Af Lone Nørgaard.
[Kan vi lære af historien? Kan historiske begivenheder og eksempler på forskellige styreformer kaste lys over, hvad der foregår i dag?
Det mener Lee Smith, der har skrevet en artikel under overskriften The Thirty Tyrants – med manchetten: ”The deal that the American elite chose to make with China has a precedent in the history of Athens and Sparta” – altså ‘den handel, som den amerikanske elite har valgt at slå af med Kina, har et fortilfælde i Athens og Spartas historie.
Det er en lang og lidt tung, men også meget tankevækkende artikel]
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The Thirty Tyrants
The deal that the American elite chose to make with China has a precedent in the history of Athens and Sparta
by
February 04, 2021
Original photo: Wikipedia
In Chapter 5 of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli describes three options for how a conquering power might best treat those it has defeated in war. The first is to ruin them; the second is to rule directly; the third is to create “therein a state of the few which might keep it friendly to you.”
The example Machiavelli gives of the last is the friendly government Sparta established in Athens upon defeating it after 27 years of war in 404 BCE. For the upper caste of an Athenian elite already contemptuous of democracy, the city’s defeat in the Peloponnesian War confirmed that Sparta’s system was preferable. It was a high-spirited military aristocracy ruling over a permanent servant class, the helots, who were periodically slaughtered to condition them to accept their subhuman status. Athenian democracy by contrast gave too much power to the low-born. The pro-Sparta oligarchy used their patrons’ victory to undo the rights of citizens, and settle scores with their domestic rivals, exiling and executing them and confiscating their wealth.
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