Month: September 2009

“When the President chose a partisan path in his speech, he pushed the real debate behind closed doors. This is now a debate among House and Senate Democrats”

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The real action is not taking place at markup.  It is taking place behind closed doors, away from the markup.  When the President chose a partisan path in his speech, he pushed the real debate behind closed doors.  This is now a debate among House and Senate Democrats.  Republicans can influence that debate only to the extent they can change the decision-making process of Democratic members, since everyone assumes that almost every Republican will vote no. 

Keith Hennessey

The comments to the above linked post are utterly depressing. Elections have consequences: I wonder how the ‘Obama’ libertarians and the ‘teach the GOP a lesson’ conservatives are feeling about their respective votes, now? Yes, in a moment of frustration I am being unfair; I barely managed to pull the lever for McCain. In the comments, Keith Hennessey shows up to make the following suggestion:

Call your Representative and Senators (in their DC office). Don’t email them. Call them. Email is largely ignored. Phone calls are not. As an individual citizen, your greatest impacts are (1) speaking up at town meetings, (2) calling, (3) meeting with your representatives and/or their staff, (3) voting, and (4) letters to the editor.

Each individual call has a trivial impact. If enough people call, it can have a big effect.

Xenophon’s Vanished Cities

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I have been trying to map the physical progress of Xenophon through the Middle East and back to the Greek cities in Anatolia. His starting point is relatively easy to find: the city of Sardis, now called Sart, still exists, although now it is just a village near the ruins. The city was destroyed several times by earthquakes. Sardis
The next city mentioned, Colossae, was located near what is now Denzli (Turkey). They went on to Celaenae, near the present-day town of Dinar, where they remained for 30 days. While looking at the area in Google Earth, I noticed some landscape features that look like they might be the outlines of ancient buildings under the plowed fields. Have a look for yourself.

Celaenae

Xenophon Roundtable: The Army Reaches Level Ground

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Xenophon’s account, written many years after the events recounted, is not a bare retelling of facts. We cannot know how much of the tale is embellished, and how much is literal. The general outlines are likely to be true. Precise details, such as the precise language of the speeches, must have been rendered, at best “more or less” as Xenophon recalled. So, we can read the book as a record of actual events, with some caveats for the passage of time and biases of the author.

However, it is also the case that there is a symbolic element in the book, in which Xenophon is using the narrative to illuminate some “big picture” issues. To do that, he uses some artistic devices, woven into the narrative. One of these, which I mentioned in my previous post is the mixing of the literal and metaphorical “ascent” and “descent” of the army, and of Xenophon himself.

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Xenophon Roundtable: A Few Martial Rhymes

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Mark Twain wrote, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” The Anabasis of Cyrus is filled with events that have reappeared throughout history to form a rhythm that if not repeated, lends example and advice to other commanders faced with similar challenges.

Not much discussed in the forgoing posts, has been Xenophon’s speech to the assembled soldiers before setting out on their march to the sea. Reading the speech, one will note several themes that have a familiar ring to any student of American military history. This account of how Xenophon dressed for the occasion has a twin in the way one American General outfitted himself for battle.

“After this, as Xenophon stood up, having equipped himself for war as nobly as he could, for he believed that if the gods should grant victory, the noblest of adornment was fitting for being victorious, but if there should be the need for his life to come to an end, he believed it was right that considering himself worthy of the most noble thing, he meet his end in these noble arms.”

Reading this passage brings to mind General George S. Patton, who in the 1920’s, read and annotated his copy of Anabasis among his many other readings of ancient history. One can begin to understand Patton’s theatre and how he might have been influenced to create his noble image in the shadow of Xenophon.

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