September 5, 2023

Back in the day, conservative political philosopher Leo Strauss adapted the esoteric/exoteric distinction to politics. He argued that, down the ages, if you wished to challenge The Narrative you needed to do it in an indirect, esoteric way that didn’t grab the unwelcome attention of the powerful, but only the people whose minds were tuned to receive your message.

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So here was I, reading a piece by Victor Davis Hanson for Imprimis in which he discusses the blind violence of the various empires down the ages — all in the best interest of their victims, of course. Famously, the Athenians sent a naval force to the island of Melos and told the Melians:

You’re either with us or against us… and if you are against us we will destroy you.

So the Athenians killed all the male Melians and enslaved all the women and children. Because.

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Julius Caesar went into Gaul and killed a million people and enslaved another million, according to Hanson.

And yet in Caesar’s Gallic Wars, and in later Roman literature, we read that Rome brought civilization to Gaul.

And here I thought all along that Asterix, Obelix, and Getafix had Julius Caesar and the Romans on the run.

But, glorious as empires are, the benefits seldom match the costs.

The costs of control seem to outweigh the benefits, even though — human nature being what it is — the imperialists tend to be oblivious to the expenses, perhaps because of the power and grandeur that come with empire.

Today we have two ambitious empires, writes Hanson: China and Klaus Schwab’s globalist WEF for the Davos set. Hanson compares the Davos crowd to Alexander the Great, who killed a couple million in his wars. But it was all for our benefit.