I haven't had as much time as I would like for blogging lately, but there's a particularly good post by Professor Bainbridge which merits attention. He begins by quoting G. K. Chesterton on the ancients, and correctly concludes,

Chesterton's point is that the evils of militarism tend to arise when the martial vitues cease to be civic virtues. Alternatively, I suppose, the disconnect between martial and civic virtues may put a society in the position of, say, late Roman Gaul, powerless to resist the engulfing tide. Either way, while not claiming there are easy answers, I would claim that the growing disconnect between the martial and civic virtues is cause for grave concern. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

The ancients, and George Washington are in accord not only with each other, but with common sense.

Instead of taking George Washington's insights seriously, the attacks on George Washington have intensified in recent years to an all time high. Even schools bearing the name Washington are being renamed!

George Washington, and all the virtues he embodies, has been downgraded to the point where students are taught that he is less important than Marilyn Monroe.
http://home.earthlink.net/~amhist/id1.html

Washington is constantly attacked as a slave owner, as if that's all that matters. Never mind that in freeing his own slaves, he showed he was ahead of his time.

The Romans and the Greeks owned slaves too. They were white and they are dead. But their virtues are eternal, and are no more discredited by the eventual abolition of slavery than Washington's or Jefferson's.

Jefferson was a slave holder too, and he engaged in cock-fighting. To say that these things make his immortal views on freedom incorrect is more than illogical. It makes me wonder whether the real agenda is to destroy freedom.

Why aren't Marx and Lenin attacked as dead white males? How many did Stalin and Mao force into "progressive" slavery? Their war wasn't against dead white men, or even slaveholders per se. The belief in freedom -- and in such virtues as courage and honor (without which freedom cannot be preserved) -- were what had to go, to be destroyed by any means necessary.

I'm with the ancients on this one -- as well as George Washington.