<p>Well, HH, sorry you don’t see it, but I do really like FS (I’m pretty sure she knows that). If it is her, I have to think she wouldn’t have a problem with someone recognizing her style (how many posters here even have a style?) And if it’s not her, then DPX should feel honored to be compared to a classic poster.</p>
<p>I really don’t get why you are throwing insults around on this thread (go ahead, call me clueless again) but, hey, if it gives you chuckles, carry on.</p>
<p>“I haven’t and didn’t forget the Spartans. They are irrelevant to the issue unless you have some new evidence that Thucydides was actually a Spartan and writing about Spartans. The Spartans were also amateur soldiers in the sense that they were not paid but, of course, they trained incessantly for war, so they were the best infantry of their day.”</p>
<p>Training incessantly, and having that as your only job in life, makes them professionals in my book. Whether compensation was in money, upkeep, or some other form is irrelevant. And Thucydides didn’t have to be a Spartan to comment on the Spartans; I suspect he was well qualified having both fought them as a commander during, and having traveled amongst them as a historian, after the Peloponnesian War.</p>
<p>"As for the “spirit of the citizen soldier lives on in the [US armed force and etc.], do you have any evidence of this? How would one measure “spirit” and specifically “citizen soldier spirit”? Do you have survey results? The US armed forces are professional armed forces. I cannot tell any difference from the “spirit” of the wholly professional 19th century British army.”</p>
<p>Let me use the word “mold” instead of “spirit” if you prefer. Were you in the 19th century British army?</p>
<p>“I seriously doubt that Thucydides thought that men caught up in battle in the front ranks of a phalanx needed to rely on scholarship to perform well. He was almost certainly talking about generalship, such as it was at that time.”</p>
<p>Obviously.</p>
<p>“Greek armies weren’t small by choice. They were small because 10,000 hoplites was about all even the largest cities could muster at one time.”</p>
<p>Small is relative. The Greek world had a much smaller population than ours. Comparatively speaking their armies, and the casualties they suffered - particularly in naval battles - were a much greater percentage of their population than the more recent conflicts. When one-quarter of your army is lost to plague in the opening years of what amounts to a world war, that’s not small.</p>
<p>“As for modern officers being “scholars,” once again, you use the term very differently from the way Thucydides would have meant it. Thucydides didn’t mean someone who studied tactics, engineering, and/or military history. He meant, basically, philosophers.”</p>
<p>Really; what’s your source? I’d be inclined to believe he meant leaders who were versed in a wide range of knowledge, to include both all of those things you though he didn’t mean as well as philosophy. I’m basing my opinion on my interpretation of his works as told in the History of the Peloponesian War and I don’t recall him elaborating on the point of what makes a scholarly soldier.</p>
<p>“I had many, many, many discussions with officers of all ranks when I was doing my dissertation on the impact of culture, training, and custom on the military performance of an Israeli brigade. They were of above average intelligence, but they were not philosophers in the mold of Socrates, Plato, and others who fought in the phalanx.”</p>
<p>I’d imagine philosophers of that caliber of Socrates and Plato were as exceedingly rare in the Greek phalanx as in an Israeli brigade. I think that supports my reasoning of why I don’t believe Thucydides was limiting education to philosophy when he commented on the value of an educated warrior. What practical value could the allegory of the cave have on a trimarine about to ram an enemy ship?</p>
<p>“The point I’m trying to make is that Thucydides comes from a different time and was writing for that time and place. But almost everyone takes him out of context.”</p>
<p>Speak for yourself. I’ll stand by my interpretation of Thucydides quote as relevant today as it was when he said it. If you recall the History of the Peloponesian War (you did read it, didn’t you), perhaps the most interesting and astounding lesson to be gotten from that work is that the world and people have hardly changed at all in the past 2,500 years since Thucydides wrote it. Change the names and places and it could have been written today.</p>
<p>I wonder why rmilitary recruiters don’t try to set up tables at amusement parks or shopping malls or ballparks or other places where young people congregate. What’s so special about schools per se?</p>
<p>Dadguy, they do, at least at shopping malls. Schools, particularly high schools, are best because there are huge numbers of young people at the age to join who have no great plans for the future. </p>
<p>I just skimmed this thread, but I didn’t see any points about why these campuses bar military groups. If my memory serves me correctly, it is because the ROTC branches conflict directly with these schools’ discrimination policies regarding gay and lesbian students. You can debate that they should make an exception for the military in the vein, as already stated, that the Universities and students in them take from the government without giving back. (Though, I have to ask: Is it the responsibility of citizens to give back to their own entity?) All of the schools who have banned ROTC that I know of offer students the opportunity to participate at a nearby school; this is certainly not easy for the students, but they do have that option and are not simply being barred from ROTC, future service, or related scholarships. I have to say, I would be worried if private institutions had to change their policies in order to fit in with the government.</p>
<p>From the Harvard website:
</p>
<p>maybe she wanted to entice the old gang into throwing stones,…but her camouflage was found tiresome(fatigues/too military?)</p>
<p>UCLAri,</p>
<p>I agree with your view, there is nothing wrong with enjoying the financial perks of serving in the military (scholarships, etc.), as is common to so many other things we value beyond the moment of financial enrichment. There is also nothing wrong with getting a college degree to socially enrich your standing; nor even to get the degree to financially enrich your own purse; but only a fool could think that there is nothing more to either a college education or military service than brute financial enrichment…neither to a modern day Gatsby, a Hollywood actor, nor a modern day Pericles. </p>
<p>For this reason–amongst others–I do not think that ROTC or military recruiters should be banned from college campuses…and how much the more so that the military, forever derided by the self-satisfied and better-than-thou atmosphere common to elite campuses (as are common to the Ivy league, amongst other elite institutions), should be present and accounted for: if represented in financially challenged inner city recruiting offices why not the ivory-tower campuses of the well-to-do socialites. There is, to the best of my knowledge, no effort to remove the “scourge” of military recruiting from the inner city, Michael Moore notwithstanding; so perhaps, as well, the ivory tower can withstand a little soot on its bleached and verdant walls.</p>
<p>It might be hoped that the highly educated and well informed on cc would recognize that ROTC is justified more by what it does for the country’s well being as a whole than what it does for the personal well being of individual scholarships applicants–as deserving as they may be.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>As to the chest-thumping (head-banging?) prognosticators amongst us:</p>
<p>I post only as Dorthy<em>ParkerX and as no one else.
If my style or words so bother you that you are lead into untoward acts of divination might I suggest you desist from your other-worldy necromancy and make your inquiries with the very real administrators of this site to ensure yourselves that I post as no other than Dorthy</em>ParkerX----your breath be-fogged crystal balls notwithstanding; I welcome their all-seeing input on the matter. From there you might like to visit Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” for a bit of self-reflection and to see how some of your indignant predecessors faired in constructing and regulating their quaint societies with rumor and innuendo. </p>
<p>But as for me–forever happy as a clam–I leave you with this timely, if chill, union of words:</p>
<p>The rivers’ tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet [river], run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>wow, we all be dissed!!! </p>
<p>suuurreeeeeee. whatever Ms. DP needs to say.</p>
<p>toodles, Ms. DP, or whomever you are. Too bad you have no originality and have to copy another poster’s style to such a degree the difference between the two- well there is none, shows lack of imagination, but if is the best Ms. DP can do, who are we to care, really</p>
<p>It is just intersting the subterfuge, and the veiled name calling in the above post…where have I seen similar prose?</p>
<p>But alas, if Ms DP feels the need to put on a mask, she/he must have a valid reason for hiding, albiet poorly, her identity</p>
<p>CGM</p>
<p>“Leaving the question, why?”</p>
<p>Isn’t that question as easy to answer as was the process of recognizing an unmistakable style? Is there really a mystery about the reasons that compel long time posters to change identities but retain their styles and … opinions?</p>
<p>“But alas, if Ms DP feels the need to put on a mask, she/he must have a valid reason for hiding, albiet poorly, her identity”</p>
<p>Yes, but one still needed to READ the posts to recognize the style. Obviously, this seemed a bit too hard for some, including the one who considered it “poorly hidden.”</p>
<p>Spare us the theatrics!</p>
<p>LOL! Dottie’s last post was the clincher!</p>
<p>No, I don’t get it…if the opinions, style, etc are all the same, and easily recognizable, what is the POINT!!!</p>
<p>If I changed my moniker to disguise myself, I would at the SAME TIME, change my word usage, my “flow”. my opinions to a degree</p>
<p>If FS did indeed create Ms. Parker to disguise herself, I think she is smart enough and clever enough to know that we would guess her secret identity…its is like the mask on the Lone Ranger…</p>
<p>“needed to read the posts” Huh? read the posts, isn’t that what this site is for? unless I mistaken</p>
<p>As for theatrics, what Ms. DP isn’t theatrical? </p>
<p>If she wanted to be anonymous and just put out some information, why not just do THAT…here is a link…enjoy, and leave it, but no, Ms Parker shares her opinions in the style to which we have all come to recognize, because it is very distinctive </p>
<p>Perhaps if she was unhappy with the reactions she got, but if so, then maybe it was what she SAID that got the reactions, and how she said it…I get slammed all the time…I move on</p>
<p>I have gotten some pretty nasty reactions, that is okay, I don’t feel the need to change my name</p>
<p>It is of course her right, her whim, her having fun, to come up with a new name, and it is a great name at that…but to think no one will figure it out is just not realizing the power of her style and words</p>
<p>That said, her last post, well, mighty nice job</p>
<p>Don’t you think it’s someone pretending to be FS disguising herself as DP? I do.</p>
<p>I think the best question is: who cares?</p>
<p>If it is someone of yore, it is. If not, then it isn’t. Either way, sitting around and giggling that you’ve figured out the big secret isn’t all that constructive.</p>
<p>if it is they are doing a magnificent job</p>
<p>I don’t really care, just find it amusing</p>
<p>that last post said it all for me</p>
<p>back to the Topic, I do enjoy reading Op pieces by writers whose opinions I generally don’t agree with, and Wisse one such writer</p>
<p>WHoever DP is, she has done what FS did, introduce me to other ideas. …and when I do some reearch on the author, i learn quite a bit</p>
<p>forget it sorry not worth it</p>
<p>Ahem. Just a scholars can debate the exact date of the Fall of Roman Empire, it might be debatable as to where exactly where this thread went off track. But that it is now off track and featuring frequent violations of CC’s terms of service is NOT debatable. Discussing another poster is off-limits. I would have said that discussing a poster’s style is within bounds but I would now footnote that with a “but not always,” depending on intent as judged by the moderators.</p>
<p>I think that speculations about a poster and his or her identity should cease, like, as soon as this post goes up. I regret that so much time has elapsed before action was taken and I apologize to the OP.</p>
<p>–Moderator Obiwan</p>
<p>My apologizes…just noticed something and went with it…found it amusing</p>
<p>Sorry Ms Parker…</p>
<p>It’s all about the meaning of “is”.</p>
<p>ps- still don’t like Wisse after having read some of her other stuff, see that is back on topic, good girl, CGM</p>
<p>Does anyway here know what an ad hominem arguement is? Or only how to make one.</p>