Rediscovery Why haven’t I been regularly reading Andrew Northrup’s blog The Poor Man? I think I linked to something of his several weeks ago, but lost track of him in a swirl of browser changes. Anyway, he’s sharp and often extremely funny and deserves a much wider readership. Here Northrup, self-described “com-symp liberal East Coast weenie”, finds himself compulsively reading National Review regular Victor Davis Hanson:

Recognize. If you are going to be a hawk, why be half-assed? Why make some candy-ass proposals about how to assemble a coalition and apply diplomatic pressure and use surgical strikes, when you can bellow from the crenellated walls of your Fortress of Blood that the armies of democracy will wash away all who oppose them like a dark tide? And why talk about modern politics and warfare at all when Pericles or Thermistecles or Triceratops offers a perfect object lesson in why America is the fucking tits, and is going to pound your sorry democracy-hating ass until my fist breaks. I think Mr. Hanson should consider taking some TM classes, and possibly a mild tranquilizer, but I hope he doesn’t.

[Note: This is not in any way an attempt to exorcise myself of the nightmare I have where, night after night, I am a novice hoplite, sea-sick and terrified aboard my trireme, as Prof. Hanson screams in my face about the glory of Athens. We are about to attack the evil Persians, when I realize I am naked, and I don’t know how to use my sword, and I’m late for a math test that Prof. Pythagoras said was half my grade. Also, all the Persians look like Jimmy Carter. I awake, drenched in sweat, only to find that I am clutching in my hand a piece of my sunken warship, still wet with the Aegean waters of 25 centuries past! Dear God, just give me one night of peace!]

[07:36 PM]