Excellent Article from Victor Davis Hanson

    I suggest War and the West, Then and Now to everybody; especially because it will provide great context for what's to come from me.

A few gems:

"There was a greater propensity in Western armies for the individual to feel that he had a stake in his army. Nothing provides a better or more clear illustration of this than Herodotus’s description of Thermopylae, where [soldiers] in the royal army of Xerxes were being whipped to fight, whereas Leonidas and the Spartans said they were there because they were following the law that they themselves had created. What kind of army, ancient or modern, would name their triremes “Free Speech” or “Freedom” like the Athenians did at Salamis, or have a play by Aeschylus that says, “We rowed into battle saying ‘freedom, freedom, freedom.’” It is very strange in comparison to what motivated other armies of the era."

"In the West it means that as a Macedonian professional soldier, you can be playing kickball alongside Alexander the Great, even though you are merely one of the Macedonian phalangites, and be a quasi-mercenary, and have destroyed constitutional government. Still, you probably have a greater degree of freedom than someone in the imperial army of Darius."

"There seems to be a morality in the West that says that how one makes and creates capital is not necessarily at odds with religion. There are no cultural prohibitions in the West, like there are in Islam, against charging interest. Whether such gain usury or not is highly controversial, but in the pre-Christian West people felt that that making money was not at odds with pagan religion, and Christianity very quickly adopted an idea that even though the poor were “blessed,” people might even be more blessed if they were wealthy. The battle of Lepanto, for example, was a very instructive reflection of 16^th-century Italy. Venice probably had no more than 200 square miles and 100,000 people within the confines proper of the city — I imagine it was much bigger than today; I think there are only about 50,000 people there today, and yet they were fighting an empire that had 20 million people and probably almost a million square miles in the Ottomans. And yet the arsenal at small Venice, if it had to, could turn out one galley per day, and they could create more galleys and more quality artillery than could all of the states under the Ottomans combined."

Though the three parts constitute a decently long read, it is well worth it!

-Jason Roberts

Comments

[Janet Busch]

Thanks for sending me to this informative series. I haven't been to the Davis site for a while, and I see that I've missed a lot.

As I read, it struck me how important it is to have intellectuals who are able to bring past experiences in human ways of life to light, especially at critical times (like now). I have certainly felt the lack of it these days. It is easy to see how Americans, generally speaking, have become unarmed against enemy propaganda; we have stopped teaching history and replaced it with "culture studies." Learning about the particulars of tribal dancing or food preparation doesn't tell you anything about the ideas that rule the culture, nor does it teach you how to make a judgment about it. It is a stark lesson (and a really good reason to have this site!)

JB

[Jason Roberts]

Janet,

Thanks for your comments. Victor Hanson is really an amazing person if you take the time to read him. I'm currently reading his book, "Fields Without Dreams" and am loving it. I would suggest it, as well as "Who Killed Homer?" and "Carnage and Culture".

And (obviously!) I agree with your view on History. History is the precedent that we build upon; the world does not exist in a vacuum, independent of all links. Everything we are is because of what we were, and everything we will be is because of what we are now. You can't separate the past from the present from the future. Doing so is like cutting off your legs and wondering why you can't run. Sadly, it's a lesson that most people don't understand today. Edward Gibbon beautifully said, “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.”