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August 2007
Elsewhere on the WebVictor Davis Hanson’s Private Papers Victor Davis Hanson Archive on National Review OnlineTour Books
A War Like No Other How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War
by Victor Hanson
Amazon.com’s Best of 2001 Many theories have been offered regarding why Western culture has spread so successfully across the world, with arguments ranging from genetics to superior technology to the creation of enlightened economic, moral, and political systems. In Carnage and Culture, military historian Victor Hanson takes all of these factors into account in making a bold, and sure to be controversial, argument: Westerners are more effective killers.
by Victor Davis Hanson
by Victor Davis Hanson
by Victor Davis Hanson
by Victor Davis Hanson, John Keegan Hanson, for those who somehow have missed him until now, is a professor of Classics at California State and also is a part time farmer, both of which have contributed to his writing as a military historian. As a classicist, Hanson is well versed in the sources in their original Greek, and as a farmer he understands how agriculture affected the experience of the Greeks at war.
by Victor Davis Hanson
by Victor Davis Hanson
Hanson relates the life stories of his farmer neighbors, writing that their way of life will likely soon disappear, thanks in part to a federal system of agricultural subsidies that favors large-scale, industrial farm corporations over individual “yeomen.” This is a sobering and eye-opening book. by Victor Davis Hanson On first glance, The Soul of Battle appears to be three different books: biographies of two well-known generals—Sherman and Patton—and one who is virtually unknown today, the ancient Greek leader Epaminondas. Yet Victor Davis Hanson, a classics professor and author of The Western Way of War, makes a compelling connection between these three men. They were “eccentrics, considered unbalanced or worse by their own superiors” who led democratic armies on missions of freedom.
by Robert B. Strassler (Editor), Victor Davis Hanson (Introduction)
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August 12, 2007 5:06 PM
Our Silly Modern WorldWhy Study Dead Greeks? Someone just asked me that at a reception the other night, wondering why anyone would prefer to write a book on the Peloponnesian War rather than something more modern and readable. I confess at least part of the reason is to read Greek literature. In fact, I get asked what’s so good about the ancients a lot lately, even after retirement from some 20 years as Greek professor who taught Greek 1A-B, Latin 1A-B, and then an upper-division Greek class (something like Sophocles’ Antigone or Xenophon’s Hellenica) and corresponding Latin course (e.g., Virgil’s Aeneid Book 6, or Livy, Book 22), interspliced with independent studies in Greek and Latin composition, and sometimes Greek and Latin literature classes in translation. For a hectic period between 1993 and 1997 my colleague, Bruce Thornton, and I each taught 10 semester classes a year in classics to keep the program alive during the California budget meltdown, mostly to minority youths who came to Greek or Latin with no preconceptions but often left after four years far better educated than many of their professors. We were so busy that we never stopped to think much abstractly why we did what we did, but as one ages and looks back, the answers are now clearer. Ten years ago, John Heath and I co-authored Who Killed Homer? to answer that question about the need to study Classics. But again as I look back, I would put it something like this. I came to look at the world of Greek and Latin literature as a garden on the other side of a strong door of modernism, a barrier which could not be opened. We look at this fascinating world through a tiny key-hole only (given the loss of most of classical literature and our feeble efforts to make-up for it with archaeology and epigraphy). But knowledge of Greek and Latin allows us, through some mysterious power of transformation, to glide through the keyhole and into the other side, where suddenly everything comes alive and continues to instruct and entertain about the unchanging human condition. And what a lesson it is in the world of Thucydides, and Euripides, and Horace and Tacitus! Like stale air before a fresh wind, immediately gone is the falsity of the modern politically-correct age. Old-age is never golden, but hard and humiliating, a time of illness of the worst sort from incontinence to deafness, assuaged only by the accumulation of experience and wisdom, and a certain resignation for what’s ahead. Teen-agers are not always vulnerable victims preyed on by their elders, but sometimes smart sassy pros who use their youth and beauty to humiliate pathetic old gawkers and hangers-on. Thracians are wild and uncouth, Cappadocians big and stupid, Athenians oily-tongued, Boiotians hard-working but boring, dull rustics. The Greeks don’t believe these stereotypes are ironclad, merely funny and more often than not accurate—and couldn’t care whether you the reader find them offensive. Farmers appear more reliable than rhetors, poets more inspired than educated, and the rich as fragile and over-refined as the poor are uncouth. The more you hammer or plow, the more hardened you become; the more your read or think, the softer and more impractical—the mean, to meson, then being critical, this elusive combination of thinking and exertion. Virtue is pretty simple in this other world: duty to the state, civic participation in all its manifestations; abidance to the truth; avoidance of sin as defined mostly by avoidance of overindulgence, as in too much money, talk, drink, sex, food, and sleep; financial and social loyalty to children and friends; and unceasing cultivation of mind and body. Public secular shame, not private religious guilt, is the goad that keeps us on track. Absent is the modern notion of victimization in which any character lapse is automatically attributable to some past childhood, parental, gender, racial, or class infliction. Usually you screw up because you were weak, or selfish, or stupid, and if you don’t make amends, it was due to an innate character flaw rather than momentary weakness. And most importantly, there is no myth that human nature is malleable, and radically changed by money and education. Thus there exists on the other side of this modernist door, in this enticing garden, our old now taboo words like lazy, stupid, traitor, cowardly, no-good, disgraceful, shameful, etc., and an expectation that when a society is given too much money, leisure, and affluence, people will usually do all sorts of ludicrous things, being people after all—perhaps in our own time like watching Anna Nicole Smith Fox News Alerts, complaining that Wal-Mart has run out of motorized shopping carts as you devour Big Macs (I saw just that two days ago), and spending $10,000 on batteries and hydraulic lifters for your car while not investing $200 a month for catastrophic health insurance plan. Then you put down the poems of Catullus or Homer’s Iliad and get sucked back through the keyhole into our modern world, in which there is a veneer, a falsity really, that coats almost everything we do, sometimes for good reasons, more often for the bad. So it is a fine thing to read a little Greek and Latin each evening to remind us that the modernist mindset is antithetical to almost everything that preceded it, and mostly a human reaction to a novel generation of once unimaginable and now unlimited choices, appetites, and opportunities.
First is fiscal sanity. For most Americans piling up debt is as much an emotional and spiritual crisis as it is an economic one. An indebted America makes all of us feel collectively lousy—weak, dependent, and self-indulgent. Who likes to be lectured by the Chinese, Germans, or Japanese that we are spendthrifts? Tax cuts are great and really did bring in more gross revenue, but who cares if we still spent far more than we took in? The first four years of this administration did more to discredit the sound policy of tax cuts that any other: had they just kept spending rises to the level of inflation, the ensuing surpluses would have proved that budgets can be balanced through the stimulation of less taxation. The public also doesn’t want any more lectures about the hidden benefits in massive trade deficits. We don’t believe anymore that a dollar-rich, but import-dependent and rival China is as vulnerable as we would be in a future financial war. Americans are tired of being lectured that massive billion-dollar annual budget deficits are actually a tolerable percentage of our gross domestic product. And they don’t believe that our national debt is not really much of a worry compared to burdens carried in the past as during World War II. These apologies for all this indebtedness are usually economic arguments—many of them valid—that suggest deficits, imbalances, and debt are nothing to worry about. But what is forgotten again is the psychological element. Americans are shamed by spiraling debt—whether their nation’s or their own—and the dependence and vulnerability that accompanies it. Second, we want the borders closed. Period. Again, elites make all sorts of arguments for the utility of illegal immigration—from the advantages of unclaimed social security benefits to global competitiveness. But aside from such questionable short-term math, for most Americans illegal immigration was all along simply a moral issue of dishonoring the law. Americans are uneasy when millions simply flaunt their legal system—whether skipping a green card, not having a driver’s license, or falsifying social security numbers. The public also senses that the melting pot works well with a few hundred thousand annual legal immigrants, but hardly at all with a massive yearly influx of nearly a million aliens, who arrive without legality, education, or English—but often with the tacit approval of politicians, employers, and church officials who find personal advantage in open borders. Despite liberal preference for the multicultural salad bowl, the public still prefers the assimilation and integration that alone turn many races, religions, and ethnicities into a common American culture—and thereby avoid the mess we see abroad from the Balkans to Iraq. Politicians need to stress that the melting pot is in everybody’s interest, especially now in an increasingly multiracial America of conflicting languages, ethnicities, and religions. Third, voters also worry that their voracious oil appetite enriches lunatic regimes in the Middle East that will use the trillions of dollars they did not earn for nefarious purposes. We know that paying such a huge import bill weakens our fiscal health while warping US foreign policy. Yet Americans don’t want some massive government Manhattan project— just common sense compromises that will reduce our daily appetite for foreign oil enough to bring down the world price. They want us to open up Anwar’s 2,000 acres in a multi-million acre Alaska for safe drilling. Most don’t think our coasts should be off limits to fuel our cars when other countries’ shores aren’t that send us oil. If friendly Brazil can supply us cheaper ethanol, let it to do so without exorbitant tariffs. Nuclear power could power plug-in commuter cars, and curtail the burning of fossil fuels for electrical power. But the larger point again, is to cut our appetite now. And that requires environmentalist Democrats to be encourage more exploration and nuclear power, and free-market Republicans to allow the government to establish conservation standards. Finally, the public is sick of Washington corruption—both the Jack Abramoff tawdry kind, and the more subtle insider earmarks of a Congressman John Murtha. Voters want Democratic lectures on reform to apply to their own pork-barrel waste, and Republican moralists to moralize also about the crooks in their midst. A winning message is simple—quit spending money we don’t have, stop flouting our immigration laws, free us from Middle East oil blackmail, and cease equating politics with profit. Americans may not agree on the war in Iraq, gay marriage, or abortion, but there is plenty of common ground on which a sober politician can still find a bipartisan majority. And now enough of that ranting! Comments (17)Gary Campbell :Mark :Doctor Hanson, perhaps you would like to comment on a notion I've had for a while. I've read that our famous e pluribus unum is derived from a poem about the creation of a stew. (True or false?) It seems to me that a stew is a far better metaphor for us than either a melting pot or a salad (or 'gorgeous mosaic'). In a stew, the ingredients each take on some flavor of the whole, while contributing their own. When we assimilate immigrants, we don't wipe out their culture; we allow them to bring what's good in it to the whole. Sometimes they also bring what isn't good, and we have to deal with that. Nobody wants poisonous potato sprouts in the stew. We investigate and prosecute the mafia, and almost nobody would suggest that this is a vital part of Italian culture that we are required to respect. The same applies to the IRA and similar organizations. No more should we insist that immigrants and visitors should be allowed to bring a culture of honor killings, FGM, and the demonization of other parts of the Great American Stew. John Hinds :In college, at the end of the 1960s decade, I had the great fortune to study Greek philosophy. During the course of my life I have had the occasion to revisit those works. What has become a guiding light for me was, in particular, the lesson in Plato about the nature of love. In the Symposium Socrates tells that he learned of love from a Mantinean woman , Diotima. She instructed that "love" is a spirit, one of many, by which the divine has commerce with man. "...the divine will not mingle directly with the human, and it is only through the mediation of the spirit world that man can have any intercourse....with the gods....There are many spirits, and many kinds of spirits, too, and Love is one of them." I take it that beauty, truth, justice, wisdom, honor, and most importantly for modern man, perhaps, liberty are such windows as love on the transcendent, the divine. Further, aren't they truly just facets, in a sense, of God? And further, isn't it likely that participation in these attributes, facets, is an additive function of consciousness. Liberty, and the others, are enhanced by our sacrifices for, participation in, them. They thus become more luminous and attractive to those who come after us. The path to truth is increasingly illumined by the efforts of those who seek after her. That is why we must fight and win against the barbarian enemies, against all existential threats such as from Russia, China. This American experiment is currently the great hope of mankind because the genius of our founding fathers was to enshrine the finest ideas of the Greeks in our constitution. So, yes, you are absolutely correct. Our debt to the ancient Greeks in incalculable. Tom Grey :Great post -- I'd vote for you even over Ron Paul! Maybe McCain or Romney might start talking like this to get ahead ? nah... sigh. (See Derbyshire for a good pro-Paul letter of Ben Novak.)
Your description of the fresh air of honest opinion shows one reason so little of semi-censored modern stuff is every going to last. Only in fantasy can normal "folk" express the normal feelings people have. Otherwise it's too un-PC. Phil Stanhope :"Americans are uneasy when millions simply flaunt their legal system" That would be "flout." You're dead on, otherwise. Tollie :I love these columns. more your read or think, the softer and more impractical—the mean, to meson Junius :Is what we want (ie. both wish and lack discipline or character? Joshua A. Lineberry :I've been saying since before Michael Moore's healthcare movie that if Americans stopped with all the entertainment-related expenses (video games, new flat-screen televisions, etc.) and actually kept their cars for more than 2 years at a time before trading them in, they could probably afford a private health care plan. tthomas :Just some general comments here. I fear you're expecting rational behavior from a congress with an approval rating of 3%. (I expect Satan has a better rating; at least he knows what he's doing.) Fiscal responsibility is an oxymoron in the context of Washington. No one is listening to the increasingly silent and angry electorate on the issue of illegal aliens. As to weaning the US off of foreign oil, look up "Plasma Boy EV Racing" on the web. I'm not an electrical engineer, but here's an idea for electric cars that has been around for years. Why isn't more of this stuff in development or use by American auto manufacturers? Sharpshooter :Perhaps we resent people of other nations telling us about our national debt when ours (40% of GNP) is far less than theirs (80-105%) even if our national debt is higher in absolute terms. Then, too, we insist on our welfare state and do not realize that this is the very reason their national debts are so high. Sharpshooter :Thought provoking as always!! However: Quote: "They want us to open up Anwar’s 2,000 acres in a multi-million acre Alaska for safe drilling. Most don’t think our coasts should be off limits to fuel our cars when other countries’ shores aren’t that send us oil." Yet they just voted in a new Congress that will do precisely that - make those places off limits for drilling, and worse, tax the beejessus out of the oil companies for more wealth redistribution. More so than "we have met the enemy and it is us", I'd venture that "We're our own worst enemy". Kevin Merkelz :Professor Hanson, In your response to the question, "Why study dead Greeks?", you also happened to put into words the answer to a question that I often find myself answering: "Why read history?" As a college student, I am saddened to see that I am surrounded by peers who, for some inexplicable reason, loathe history. It boggles my mind how students see history classes as boring and irrelevant. Yes, you have to take notes and remember a few dates, and, true, some teachers fail to capitalize on the narrative riches of history and treat it as timeline waiting to be memorized, but the essence and the excitement of learning history is always there: it allows us to slip through that keyhole and, like you said, brush aside the "falsity of the modern politically-correct age." Reading history offers me a corrective lens that I can put to my eye whenever I see a splashy, panicked headline in the paper or an editorial crying "Retreat!" over a few casualties in Iraq. The reward of knowing just a little history is the unique perspective that it offers on current events. My peers bemoan the "devastating" casualties that our country has suffered in Iraq. If only they had read their history. Then they would remember Cannae, where 50,000 Romans were cut down in a single afternoon and yet their republican state was not destroyed. Rather, it immediately recruited 20,000 new legionnaires and mustered 80,000 additional troops by year's end, replacing the losses sustained at Cannae. The 3,000+ casualties that we have suffered, while tragic, do not spell the doom of America. History reveals the ability of a democratic society to bounce back from truly crippling losses. (Can you tell that I've read "Why the West Has Won"?) Likewise, my fellow classmates ask of the Middle East, "Why do they hate us?", and place the blame squarely on America for stirring up the hornets' nest and provoking an Islamic jihad. Yet the average college student would hardly be able to articulate the differences between a Fatimid Shi'ite and an Abbasid Sunni, much less know that jihad is simply the modern continuation of something that began when Islam burst forth from the Arabian peninsula in the 7th century, came into conflict with the Western forces of the crusades of the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, and continued through the ages with the sacking of Constantinople in 1453 and the battle of Lepanto in 1571. To my classmates, bred on 60-second CNN news blurbs and bold-face headlines, radical Islam is something that began on September 11, 2001, at 8:46 AM. I am no history scholar--in fact, I can't even say that I've reached the level of "history buff", although I'd like to think that I might reach that distinction someday--and I will never even approach your knowledge of the Classics, but I've found that the more ancient and medieval history that I read, the more the present world seems to make sense. Events happen for a reason, and they may have even happened before. History does repeat itself, and the human condition truly has not changed. So, why do I read history? For all those reasons and more. Thanks for sharing why you read about those wonderful "dead Greeks", Mr. Hanson. You worded it so much more eloquently (and succinctly) than I ever could. And thanks for your books that continually polish the glass and sharpen the prescription on my lens for viewing our present world.
Kevin Merkelz BMoon :I think the silliness began with Nietzsche's boastings of "erasing the horizon" and such. Far too many half-educated academics and their half-baked cultural products of the 60's and 70's took him far too seriously at his word, and now cannot tell whether the sun is up or down, or whether it actually might be the moon they are barking at. And when I hold my great grandfather's Greek version of Josephus or New testament in my hand, I am at once ashamed, humbled, and fearful for us all. Junius :Wasn't the ancient definition a barbarian some one who did not understand the Greek language? And the story I heard once was that when some one asked Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. why he was learning Greek when he was over the age of 90, the Justice replied: "If not now, when"? Mike :Americans are uneasy when millions simply flaunt their legal system "Flaunt"? Ten points off. eliXelx :Add a fifth, a cover-all if you will. America needs to recover its pride and its purpose! And the way to do that is by scouring, cleaning and disinfecting its educational system AT ALL LEVELS! It is only by giving Respect that one gets Respect. dm :You do realize that your hope that the govt should have kept spending increases in line with inflation in its first 4 years is both quaint and more than a little disingenuous. There was this small matter of a war or two - perhaps you remember. Also, your claim that ANWR will magically free us of foreign oil dependence, even in part, whether immediately or at some point in the future, is pathetically false. You will do well to read up on expert analysis from the DOE and elsewhere. As a professional opinion monger (and possibly scold), you are woefully out of your depth when you stray from your chosen fields of the classics and touting neocon politics. Comments have been archived for this page. |
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Don't you mean "flout" in the penultimate paragraph?
Aug 12, 2007 05:55 PM