Posted on 04/01/2011 1:28:15 PM PDT by neverdem
Let’s not make too much of this. It was Persians that rescued the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, and I seem to remember that it was the Athenians who started the war with Persia.
And, Rome pushed right up to Parthia’s doorstep, and tried to conquer it. What were the Parthians to do?
More Iranian people have become Christians since 1978 than in quite a few centuries before that point. They got what they wanted — an Islamic state — and discovered that it wasn’t what any sane person could want! At this point, most Iranians love America and hate their own government. All we have to do to reverse that polarity is let the butchers of Wall Street send us into yet another lucrative war against a Muslim nation.
But they still were not able to run their own affairs.
Persia was never democratic. Democratic values come from the West.
Sparta was democratic? Rome made a pretense of it after Julius Caesar for a few years.
2500 years ago? 500 B.C.? what kind of a “West” was there? Egypt? I would not call Egypt any part of the West.
OK, Greece. Forgot about Thermopylae. That was a heck of a war.
Uniting them was indeed a feat because they are historical enemies and have oposing geopolitical interests.
the first recorded instance of an Eastern ruler expressing his contempt for the just-emerging democratic and market-oriented values of Western society.
Okayyy, Mr Lacey, this is a pretty good essay with some relevant history. In particular the reference to the Greeks as the first truly aware society where the citizen is recognized as a conscious decision-capable individual. This is the origin of "democracy," and that individual human consciousness has been definitively described by Julian Jaynes in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
Incidentally there is a Grecian corollary in the plays of Euripides and Sophocles and history by Thucydides; that is, here for the first recorded time are human beings examining objectively there own conscious free-will selves, and putting it before the society of potentially free-thinking constituents. (This incidentally is exactly counter to the modern stupor of media, and leftist, mesmerism). There is also a modern literary example by Gene Roddenberry in the struggle between the bicameral authoritarian system of the Borg versus the independent consciousness of Federation members. As most of us once learned in school this consciousness and independent courage of the individual is the foundation of "Western Civilization."
But the bicameral authoritarian mindset goes somewhat beyond Iran, and I don't quite agree that that society is the one that carries it, at least exclusively, into modern times. In fact the Semites, the Arabs and Jews, (Arabs are every bit as "semitic," a subrace out of Arabia, as Jews), clearly adhere to an authoritarian top-down view of society, for example Moses, when held against the personal consciousness and morality of Buddhism and Christianity. Indeed it is almost like the Buddha forecast Christ; and of course this may well be an expression, as Jaynes maintains, of some deep schism in human psychological development. In any case it is clear that even today there is some profound chasm between those who perceive human society as functioning by the individual moral consciousness of the individuals, ala Christianity, versus those who perceive society as functioning through some dependent top-down mandate, ala the Left.
Is that clear?
As in the Borg versus the Federation it is not clear at all which human mindset will prevail in the long run, there is certainly mechanical intelligence on both sides. But the humanity in which many of us have held dearly stands for the individual, his consciousness, his responsibility, his free-will, his charity, as God's special creation, obliterated by the paganism of authoritarian extortion. Thus the Right versus the Left, the Tea Party versus the Democrats. (The Republicans of course being near worthless).
Johnny Suntrade, the Suntrade Institute
They all vied for leadership. Another sign of democracy.
Good points. Persia has been conquered countless times since Alexander, including by the Arabs, Mongols and Ottoman. Islam destroyed an otherwise dynamic culture.
Most artistic and scientific Muslim accomplishments are Persian. They resisted Muslim influence as much as possible.
Of all of the countries in the ME, I believe Iran is most prepared and able to function as a democracy. The Sunni Arab and Central Asian populations are even more whacky than their rulers.
Our focus on the region should be regime change in Iran.
Or of warlike tendencies.
The Persians are Indo-Europeans, as are the Greeks and the Romans. They all came from the same place, probably the Eurasian steppe.
The Persians were prone to bouts of violent religious fanatacism that preceded Islam. One of those was led by a man named Haman.
The clash of ideology leads to war? Heavens, thank God the US never engages in such folly!
Democracy should equal pacifism? Even the liberals will not tell you that this month.
Pericles? Solon? Anaximander? Herodotus? Sophocles?
Thanks for the link.
The Greeks city states among themselves. In modern history, the last time I know of democracies fighting democracies was the American civil war. Democracies generally don’t fight each other.
You seem to have an incomplete knowledge of:
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
Judaism, and the follows of the Jewish Messiah.
Therefore the other city-states had to fight them.
There shouldn't be a doubt that the idea of democracy was alive and well in the Greek isles, though not all of them thought alike.
I've heard many here on FR say that they would be eager to take up arms if states like MA, NY, etc. continue on with their dictatorial ways. Here's to hoping it will never come to that but if it did would that be a sign that there was no democracy among us or would that be a sign that some were willing to fight for democratic principles?
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