That's the Way She Writes Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Up, 6 am. Work, 7:45. Home, 7:30 pm. Tomorrow we try, once again, to get it right. I am not confident in our chances.

Progress, finally. I rewrote a decent chunk of the intro to the Secret Thing, clarifying a number of ideas and laying out the roadmap for what I have to do next. Which no longer seems so intimidating. Not nearly not, not nearly started, even, but progress.

Thought for the day, from Victor Davis Hanson, whose book "The Soul of Battle" is keeping me sane on my commute. The book is about the ancient Greek general Epaminodas, William Sherman and George Patton--three military leaders who used remarkably similar tactics to accomplish remarkably similiar goals. Which is to say: attacking the economic and social base of an apartheid state in order to show the hollowness of its strength. Epaminodas was a Theban leader who led an army of liberation against Sparta, intent upon freeing the states it held in thrall. And he succeeded wildly, at least as well as Sherman in the South.

Anyhow, the thought:

In those rare moments in history, when conservatives encourage economic egalitarianism, and liberals remain cultural traditionalists, a country like Boeotia can indeed unite, thrive, and field a murderous army of a season.

Two days, and that first clause hasn't left my mind. The conservatives he refers to are the ruling class of Thebes (Boeotia), which had just removed the landpholding qualification for citizenship; the liberals, the radicals who wanted to extend the old democratic spirit of the Greek polis to the rest of the city-states.

A good lesson. The vaunted philosophers of Athens didn't do a goddamn thing to free Sparta's vassals--or to enfranchise their own citizens beyond landowners, for that matter. It took a bunch of uncouth farmers from Thebes (the homeland of Hercules) to knock the Spartan oppressors on their asses.

Draw your own conclusions. I'm going to bed.

@ 10:30:00 PM,

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