-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: May 31, 2007 3:43:53 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Neocons in Togas -- Faux-"Greek" Geeks GLORIFY Hubris, the
Cause of All Tragedy
Maureen Dowd: How We’re Animalistic — in Good Ways and Bad
MoDo admits that when it comes to the macho conservative types,
it's all Greek to her.
Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, May 30, 2007
http://roziusunbound.blogspot.com/2007/05/maureen-dowd-how-were-
animalistic-in.html
The odd thing is that conservatives wear pinstriped suits, when
they really should be walking around in togas. The main
contribution of the Greeks to modern American politics may have
been Michael Dukakis, who once climbed the Acropolis in wingtips.
But that doesn’t stop conservatives — especially the Straussians
who pushed for going into Iraq — from being obsessed with ancient
Greece, and from believing that they are the successors to Plato
and Homer in terms of the lofty ideals and nobility and character
in American politics — while Democrats merely muck about with
policies for the needy.
Harvey Mansfield, a leading Straussian who teaches political
science at Harvard and who wrote a book called “Manliness” (he’s
for it), gave the Jefferson lecture recently at the National
Endowment for the Humanities in Washington.
It was an ode, as his book is, to “thumos,” the Greek word that
means spiritedness, with flavors of ambition, pride and brute
willfulness. Thumos, as Philip Kennicott wrote in The Washington
Post, “is a word reinvented by conservative academics who need to
put a fancy name on a political philosophy that boils down to ‘boys
will be boys.’ ”
Mr. Mansfield did not mention the war, which is a downer at
conclaves of neocons and thumos worshippers. But he explained that
thumos is “the bristling reaction of an animal in face of a threat
or a possible threat.” In thumos, he added, “we see the animality
of man, for men (and especially males) often behave like dogs
barking, snakes hissing, birds flapping. But precisely here we also
see the humanity of the human animal” because it is reacting for “a
reason, even for a principle, a cause. Only human beings get angry.”
The professor used an example, naturally, from ancient Greece to
explain why politics should be about revolution rather than
equilibrium: “What did Achilles do when his ruler Agamemnon stole
his slave-girl? He raised the stakes. He asserted that the trouble
was not in this loss alone but in the fact that the wrong sort of
man was ruling the Greeks. Heroes, or at least he-men like
Achilles, should be in charge rather than lesser beings like
Agamemnon who have mainly their lineage to recommend them and who
therefore do not give he-men the honors they deserve. Achilles
elevated a civil complaint concerning a private wrong to a demand
for a change of regime, a revolution in politics.” Mr. Mansfield
concluded: “To complain of an injustice is an implicit claim to rule.”
The most recent example of the Hellenization of the Bush
administration is the president’s choice for war czar, Army Lt.
Gen. Douglas Lute, who says he loves the Greek military historian
Thucydides.
Other Thucydides aficionados include Victor Davis Hanson, who was a
war-guru to Dick Cheney when the vice president went into the
bunker after 9/11 and got into his gloomy Hobbesian phase.
(Hobbes’s biggest influence was also Thucydides.)
Donald Kagan, a respected Yale historian who has written
authoritatively on the Peloponnesian War, is the father of Robert
Kagan, a neocon who pushed for the Iraq invasion, and Frederick
Kagan, a military historian who urged the surge.
I called Professor Kagan to ask him if Thucydides, the master at
chronicling hubris and imperial overreaching, might provide the new
war czar with any wisdom that can help America sort through the
morass of Iraq.
Very much his sons’ father, the classicist said he was disgusted
that the White House, after a fiasco of an occupation designed by
Rummy, “is still doing one dumb thing after another” by appointing
General Lute, a chief skeptic of the surge.
Professor Kagan said that one reason the Athenians ended up losing
the war was because in the Battle of Mantinea in 418 B.C. against
the Spartans, they sent “a very inferior force” and had a general
in command who was associated with the faction that was against the
aggressive policy against the Spartans.
“Kind of like President Bush appointing this guy to run the war
whose strategy is opposed to the surge,” he said dryly.
With cold realism, Thucydides captured the Athenian philosophy in
the 27-year war that led to their downfall as a golden democracy:
“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
What message can we take away from Thucydides for modern times?
“Professor Kagan said, “the deepest message, the most tragic, is
[Thucydides'] picture of civilization as a very thin veneer. When
you punch a hole in it, it's hollow and what you find underneath
are the pre-civilized characteristics of the human race --
animalistic in the worst possible way.”
Compared to Iraq, the Peloponnesian War was a cakewalk.
See what's free at AOL.com.
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