----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
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>
> >===========
> >Too bad they aren't taught about Solon and how many carry good old
> >Pericles in their packs....
> >
>
> Ah, Pericles, whom Thucydides reports as saying, "What we have is,
to speak
> frankly, an empire, to take perhaps was unjust, to abandon it,
unsafe."
> Maybe they have been reading their Thucydides. jks
>
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Fair enough. However they did warn about imperial overstretch undermining democracy which they thought was more important than empire. At the same time we should be showing precisely the opposite of the conclusion of P. above; to *not* abandon empire is *very* unsafe, for the entire planet. For an excellent exposition of P & T juxtaposed with KM see "Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy" by Alan Gilbert.
"A polis should not be considered happy or a legislator praised, when its citizens are trained for victory in war and the subjection of neighboring regimes. Such a policy...implies that any citizen who can do so, should make it his object to capture the government of his own city." [Aristotle, Politics 133b29-33]
Ian