Neocons are Spartans, Liberals are Athenians

[ixion]

Just watching a program on the Spartans and Athenians, and the similarities between the Neocons and the Spartans and Liberals as Athenians are striking...

Spartans
Militaristic Oligarchy government
Believed in war and exploiting others
Lacked imagination and creativity (*snicker*)

Athenians
Democratic government
Peace loving
Society based on imagination, creativity and intelligence

The similarities, on both sides, goes on and on.


Sound familiar?

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Yes in the end Athens fells

to Sparta

[leftyandproud]

6. we are dealing with brutes...

AND THEY WILL KEEP KICKING OUR ASS!!!...until we learn to FIGHT DIRTY!
They don't play nice...They lie, cheat, steal...and in the end, they have WON! Major pieces of non-public media...talk radio...cable news...all three branches of government. I'm sorry, but principle only gets you so far. Eventually you need to confront the bastards on their level..head-on.

[Rowdyboy]

2. The Spartans were heroic warriors

neo-coms are largely armchair chicken-hawks. BIG difference...Sorry, the analogy doesn't work for me.

[Clete]

3. If you consider veiling a woman and making her

stay in the back of the house Democratic, I suppose so. Spartan women had far more freedom and say so in the affairs of the state. Although the Athenians had the right idea in inventing Democracy as we know it, it really only extended to aristocratic men. Slaves, women and peasants were not part of it.

[Muesli]

14. Peasants were part of it

Of course, otherwise it wouldn't be a democracy.

[Clete]

15. The peasants were not of the tribes of the ruling class.

They owned no property. So they were not allowed to vote. So how would this be Democratic.

[htuttle]

16. Only Land-owning Greek males were allowed to vote

They were the only ones considered to be 'persons'.

In fact, once might say that much of the struggle within democracies since Athens has been to expand the definition of 'person' under the law.

But I digress.

[Aidoneus]

4. the Athenian empire was peaceloving?

methinks a dictionary and a history book should be put to use..

[Jonte_1979]

5. Neo-cons are more like 16th century Spain

Foolishly attacking other nations while bankrupting themselves in the process.

[starroute]

7. The Athenians abused their allies and crapped on their enemies

By the time they were defeated, every other city in Greece hated them.

I've been haunted by the fate of Athens ever since I first read a description of it in Mary Stewart's "The Last of the Wine," some forty years ago. Unfortunately, it looks more and more like the shape of our own future every day.

[Clete]

11. You read Mary Stewart too?

I find her books addictive. I love the ones on Alexander the Great.

[kodi]

8. a remark worthy of alcibiades

.

[ComerPerro]

9. One major flaw

Most spartans actually fought. They didn't talk about fighting from a safe distance.

[ixion]

10. all right.. so maybe it was a bad comparison...

just kind of occured to me while I was watching this program...

[Character Assassin]

12. It wasn't all that similar to what we currently think of as democracy...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy

[IranianDemocrat]

13. No because spartans were warriors.

Republicans let others do the shitwork for them.

[GOPEC]

17. Spartans discouraged greed and gluttony...

Their unit of currency was a huge rock (so people wouldn't want a lot of them). Everyone got the same portion of the meal except for the leader who was given two portions. He ate one and awarded the second to someone who had distinguished himself.

[VOX]

18. It's a fact that Nazi Germany took some cues from Spartan practices...

The lives of healthy male children were dedicated to the Spartan state -- unhealthy babies were left in the boondocks to die.

This warrior state was everything -- there was little interest in literature, music, etc. The state was much more important than the individual. Individuals were evaluated by whether or not they would be of use to the state.

It was an early example of a kind of "master race" philsophy.

[angka]

19. tempting but wrong

if the athenians were that nice, how do you explain the melian dialogue, and the subsequent slaughter on melos?

[0rganism]

20. Does that analogy pair Bill Clinton with Alcibiades?

I dunno about "peace loving", the Athenians were plenty violent and imperialistic; it seems awkward to associate one side or another in the classic Peloponesses with liberalism or neo-conservativism.

[legin]

21. My take

The Athenians were only good when Greece had a common enemy to fight, the Persians. Once the Persians had been defeated Athens decided to cash in on being the top superpower, the Parthanon was built using the money that had been supplied by its allies to fight the war against Persia. Athens decided to uni-lateraly turn its allies into vassals.

The other Greek states realised that there is only one thing worse than living in a world with two superpowers slugging it out for domination. That is a world where one superpower dominates, so they attacked Athens.

The histories of that age were written by Athens. Hypothetical think of a time 2000 years from now with a historian looking back on these times, and the only information he had were the writings of Rush Limbaugh.

The other countries on this planet made a big mistake when they downsized their militaries when the Soviet Union fell, they should have been building them up to complete the job.

[mitchum]

22. That is a terribly flawed analogy

[KittyWampus]

23. NeoCons Are REPTILES & Lieberals Are Evolved Beings

[Scaramouche]

24. Lieberals???

Spelling or intentional???