Flight Medic Article on Defense.gov

The article I wrote recently about Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Kwiecien just got published on here "Faces of Defense" on defense.gov.  Jeff is a great guy.  I'm glad the story got republished.

Μολων Λαβε: The Tattoo and the Myth

When I re-enlisted in the Army in 2007, I saw several soldiers with Μολων Λαβε tattoos and Μολων Λαβε stickers on their pickup trucks.  I can read Ancient Greek so I looked up the phrase and found it attributed to Leonidas of the Spartans, the leader of the 300 defenders of Thermopylae.

According to one version of the battle, when Xerxes, King of Persia demanded the surrender of the vastly outnumbered Spartans (100,000+ Persians against 300 Spartans), Leonidas answered "Μολων Λαβε" or "Come and take them."  The phrase has come to be seen as the inspiration for the sentiment "I won't give up my guns until you pry my cold, dead hands from them."

 I am currently taking a course in Ancient Greek in which we are reading the Histories of Herodotus.  Right now we are reading the account of the Battle for Thermopylae.  Herodotus wrote about 50 years after the battle and does not mention the exchange between Xerxes and Leonidas.  I asked the professor.  The only account directly mentioning Μολων Λαβε is in Plutarch written more than 500 years after the battle and centuries after Greece was conquered by Rome.

So the historicity of the account is in some question.  And Sparta was a state ruled by tyranny in which the majority of the people were slaves.  There was nothing like the 2nd Amendment in Sparta. If Leonidas said these words, he said them as a man who represented a warrior class, an upper class caste of warrior, nothing like armed common people.  Since the only mention of the phrase is five centuries after the battle, it could well be a myth.

Μολων Λαβε, if Leonidas said it, are the brave words of a King facing certain death.

Leonidas would roll over in his honored grave to think his words would be used as a rallying cry for rebels and anti-government conspiracy theorists.  Leonidas was the government, just as every soldier in every army, especially the "well regulated militia" our founders envisioned in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

Μολων Λαβε, on a pickup truck next to a rebel flag means the owner of the truck is an ιδιοτης, an idiot, which means a person having his own ideas apart from his community and therefore is a fool.

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For Greek Geeks:  The two words in the phrase Μολων Λαβε are verbs.  The aorist participle Μολων can be translated "having come or coming" and Λαβε is the imperative singular "Take."
Inflected languages can say much with few words and this phrase is a beautiful example of that.  You can parse it yourself in context here.

How to Lose an Empire

When you hear Conservatives bemoaning America's loss of power, prestige and leadership, the blame will be somewhere other than in themselves.  

The problem is in full view on every Republican debate and and from the top down in the most recent Bush administration.  NOT the previous Bush administration.

The reason the Roman Empire fell will be the same reason we eventually collapse.  Rome went from city to state to ruler of the known world with an Army in which every citizen served.  To be a senator, to be a noble, meant fighting for Rome.  From the founding of America until the end of the first Bush administration, American leaders were men who served their country.  Some were great soldiers, some just showed up, but everyone served unless, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, they could not even walk.

The beginning of the end for Rome was when the nobility stopped serving in the Army.  Further deterioration came when the Army went from being mostly Roman to mostly Gauls and Goths and others.  Later the Army was really a mercenary Army.  The Empire split.  The Empire dissolved.

Among the more than 20 candidates of both parties, all of the actual veterans have either dropped out or are barred from the debate:  Rick Perry is gone.  Jim Webb, the only actual combat veteran, is gone.  Lindsey Graham and Jim Gilmore were barred from the "kids table" debate on the eve of Veteran's Day.  

At the center of the debate stage are Donald Trump with five deferments and Ben Carson with three. They actually dodged the draft and let someone else serve in their place.  John Kasich also avoided the draft.  The rest of the candidates simply chose not to serve.  

When the leading citizens of the a country avoid military service and the poor and minorities and immigrants are overrepresented in the Army, then the reason for decline is clear.  Draft dodgers like Rush Limbaugh can make up a thousand other reasons for America's decline, but Rome fell when its leading citizens acted just like America's leaders now.

Terrorism and Gun Violence on Both Sides of the Ocean

A good friend who has been traveling to America on business for more than a decade left Brussels, Belgium, for her current trip to America just days after the Paris shootings while Brussels was still on lock down for a possible second attack.  

Part of her trip to America is to visit her brother in Colorado Springs for Thanksgiving.  So she was there yesterday when a gunman shot eleven people in a Planned Parenthood clinic.  She will be returning to Pennsylvania before going back to Europe.  I hope nothing like this happens in here in Pennsylvania.

But it could.  

Because Fundamentalists of every kind share a common belief that they are right and everybody else is both wrong and can be killed for The Cause.

So murderous Muslim Fundamentalists attack the most civilized city on the planet, and a lone Fundamentalist, reportedly armed with the same weapon, the AK47, shoots eleven people on the day after Thanksgiving.  Because whatever kind of nut-job Fundamentalist he is, the faux God he has made up in his head told him that killing innocent people is the right thing to do.