Profile: Victor Davis Hanson. USA needs a dose of ancient Greece's warrior culture

The Boston Globe ^ | 5/25/2003 | Laura Secor

[TheWillardHotel]

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON leads a double life. A fifth-generation raisin farmer in California's fertile Central Valley, Hanson is also a historian of ancient Greece, a lyrical defender of American agrarianism, and a prolific contributor to conservative opinion magazines. His columns so caught the fancy of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney that he has enjoyed audiences with both. It's hard to say which is stranger: that a raisin farmer should exert such influence, or that a classics scholar should.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Representative govt. did not exist at all until the Magna Carta (embyronic of course), several hundred years after the last Viking invasions."

Magna Carta arises directly from the northwest European cultural idea of the existence of the "rights of free men" as distinct from those rights granted "by the sovereign", whose roots antedate Magna Carta by many hundreds, if not thousands of years.

[Oztrich Boy]

I simply feel that the "PINEs" contribution to the Western cultural tradition of individual liberty and representative government is under-appreciated.

Absolutely. Hanson has a point when he says that
But ''The Other Greeks'' (1995) is probably Hanson's signature work. In it, he argues that the values of classical civilization originated not among the urban elites of fifth-century Athens but among the communities of middling farmer-soldiers who dominated Greece's pre-classical era. These small land-owners were ''keen-eyed,'' egalitarian, hard-working, and largely self-governing. They were also the same hoplites who fought to defend their own land and hard-earned harvests.

But what is overlooked by those hung up on the "Democarcy is a Greek word" thing, is that the pre-classical Greek ideal was pretty much destroyed by Pericles when he established the Peoples Democratic Republic of Athens.

While those barbarians in the north: Peninsula, Littorial, and Island Northwest Europeans (PLINEs for short), came up with the idea independenty and made it last (more or less).

[denydenydeny]

Indexing.

[Feiny]

Future guest ping....

[freedumb2003]

Thanks

Great post and I will certainly be researching and thinking. I hadn't really thought of the importance of lex, and it certainly puts a spin on things. The statement "we are a nation of laws, not men" may be a differntiator.

Pax Romana lasted 2 millenia. If the liberals and Islamists (especially when working together as they are right now) have their way, Pax Americana won't even last past the lifetimes of current younger generation.

[Wonder Warthog]

"While those barbarians in the north: Peninsula, Littorial, and Island Northwest Europeans (PLINEs for short), came up with the idea independently and made it last (more or less)."

Now THERE is the ideal succinct statement of the concept I am trying to get across---thank you!

Great tag line--anyone who references Heinlein has got to be OK.

[FreedomPoster]

Yes.

[freedumb2003]

LOL

[FreedomPoster]

;-)

[FreedomPoster]

To follow up further, how does one separate the yin and the yang? The head and the tail?

Our civilization rides on both.

[Tin-Legions]

Good-good agree that said rights predate MC, however, you deny that "the rights of free men" is a Greek idea also, any casual reading of Greek state philosophers (Aristotle or Plato), or any Greek/Roman writer concerned with the subject will give you this idea. Stating that idea as unique to Germanic tribes is erroneous, at best, unprovable by any archeological finds or writings at worst. But to state that just one idea-shared by Greeks, Latins, Germans, and Celts, outwieghts the vast cultural, governmental, and legal lineage we trace directly from Greece and Rome is, to say it nice as possible, quite preposterous.

Keep it coming. I'm overseas so if I miss a retort or reply, I'm in bed, at PT, or wasting taxpayer dollars at "work".

[Tin-Legions]

Thanks, I was just guessing, it has been years since I even did a idle study of such things.

[Tin-Legions]

Nice, but a side issue with no relevance. How did they influence modern thoughts on culture, law, and government in the West, mainly U.S. is the issue. The answer is: some, but very little compared to Greece and Rome. I'm still not convinced either you or WW make a convincing point that Viking-Germanic tribes one and all, (although seperate in some ways to continental German tribes)with their not unique idea of "rights of free men" and rather insignificant "parliments" (councils of landed lords is the proper equivalent) outweigh the influence of Greece and Rome on US traditions. Agian I urge everyone to reference writings by Thomas Jefferson (sorry, I can't quote a source, it has been a while since I read anything on him, either)

[Tin-Legions]

Final note for the night: If you can prove that the English Parliment and by extension the US government as proposed by the Constitution (I've just made this quite harder) is a direct decendent of Viking forms of governance as opposed to pre-Canute (@1016 AD) Anglo Saxon forms of governance, with minimal impacts from salvaged Greek and Roman law saved by the Muslim hordes-you've proved your case.

I think that will take a book, you could make a killing just off of all of us that would write counter-argument books.

Some good books to think about: Vikings: Fear and Faith, Paul Cavill-great selection of translated Anglo Saxon works
Viking Art of War, Paddy Griffith-funny and informative
Oxford History of the Vikings-long but covers all the general and some specific topics of the Viking age

[RightWhale]

Apparently prefers the Athenian utopia to the Spartan utopia, yet the Spartan utopia was the one where all citizens were soldiers and were ruled by iron law.

[don-o]

I had never heard of Mr. Hanson. Did a Google and found archives at NOR. (National Review Online.)

Reckon I have some catching up to do from a great mind. Thanks for the post

[don-o]

My hope for the future of this Nation lies with the increasing numbers of home-schooled and privately-schooled kids. They will wield influence far in excess of their numbers.

Oh my Lord!

Have I died and gone to Heaven?

First, I discover a great mind (Hanson) of whom I was ignorant, and then FreedomPoster nails it.

[don-o]

Even with all our problems, we are the most adaptable people on the face of the earth and we're the smartest too.

snip

I believe the Greek word for that is "hubris".

[Defiant]

More accurately, European tribal culture, similar to many tribal cultures elsewhere, was fairly egalitarian and democratic in nature--chieftains were not dicatatorships, but due to the small size of the unit and the limited power of the Chief if the tribe did not go along, consensus was necessary on most things.

This pre-urban culture lead individuals to have a sense of individual freedom and autonomy. Many European cultures evolved from tribal confederations to larger states while retaining their sense of individual autonomy. The Romans and the Greeks all made this transition, and created entities that made citizens part of the governing class. The Germanic tribes did not make this transition except in England (and Iceland, as someone mentioned), where the groups that migrated in 400-700 AD from northern Germany brought with them their notions of individual liberty and self-governance at the local level. The English formed parliamentary institutions and created rights that survived the transition to monarchy, and survive to this day. The reason why the English democratic institutions survived, and Greek and Roman ones did not, is probably due to some peculiarities of the English situation that could have gone the other way very easily.

Point being that the notion of individual liberty was not invented by any culture, but came out of a certain type of socio-demographic milieu that was common to many peoples of Europe. That democratic government arose independently in some of these countries as they made the transition to statehood is not surprising. That it survived to the present in Britain is.

That said, Greek thought and institutions permeate western civilization in many, many ways. The conquests of Alexander the Great, and the spread of Greek culture over the entirety of the civilized world (the Hellenic world, if you will) is one of the events that impacts us to this day. Even nations never governed by the Roman/Greek world felt its influence indirectly, as the Germans and Scandinavians did when they became Christian.

[Oztrich Boy]

If you can prove that the English Parliment and by extension the US government as proposed by the Constitution (I've just made this quite harder) is a direct decendent of Viking forms of governance as opposed to pre-Canute (@1016 AD) Anglo Saxon forms of governance

Yes you have(made it harder) but why? For both Warthog and my arguments, whether the main source was Viking or littorial Saxon is a distinction without a difference. In either case it was indigenous to Northern Europe and did not derive from Greejk sources.

Anglo Saxon Law from the Greatest Encyclopedia Brittanica Ever