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Comment by OscarCunningham | Hacker News Reader

I like Devereaux's take on the Spartans, but I see people repeating it every time the Spartan's are mentioned. I worry that I'm only getting to see two perspectives on the Spartans: the naive glorification and Devereaux's takedown. Does anyone know of a good third source? Ideally another historian who would still be interesting to an amateur.

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I do sometimes think this about the info I get from his blog. He’s a fun writer and so I think, like lots of us, I probably over-value his takedowns.

But, we should keep in mind the stakes, right? He provides a compelling argument that, actually, Sparta was not even that great at marshaling up a bunch of guys with big spears. That’s a nice beachhead in the conversation as to whether Spartan values are valuable, if you think they aren’t.

But even if he is wrong, what does it mean? Big groups of guys with spears don’t win wars nowadays anyway so even if we think a value system’s ability to win wars is very important (pretty questionable!) spartan-ism is obviously much worse than something like liberal democracy, which produced nukes and stealth bombers which could kill, like, endless numbers of spear guys (however good they are at lining up).

What is the equivalent of Spartans in the modern world? The Soviet Union also produced nukes and bombers.

Maybe it's us? The USA has a reputation as a military superpower and yet in most of the conflicts after WWII we have actually lost (or at best tied).

It's a bit more complicated than that. Militarily, we rather consistently win (or at least not lose). The trouble is that the new regimes we establish end up reliant on us for defense, and unless we're willing to be said regimes' military for decades on end (like we were with Japan) or at the very least maintain permanent military presences (like we did with West Germany until its reunification with East Germany, and like we're still doing with South Korea and Japan), those regimes prove incapable of defending themselves from the adversaries we defeated to establish said regimes in the first place.

That's exactly what happened with South Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan: as soon as we pulled out "victorious", the newly-established allied regime was unable to defend itself against North Vietnam / ISIS / the Taliban (respectively).

Things are different now.

The US can destroy anyone by one guy pressing a button.

On the other hand, to win a non-nuclear war in the modern age, you need clever political positioning and a realistic end goal as well as battlefield results. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq 2.0 were all unwinnable no matter how well you fought.

What does it mean to be “equivalent” anyway? I mean, the fact that we’d have to do some funky normalization to the standards of the era is itself an indictment of Spartan values, right? Every major power of even somewhat recent history is very decadent by their standards, including the Soviet Union. If somebody thinks Soviet feats were impressive, they should just adopt Soviet values instead I guess.

The claim was that liberal democracy not Sparta created nukes and stealth bombers, when Sparta didn't exist in the modern age, and couldn't have created such things no matter how they organized their society. This isn't a promotion of Spartan ideals, rather it's just pointing out that the comparison doesn't work for obvious reasons.

Take a look at the links and sources mentioned in his retrospective on the Sparta series: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/19/collections-this-isnt-sparta-r.... Devereaux mentions some different approaches that modern historians take towards Sparta, particularly Steven Hodkinson's arguments that Sparta was more typical and less unusual compared to the other Greek poleis; following up on that work would probably be a useful counterpoint.

There are lots of sources, the article briefly covers many of them. They all share in common the fact that there is very little real information and so we can only read behind the lines at trying to find the truth. Devereaux is one of the few takes that admit to this problem, and for that alone is makes him my favored source. It quickly becomes clear if you read these that most takes on the Spartans are using the lack of information to read some favored angle.

I'd be interested in another historian's take if different. I'm reasonably confident that they will be similar to Devereaux's take though, so I'm not looking.

If you want a historian that tends right rather than left like Devereaux, you could try Victor David Hanson.

https://newcriterion.com/article/the-spartan-way-of-war/

I don't think he is that adrift from Devereaux in his assessment of Sparta though.

> tends right rather than left like Devereaux

I just feel the need to clarify that Devereaux is barely left-leaning. He keeps his politics pretty firmly out of his blogs for the most part, but when he does break out politics he's pretty clearly very close to the center relative to what we think today when we hear "left" and "right".

As a historian (and, I believe, a good one), he seems to see the complexity of the current partisan dynamic too clearly to dogmatically pick a side.

That is very much not true.

He wrote a hysterical philippic [1] just before the election calling Trump a fascist, which was written with about the same level of historical rigour as the Paul Krugman's rants exhibit for economics.

You may argue that "Trump is a fascist" and you are entitled to that view, but that is not a centrist view, and is at odds with the majority of the US population, which voted for Trump.

[1] https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...

generally speaking he is decidedly centrist in his historical perspectives. it is uncritical to paint in broad strokes over a post, or two, in which he uses historical analysis to communicate a progressive perspective that warns against the danger(s) of an incoming administration

>>it is uncritical to paint in broad strokes over a post, or two, in which he uses historical analysis to communicate a progressive perspective

There have only been a couple of posts where he discusses current politics, so that is all I have to go on.

However, from reading his material, I think it would be fair to say he is against the "great man of history" theory, which tends to be a more left wing interpretation.

In this poll, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-fascist-concern... , so called centrists overwhelmingly said he is.

The majority of the US population did not vote for him. Only a portion could vote, and only a portion of those voted, and out of those 49.9% voted for him.

Pointless pedantry. I think you know what is meant by a majority in an election. He won the popular vote. I'm obviously not including toddlers etc in my statement.

> I think you know what is meant by a majority in an election.

I thought I did. But now I'm learning that 49-something percent is a majority, so I'm questioning all my beliefs.

Perhaps, but I'm not interested in making a point. I'm interested in discovering why it's not important to you to describe the election result precisely.

What was the participation? 60% or so? I think so. So maybe 30-35% of the people who could have voted for him actually did. In the US population large portions are unable to vote. You correctly pointed out the very young, but also the pre-adolescent young, the disobedient, the non-citizen, the precarious worker, the infirm and so on should also be included.

So the majority you had in mind is rather small compared to what you literally compared it to. I'm guessing the result feels like 'the will of the people' to you anyway? Do you feel like most usians approved of the current regime? Do you also think that 'the will of the people' is inherently democratic? Inherently good, even?

I think the description I gave is consistent with the one used when Democrats get the "majority" of the vote. You can sealion the definition as much as you like, but it won't make you right.

The result feels as much the will of the people as any other US election result.

I think you've dreamed that but feel free to showcase some examples to prove me wrong.

Also ironic to nit pick about Trump not having a majority and then quote a poll that queried only 2800 people.

Are you trying to assert that fascism can't be popular? He pretty clearly stated the criteria and how he considers trump's movement in respect to them. You can refute the point¹ but you haven't, merely stating you disagree with them based on the popular vote.

¹ Not to me, I won't read it. I don't care and I've heard enough fascism apologetics on HN in the last few years.

It's not hysterical, it's very well reasoned and actually persuaded me, someone who's decidedly centrist.

Then you need to check some of his sources better.

You need to provide better arguments than telling your interlocutor to check sources. This is just FUD unless you have concrete facts to share that make him wrong.

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