Now my life is complete - a Donna Summer reference is used to bolster a political argument.

Rousseau would be so proud.

Peter:

Even he believed in noble savagery.

So did Donna Summer.

OJ:

Rousseau is an interesting figure to invoke here, because he was such an admirer of Sparta, a city-state which, as Lee Harris discusses in his book, had a unique use for its homosexuals -- and hardly the one that our modern day Rousseauian innovators would like.

Paul:

Not really unique, it pervades all such boy gangs--prisons, private schools, navies--for the same reason, to establish a hierarchy of dominance and submission.

Paul

More generally, it is amusing that so many modern secularists and relativists scorn their own traditions and reach back admiringly to a civilization whose guiding ethos was the crafting of form and order out of chaos.

Yeah, but Sparta made it work for an entire nation, and for hundreds of years. Moreover, they turned it into the most fierce patriotism the world had ever seen.

Here is Rousseau on Sparta:

As for Lycurgus, he undertook to legislate for a people already debased by servitude and by the vices the latter brings in its train. He fixed upon them a yoke of iron, the like of which no other people has ever borne; but he tied them to that yoke, made them, so to speak, one with it, by filling up every moment of their lives. He saw to it that the image of the fatherland was constantly before their eyes -- in their laws, in their games, in their homes, in their mating, in their feasts. He saw to it that they never had an instant of free time that they could call their own. And out of this ceaseless constraint, made noble by the purpose it served, was born that burning love of country which was always the strongest -- or rather the only -- passion of the Spartans, and which transformed them into beings more than merely human. Sparta, to be sure, was only a city; but the sheer force of its legislation made it lawgiver and capital to all of Greece and caused the Persian empire to tremble. With Sparta as a base, Spartan legislation extended its influence on all sides.

Peter:

Indeed. When modern Liberals call on the name of Rousseau they tend to overlook the latter's unyielding antipathy for the modern state. It is foolish to conceive of him as a all-around "liberator." Even his famed opening to The Social Contract: "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains," is followed by an explanation of why the chains are necessary, if properly constructed.

(It is true, of course, that he was a veiled but intractable opponent of orthodox Christianity.)

But produced nothing. Where is the great art, literature, etc. of Sparta? A culture of buggery may be the basis for a fierce patriotism, but it doesn't do much for your civilization.

Harris argues that it made civilization, by breaking the trap of tribalism, the "cake of custom," which was the great enigma to Walter Bagehot. Rome and Christianity (especially the latter, both Catholic and Protestant) added crucial elements, but Sparta, art or no art, took the first step but harnessing the power of the male gang. This is why Harris's thesis is so explosive.

Yes, that's the argument, but why did others not need to adopt the model? Why are we Athenian rather than Spartan?

Take that up with Harris.

Quitter.

There was an article in MHQ, the military history quarterly, a few years back on Sparta. The author argued, quite convincingly, that Sparta's aggressive bugger-thy-neighbor caste system was what made it powerful--and what ultimately led to its undoing. (Not available online, or I'd give you a link; and I can't recall the author's name and don't have my MHQs handy . . . I know, I know, useless, ain't I?)

Mike, it was probably Victor Davis Hanson. He discusses Sparta and their downfall at length in "The Soul of Battle".