[lit-ideas] America and Athens
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 12:28:50 -0800
From A War Like No Other, How the Athenians and Spartans fought the
Peloponnesian War, by Victor Davis Hanson, 2005:
p. 8: "Contemporary America is often now seen through the lens of ancient
Athens, both as a center of culture and as an unpredictable imperial power
that can arbitrarily impose democracy on friends and enemies alike. Thomas
Paine long ago spelled this natural affinity out: 'What Athens was in
miniature, America will be in magnitude.' Like ancient Athenians,
present-day Americans are often said to believe that 'they can be opposed in
nothing,' and abroad can 'equally achieve what was easy and what was hard.'
Although Americans offer the world a radically egalitarian popular culture
and, more recently, in a very Athenian mood, have sought to remove oligarchs
and impose democracy - in Grenada, Panama, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq -
enemies, allies, and neutrals alike are not so impressed. They
understandably fear American power and intentions while our successive
governments, in the manner of confident and proud Athenians, assure them of
our morality and selflessness. Military power and idealism about bringing
perceived civilization to others are a prescription for frequent conflict in
any age - and no ancient state made war more often than did fifth-century
imperial Athens.
"So great were the dividends of envy, fear, and legitimate grievance against
the ancient world's first democracy that the victorious Peloponnesians who
oversaw the destruction of the Long Walls of Athens - the fortifications to
the sea symbolic of the power of the poor and their desire to spread
democracy throughout the Aegean - did so to music and applause. Again, most
Greeks concluded that, as Xenophon wrote, Athens' defeat 'marked the
beginning of freedom for Greece' - without a clue that the victorious Sparta
would move immediately to create its own overseas empire in the vacuum.
Blinkered idealists in America who believe that the world wishes to join our
democratic culture might reflect that the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War,
'the general good intentions of people leaned clearly in favor of the
Spartans' and that 'the majority of Greeks were deeply hostile toward the
Athenians.'
Comment:
Hmm. I've just started this book, but on page 8, Hanson would not seem to
be terribly impressed with the Neocon enterprise. Both the Neocons and
Athenians were completely convinced of the superiority of their respective
ideas, political ideas that have much in common. But both Athens and
America have been opposed, and one might risk the adverb irrationally, as
in, irrationally opposed. For the Greeks to support Sparta against Athens
because they wanted "freedom" strikes us as ludicrous. Sure the Spartans
may be the best fighters, man for man on the ground, but Athens produced
great philosophy and literature, much of it during the Peloponnesian War.
The defeat of Athens did not bring Greece Freedom but the reverse. And
those Greeks who supported Sparta and opposed Athens never knew that they
were supporting their own loss of freedom.
So what is it that Hanson wants us to learn from a study of this "War like
no Other." Do we want the Neocons to draw in their horns? That seems to be
going on already. If the Foreign-Affairs Tyro, George Bush was influenced
by the Neocons early on, he seems so no longer. There has been a noticeable
return to the Realpolitik of Henry Kissinger. And Francis Fukuyama seems
ashamed that he started the whole Neocon idea up.
Today we are surprised that anyone could have anything against the
enlightened and brilliant Athens. What that city-state produced in a
relatively short period of time is still appreciated and studied today. It
is one of the high-points of Western (and world) civilization. Would that
we could go back in time and warn the other Greeks, leave Athens alone!
Better yet, listen to them. They have the best interests of Greece at
heart. Whatever you view as oppression is a hundred times better than what
can be and will be opposed by tyrannically nations in the future. You will
be destroying what is the very best of Greece for your mistakes and
illusions. If you want to oppose them, do it a little more quietly, leave
your spears and shields in the closet, and don't back the Spartans!
Lawrence Helm
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] America and Athens
