sunni-dominated provinces of Iraq. Moreover, ISIS would not be in control of great swathes of Syria had the president followed the advice of his advisors and allies and backed the secular-minded opposition to Bashar al-Assad from the start.

[Member Post]

 

[Preface: I started writing something in the discussion on James Poulos’s summoning post, “Who’s Failing America: the Elites or America?,” viz., my thoughts on what constitutes the great cleavages between liberals and conservatives. It got a bit, well, augmented, so I’m posting this to Member Feed. The steamy subtitle: “Why the moral-political is determinative of […]

⚠️ This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet's community of conservatives and be part of the conversation.

Join Ricochet for free.