Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

I don't know whether I'm reading into this with a bias given that it's published in The American Conservative, but the conclusion of the article definitely reads as an homage to when "Western Civilization" was nice and homogeneous, and everyone could trace its lineage back to Rome.

> The importance of classical Rome to the conscious and unconscious customs of later Western urbanism cannot be overstated. Today, as cultures cross-pollinate, and as technologies topple timeless ways of living, it is an open question whether the familiarity of Rome’s ancient forms will be felt much by those who live in the future, beyond the next horizon. [ ... ] Perhaps this time—our time—is really the end of the ancient world.

I read this as "all of the 'other' people who come into the West won't share this unifying history of the city that was the pinnacle of civilization."

Highly ironic that the article in the carousel directly above this one was "Why Identity Politics Kills Democracy."

You are reading it with the bias you mention, and, as a consequence, you are attaching overbroad significance to a sentence that weighs in at about 3% of a text dedicated to the discussion of an archaelogical atlas of Ancient Rome.

Well, they suggest it in the title as well, so it appears like they find it important.

I will point out that a dislike of "Identity Politics" can easily be defined as "divisions within some set that a person wishes to be uniform". For example, a Christian may be perfectly happy with Christianity's differences with other religions but very unhappy with divisions within Christianity itself. I don't think it is necessarily hypocritical to hold that view.

To put it in terms more familiar, intersectionality is intended to unify a diverse body against a larger uniform society. In a sense, the most conservative Americans and the most radical are one in the same. Radicals seek unity against enemies within and conservatives seeks unity against enemies without. The only thing separating some radical ideas from some conservative ideas is the scoping.

---

As a sidebar, I'm really digging this train of thought. Its kind of interesting to think that the only difference between Martin Luther and Pope Urban II was their scope of the world's problems. Which makes sense. After all we're only human. We don't think that differently from one another.

I have read the same text and not for a moment read it this way.

Why does one need to be a conservative to find value in Ancient Greco-Roman civilization? It's certainly possible for someone to be critical of modernity yet not be some kind of right-wing zealot, or even right-wing at all. Personally I don't identify with any modern political ideology and think that there is a lot of value to be found in the ancients.

This black-and-white view of dividing everything into "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" is extremely destructive and it's one of the main reasons that Western Civilization is in its current identity crisis. And that applies to all sides of the political spectrum.

My suspicion is that they had to find some ideological justification for writing about this cool project in a conservative magazine, so they probably just shoehorned those lines in there.

I don't think this is a bad thing. The more conservatives are exposed to ideas and cultures that are radically at odds with contemporary conservative mores, the more likely these conservatives are to open their minds.

And make no mistake, ancient Rome as a pagan civilization is absolutely at odds with contemporary American conservatism. They can twist and shoehorn in their preferred takes as much as they'd like, but once the seed is planted the smarter conservatives start looking beyond the provincial ideas they're inclined to inherit from their immediate cultural background.

Perhaps more exposure to the intellectual tradition of conservatism would likewise help free you from, to borrow a phrase, "the provincial ideas" about your political opponents that you seem to have been "inclined to inherit from [your] immediate cultural background. "

Lol. Trust me, I've been down that path. I was not only conservative when I was younger, but fairly right-wing, including some beliefs close to NRx decades before that was a thing.

I've read most of the books, been to the conferences (including multiple CPACs), raised money for right-wing causes, and worked for right-wing organizations including some personalities that most politically savvy people would recognize.

Heck, my righ-wing connections were one of the reasons I was an early user of paypal (since one of my boddies was friends with Thiel and the Stanford Review crowd).

So, thanks, but I've already done what you've said and have found it wanting and severely lacking.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com