I was more amused than annoyed, actually.
You notice I didn't bother disecting your Greek
commentary....it thought that was a lot more carefully
thought and phrased. I liked that.
Beware ovrsimplification when looking to apply parallels.
And on that note:

You're right about the ubiquity of kook theories.
I think people cop to them when they grow tired of
thinking and let some ranter drive.


There's something about democracy which can bring out the worst in people.


I think it's the free speech aspect. It's the followers
more than the leaders who propagate the various bits
of madness. I compare commentary between a local
AM conservative station and a aoul station with call-ins
and a national show. Structurally, the parnoia of
Michael Savage and the paranoia of Al Sharpton are
quite similar. Lots of boogey-man myths.

But is a series of 'noble lies' a fix? That seems so
unstable, in terms of trusting motives. I think every
schoolkid should be trained in Critical Thinking to produce
citizens more responsible to society, and even to
themselves. After all, it isn't just politics that uses
a nose-ring on people. The same stations have ads
for all kinds of quack cures and hokey investment schemes.
No coincidence, I think. Sloppy thinking is bad for
health and life. There are ways to build a better citizen
without taking sides.

There's something about democracy which can bring out the worst in people. This wasn't foreign to the founders of the American republic, which is why Madison and Hamilton write so much about the evils of "faction" inherent in democratic life. The sought to find the best strategy to avoid its deleterious impact.

I enjoyed your posts on Thucydides, thank you.

Madison, Hamilton and other Framers were indeed aware of the dangers of democracy, but they were precluded from solving the problem by the fact that the revolution and the new constitutions presupposed popular sovereignty. Although they tried to simulate the form of the British government in our Constitution, the Framers could never duplicate Britain's effective distribution of powers because all political power in America was ultimately reducible to popular sovereignty.

Some more thoughts on a type of 'real-politic'--Ron

The writings of famous historians and biographers like Plutarch and Thucydides have much to tell us about autobiography and the real-politic of our own lives. I wonder if Thucydides would have agreed with Ira Nadel that “the recreation of a life in words is one of the most beautiful and difficult tasks a literary artist can perform.”1 Part of this beauty and part of this difficulty is the fact that these qualities are rooted in individual difference and idiosyncrasy, as A.L. Rowse emphasizes in his study of Matthew Arnold.2

Such are some of my thoughts on biography in these first years of my retirement even though I took an interest in it due to my study of historians like Thucydides. I have for the most part lost my interest in writing biography after 3 periods, 3 attempts in the last 20 years. –Ron Price with thanks to 1 Ira Nadel, op.cit., p.152 and 2A.L. Rowse, Matthew Arnold: Poet and Prophet, Thames and Hudson, London, 1976, p.160. –2002.
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I WANT TO SPEAK IN MEMORY OF....

What I want to do is....discuss the spirit in which we face our trials and also our constitution and the way of life which has made us great....We are free and tolerant in our private lives but in public affairs we keep to the law...you should fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and should fall in love with her.....One's sense of honour is the only thing that does not grow old...having the respect of one's fellow men.-Pericles' funeral oration 431/30 BC in History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides, Penguin, 1988(1972), pp.143-151.

What I want to do is speak in memory
of the spirit which enriches the tragic
and heroic annals of the inspiring
religious experience behind a place
we fix our eyes on daily and which we
have come to love, venerate, contemplate
with wonder in these intensely dramatic,
fate-laden years whose dynamic spirit has
uplifted our expectant hearts and opened the
doors of heaven wide to pour forth benedictions.
There is a greatness here, a wondrous greatness,
as there is in our own small lives as we find our
happiness, our well-being, our bliss and delight
in bringing the same to our fellow human beings.
Is this the sort of real-politic we should have?
Was this what Thucydides would have liked to see
in Athens as that 5th century was closing while he
was writing his great work??

Ron Price