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]

"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."

Whoa! Reading lesson time! I never denied that the Greeks have made a contribution--what I said was that the PLINES' (to use Oztrich Boy's term)contribution was under-appreciated.

[Wonder Warthog]

"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.

THAT one is easy. The first true parliament was the AllThing in Iceland--established 920AD. There is absolutely no doubt that the British parliament is a direct descendant of same. The US Constitution borrowed from everywhere---Greeks, Romans, "PLINES", and possibly even the Iroquois confederacy.

[sonofron]

"I am by no means a Greek scholar, but if we are following the successful Greek path, then why are the Greeks not in charge right now? "

ah, but they are. domocracy is a greek concept for starters...

We live in what is referred to as a "western" culture, which has two pillers. greco-roman and judeo-christian

Of course the Greeks themselves don't rule the world anymore for the same reason we will sooner or later forfiet our "single super power" status. internal corruption, and self-destruction. When a society loses it's mores it begins to die.

[Wonder Warthog]

"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."

I absolutely agree--the roots of representative government rose from the same cultural (or socio-economic) stimuli for the PLINES, the Greeks, and the Romans. For whatever reason, though, the variant arising from the PLINES (NOT just the British!!!, if you please!!!) survived the transition from tribal, through monarchy, and into the modern era. Why??? Maybe there is some reason that the other variants went the way of the dodo in their originating environments, and the north European variant did not.

But my basic point remains the same---we were all taught in our history and social studies classes that the British/US/Western European representative government model stems solely from Greek and Roman roots, completely ignoring the contributions to same made by the PLINES. This is erroneous.

[FreedomPoster]

Glad to be of service!

[Sparta]

Victor Davis Hanson is one of America's premier historians. His book, Carnage and Culture, is a must read for any serious student of history.

If you want on or off the Western Civlization Military History ping list, let me know.

[Defiant]

I did not include the Northern Europeans because they did not retain individual liberty after achieving some form of statehood, but for the most part never achieved a statehood in the post-tribal state, instead enduring centuries of autocratic rule by the nobility in the duchies and principalities north of Austria. Once they did achieve statehood, 1000 years after Britain, they were not anything like Britain in their protection of freedom. The northern Europeans are now democratic, but since the Angles left home, we have seen Charlemagne (Karl), repressive small states, Prussia and Hitler's Germany. Over the centuries, the Germanic tribes lost something that the British did not.

If you are referring to Denmark and Holland, you may be right about their unbroken retention of their tribal sense of individual liberty, but I am not as familiar with their history during the middle ages and prior to the 1700s.

[Polybius]

I am by no means a Greek scholar, but if we are following the successful Greek path, then why are the Greeks not in charge right now? The current global influence of Greece is the revenue made from "my big fat greek wedding" (which stank btw). I am not being facetous -- I really want to know.

The Greek way of war was copied by the Romans who trumped the Greek City States by the size and resources of their ancient version of the Nation State. The Roman way of war was then inherited by what later came to be called "Western Civilization".

When the British Empire was in full bloom, British officers went out conquer the world after a Classical education that had them dreaming of glory after reading the Iliad as schoolboys. Lord Nelson went to Battle at Trafalgar with ships named after Greek mythology.

It's not really just the "Greek Way of War.

It's The Western Way of War

[Wonder Warthog]

You appear to be basing your definition of "Northern European" on CONTINENTAL Northern Europe, which is not what Oztrich Boy and I mean by "PLINES". The Scandinavian Peninsula has a largely unbroken tradition of representative government, even during the period of monarchy. Iceland in particular has the oldest, continually-active parliament known to exist, established in 920AD. The British Parliament owes far more to these sources of parliamentary government than to anything that came out of Greece or Rome.

[AlbionGirl]

snip II

I believe the Italian for your description of hubris is senza cognizione.

[TheWillardHotel]

...Katie Couric and Jonah Goldberg would be clutching...

LOL!

[WaterDragon]

I absolutely love Hanson's books about the Greeks. My whole family is reading them, passing them around. Davis is a great teacher!

[Defiant]

Iceland is a pretty small example, and was not what I would consider a European state, but an isolated colony, like the Falkland Islands. You are probably right about Scandinavia retaining their concept of rights through the years. It's a shame for them to throw it all away now after all this time and throw in with Socialism and Islamo-fascism.

And certainly there was extensive contact between England's east coast and the Danes, and the north/west and the Vikings, but I doubt that English institutions sprang from these contacts. Rather, both the English and the Danish/Vikings had just emerged from the same culture and phase of development, and both retained their self-governance as their tribes coalesced into states, albeit in different ways. I don't think that the English looked over to Iceland and said, "Hey, let's us get one o' them there Par-lay-mints."

[Wonder Warthog]

"Rather, both the English and the Danish/Vikings had just emerged from the same culture and phase of development, and both retained their self-governance as their tribes coalesced into states, albeit in different ways. I don't think that the English looked over to Iceland and said, "Hey, let's us get one o' them there Par-lay-mints.""

You can book it that there was cross-fertilization both ways over periods of many hundreds of years. When England was developing its concept of parliament, it undoubtedly drew from its own customs and experience and knowledge of WORKING EXAMPLES of such systems in other places. What working parliamentary example was existent at the same time in Continental Europe?? I'm not sure there "were" any.

As to Iceland being "..a small example...", I'd say "size doesn't matter"--after all, the Founding Fathers of the USA looked to the Republic of Venice for many of the ideas they used in developing the American Republic and its Constitution. Not exactly "Gargantua" :^)

[ladyinred]

This man is just fantastic. He appears often on the local talk radio station, and his expertise is just astounding. He is a gentleman, yet he does not suffer fools gladly, such as the liberals who call in to bash this administration on the air.

[Tin-Legions]

To state our feud more clearly:

1. You state that modern forms of American governance owe more to Viking influence that to Greek-"Representative government in Britain and the US owes far more to the Vikings than to Greece."

1a. My reply is that the Vikings influence on any culture has been fleeting-even in England where they gained the most dominance. OZB states that Anglo Saxon and Viking culture are rather interchangeable-which to some extent I agree, but the truth of the matter is that the Vikings just melted into the societies where they settled, with little impact on the culture, outside of DNA and place names. Anglo Saxon governance reigned supreme until modified by the Norman invasions with their more Latin dominated legal and governmental codes. I also add that the founders relied much more heavily on the ressurected ideas of Citizen farmer of Rome and Greece that become popular during the Enlightenment.

2. You state that the rights of free men is a dominantly Northern European idea: "Magna Carta arises directly from the northwest European cultural idea of the existence of the "rights of free men". You then state you did not mean this to be an exclusive idea of only North Europe. We have debated this already, I think the Greek and Roman influence is far greater than any ideas espoused by German tribes.

"THAT one is easy. The first true parliament was the AllThing in Iceland--established 920AD. There is absolutely no doubt that the British parliament is a direct descendant of same"

I won't buy that as proof of direct descendant of the English Parliment, which as OB pointed out in his attached web site in post 80 that after the conquest Continental legal and governmental law forms became ascendant (superseding but not completely replacing) Anglo Saxon law codes-based on Roman legal codes. I think you may have a point as I debated that myself last night-I'll need some reference material though-please provide if you have any-scholarly works as opposed to the internet if at all possible.

Finally,

I will give that the Anglo Saxon, and by extension Viking influence on our legal and government system may have recieved bad press, but to state that their systems are dominant to the creation of modern US legal and governmental systems is incorrect. Our entire government is modeled rather closely to Rome, with a good dose of England's Parliment (we are NOT a copy of English law, we tend to go on a rather seperate course). Our law is dominated by Latin, and common law is derived more from continental law, with a healthy dose of AS law intermixed. Bottom line: are we influenced by German legal systems-definitely, but Latin and by extension Greek legal systems reign supreme. By the way all those books I mentioned are available on Amazon, I got them all for my birthday and are good reads, with much of the content we have discussed reviewed to some degree in them.

[Wonder Warthog]

The cultural idea of the rights of free men IN ENGLAND (and by extension the US) originated with the PLINES, not Greece or Rome. That they were later supplemented and modified by similar Continental ideas doesn't change that. The independent ORIGIN of those ideas owes nothing to Greece or Rome.

[Valin]

Free men make better killers than slaves do.

[Valin]

Confusion is already rife. In 2002, an article in the conservative Brithish Spectator magaxine opined that the Could War was "one of the most unnecessary conflicts of all time

Would you have link for this article, or the name of the author?

[Jeff Gordon]

An essential part of the culture of those Greek Armys was homosexuality. I wonder why the author left out that small detail?