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life pro family pro limited government and someone who believes our 2nd amendment rights should be defended the same way we treat our 1st amendment rights as a mother a military spouse and a community leader who views titles as responsibilities rather than stepping stones conservatives can rest easy knowing that freitas will defend all the values we hold dear and do so with integrity respect and common cause the term of proudly supporting people in public life is a term that is at times much abused virginians in the 24th senate district have every reason to be proud to support tina freitas not just because she represents our values but because she lives them as well posted in endorsements politics virginia senate comments off on pro life republicans will be served well by freitas in sen 24 thucydides on american politics posted on december 7 2018 by shaun kenney having spent a great deal of time with thucydides this year there is a certain portion of his history of the peloponnesian war that describes the violence inside the city of corcyra modern day corfu led by the two factions within the city given the fact that some public figures today use thucydides as a textbook i thought this reflection of the stasis read civil war of corcyra to be rather apt as a warning and a recommendation to take up the classics so bloody was the march of the revolution and the impression which it made was the greater as it was one of the first to occur later on one may say the whole hellenic world was convulsed struggles being everywhere made by the popular chiefs to bring in the athenians and by the oligarchs to introduce the lacedaemonians in peace there would have been neither the pretext nor the wish to make such an invitation but in war with an alliance always at the command of either faction for the hurt of their adversaries and their own corresponding advantage opportunities for bringing in the foreigner were never wanting to the revolutionary parties the sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible such as have occurred and always will occur as long as the nature of mankind remains the same though in a severer or milder form and varying in their symptoms according to the variety of the particular cases in peace and prosperity governments and individuals are better minded because they are not plunged by imperious necessity to act against their will but war takes away the easy supply of daily wants and tames as a violent schoolmaster assimilating most men s characters to their conditions revolution thus ran its course from city to city and the places which it arrived at last from having heard what had been done before carried to a still greater excess the refinement of their inventions as manifested in the cunning of their enterprises and the atrocity of their reprisals words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally prudent hesitation specious cowardice moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness ability to see all sides of a question inaptness to act on any frantic violence became the attribute of manliness cautious plotting a justifiable means of self defence the advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy his opponent a man to be suspected to succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head to divine a plot a still shrewder but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries in fine to forestall an intending criminal or to suggest the idea of a crime where it was wanting was equally commended until even blood became a weaker tie than party from the superior readiness of those united by the latter to dare everything without reserve for such associations had not in view the blessings derivable from established institutions but were formed by ambition for their overthrow and the confidence of their members in each other rested less on any religious sanction than upon complicity in crime the fair proposals of an adversary were met with jealous precautions by the stronger of the two and not with a generous confidence revenge also was held of more account than self preservation oaths of reconciliation being only proffered on either side to meet an immediate difficulty only held good so long as no other weapon was at hand but when opportunity offered he who first ventured to seize it and to take his enemy off his guard thought this perfidious vengeance sweeter than an open one since considerations of safety apart success by treachery won him the palm of superior intelligence indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest and are as ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first the cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention the leaders in the cities each provided with the fairest professions on the one side with the cry of political equality of the people on the other of a moderate aristocracy sought prizes for themselves in those public interests which they pretended to cherish and recoiling from no means in their struggles for ascendancy engaged in the direct excesses and in their acts of vengeance they went to even greater lengths not stopping at what justice or the good of the state demanded but making the party caprice of the moment their only standard and invoking with equal readiness the condemnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of the strong arm to glut the animosities of the hour thus religion was in honor with neither party but the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation meanwhile the moderate part of the citizens perished between the two either for not joining in the quarrel or because envy would not suffer them to escape thus every form of iniquity took root in the hellenic countries by reason of the troubles the ancient simplicity into which honor so largely entered was laughed down and disappeared and society became divided into camps in which no man trusted his fellow to put an end to this there was neither promise to be depended upon nor oath that could command respect but all parties dwelling rather in their calculation upon the hopelessness of a permanent state of things were more intent upon self defence than capable of confidence in this contest the blunter wits were most successful apprehensive of their own deficiencies and of the cleverness of their antagonists they feared to be worsted in debate and to be surprised by the combinations of their more versatile opponents and so at once boldly had recourse to action while their adversaries arrogantly thinking that they should know in time and that it was unnecessary to secure by action what policy afforded often fell victims to their want of precaution thucydides history of the peloponnesian war iii 82 83 posted in uncategorized comments off on thucydides on american politics on the bacchae and discourse in america posted on november 4 2018 by shaun kenney about 10 years ago virginia s bloggerati held the world in the palm of our hand our perspectives were not just consulted they were feared such was the power that columnists and editorial boards held over the minds of virginians that elected officials feared this new set of variables yours truly happened to be one of those voices to some degree though we have scattered a bit that same handful of perspectives still holds sway norm leahy writes for the washington post as a columnist brian schoeneman still manages to rack a few column pieces even if he is in self imposed exile rick sincere has taken over the score from the lee brothers and kenney the younger still pokes around as a writer just invariably not on politics sure the the bull elephant continues to define itself against bearing drift our friends at blue virginia seem to have figured out the keys to success early with a democratic party that understood why it was important to subsidize a narrative for all the griping that republicans do about the liberal media and the pay to play leftosphere republican digital media seems to have endured as a volunteer only endurance marathon until certain pay to play actors accuse others of in fact being pay to play witness the pettiness of virginia politics today s environment sees publications like the republican standard the virginia mercury and richmond 2 day rising above the amateur op ed writers in a time before facebook the lowly blog was the only means of really disseminating information beyond the legacy media if i seem terribly down on the legacy media vs digital media it isn t because of the medium itself after all most of us in the digital arena would crawl across broken glass to be picked up by the washington post or the richmond times dispatch if even for peanuts rather one sees today some of the best investigative reporting ever done vice politico the new york times and the wall street journal and some of the best opinion writing in places such as national review the weekly standard and quillette and no one is reading it we are all lying to ourselves and we love it it is difficult to write in such a time as to stand athwart history yelling stop while there is a cacophony of noise catering to our every whim telling us to keep going and leveraging our feelings against us marketing does this we buy coke vs pepsi because we are attracted to red over blue we buy ritz crackers because it is perfectly spherical and attractive to the eye we react viscerally to advertising and buy the products not because we like or even want the product but because the reaction itself felt true ergo the argument must be true are we all really this stupid yes we are or more importantly we have entire industries set up to convince us that we aren t as stupid as we constantly feel for instance we have a social media apparatus designed for hook ups feeding us 85 of our social media and 67 of our news consumption what 45 responding that they get some of their news from a dating site turned pro guys worse than that we have entire cottage industries set up to tell stupid people that they are in fact educated souls most college diplomas are crap even if they are in the humanities how many people can truly say they are better for the exchange 50 000 in debt for an undergraduate education can buy you the great books series several times over and you d be 45 000 better off this is where i still hold out tremendous hope for the humanities in the sense they might actually teach us to read consider think and slow the hell down a bit but they don t people have been taught that verification of one s ideas and thoughts comes with attention the more attention the more valid the feelings and ergo the more valid one s ideas after all isn t that how we built this entire blogosphere thing in virginia what disappoints me most perhaps is the revelation that most people really don t want to learn a damn thing i have barn cats they follow me because they expect to be fed on a rare occasion most people don t want to be helped in the end they just want to be fed thus otherwise good people will justify absolutely horrible things in the name of principles and so forth tolerate the worst abuses tear apart another person s character or seek to absolutely obliterate an opponent in the political arena because she who believes most wins is it worth it is it really worth one s soul i have been thinking a great deal on this line in the matthew 19 it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven for those who have seen the compromises power forces others to take when was the last time you saw a wealthy man who was a morally decent one i m not even talking about daddy warbucks here even moderately successful people in fact most americans are this person indeed most working class americans enjoy luxuries unavailable even to roman emperors we are well fed housed entertained beyond our wildest dreams informed and wonderfully distracted but does any of this mean we are really good people at the end of the day sure we pay taxes go through the motions attend church flip that guy in the median our 3 86 we got back in change after we purchased our big kahuna burger and maybe even itemized our charitable contributions but is that it maybe we put our heads on our pillows claiming to be a part of a cause volunteering for the pto doing our jobs really well maybe we even perform extracurricular stuff like local or state politics you know righteous anger against those people coming to take our rights away destroy what it means to be an american and deny other people their basic rights there are far too many people who base their goodness on what they do we don t need better brands we need better souls we don t need more identity we need stronger minds one thinks of the parable of the rich man and all the compromises one must make to become wealthy considered even honored by others things we would never normally excuse others will wantonly excuse in the pursuit of power people we would willingly embrace we would tear apart once objectified as an diabolical other we manufacture hatred because we have no charity ourselves politics in america just seems to bring this fatal personal flaw in people to the fore in ways i d never imagined even five years ago much less 10 or 20 years ago when i got started again they don t want to be helped only fed i have thought a great deal about keeping a diary the same way victor klemperer did during the rise of fascism in germany and the concurrent arrival of the communists in east germany both claimed to be utopias neither had conscience and we seem absolutely bound and determined to create american versions of each who wins this fight certainly not the people yet there is a presentation of inevitability in the contest participate in politics they say lest you be governed by evil men the counterpoint better to be insane with the mob than sane alone for myself i see this wave of creative destruction in our institutions and society proglumated by people with rotten souls and malformed minds both sides chasing appetites knowing what the rich man knows that it is far easier to steal than it is to build can there be a politics when rational discourse is reduced to pathos on the left and ethos on the right that narrow field for logic and discourse logos seems to be growing more and more narrow by the day one gets the sense that people don t even really believe what they say they believe anymore provided it either carries their tribe to victory or denies it to those whom they profess to dislike to keep such factions in line roman emperors used to resort to colors such as blues and greens and then force them towards civic projects the key point here that an emp...