One doesn't have to look back to ancient history to find very courageous leaders. Andrew Jackson was as courageous as any man can be, time and time again leading from the front in extreme danger. I find it interesting that Trump expressed admiration for Jackson numerous times, and chose a portrait of him for the Oval Office during his term.
The lack of accountability is a mark of a lack of maturity. As a society we've regressed to a juvenile stage where people are just expected to make endless "boo boos" because the stakes are assumed to be low -- there's plenty of ruin in a nation, after all.
I think it was the War Nerd who suggested that if America really wanted to emulate the Romans we were always comparing ourselves to after 9/11 we would have executed the Air Force generals responsible for defending American airspace on that day, "pour encourager les autres."
he perhaps said the Athenians, who famously did that after a sea battle and then regretted it, Machaivelli has a whole section about how Romans never excessively punished commanders, though of course this and that are both guarding mistakes, whereas Machiavelli was more talking about when their strategy loses a battle.
Yeah, it doesn't really seem to be a Roman thing, actually. I was thinking of Pulcher and Varro, but Pulcher was merely exiled and Varro didn't seem to face any repercussions. Varus, Brutus, Cassius and Cato the Younger all fell on their sword but mostly to avoid the consequences of their capture rather than out of shame of defeat. I'd dig up the original column but it requires rooting around in the Wayback Machine.
the Athenians have this really famous instance at of executing Admirals over... Argoustai or something, I never remember the name because it isn't like anything you would know in English. It was later in the Peloponnesian War, after Thucydides' narrative is taken up by Xenophon. In short it was felt they didn't try sufficiently hard to save sailors after the battle. It was a crazy thing to do.
that said failing to guard a site at all is quite a bit different from employing a bad strategy. Romans wanted their generals to have a free hand to try strategies etc and not worry that if they did anything unconventional they would be executed if it didn't work out.
Romans also just generally had a lot of legal protections and a strong court system whereas the mob could more or less decide anything
One doesn't have to look back to ancient history to find very courageous leaders. Andrew Jackson was as courageous as any man can be, time and time again leading from the front in extreme danger. I find it interesting that Trump expressed admiration for Jackson numerous times, and chose a portrait of him for the Oval Office during his term.
I did mention our Founders, and of course Jackson was shortly after that, but Jackson was certainly a great leader of men
The lack of accountability is a mark of a lack of maturity. As a society we've regressed to a juvenile stage where people are just expected to make endless "boo boos" because the stakes are assumed to be low -- there's plenty of ruin in a nation, after all.
I think it was the War Nerd who suggested that if America really wanted to emulate the Romans we were always comparing ourselves to after 9/11 we would have executed the Air Force generals responsible for defending American airspace on that day, "pour encourager les autres."
he perhaps said the Athenians, who famously did that after a sea battle and then regretted it, Machaivelli has a whole section about how Romans never excessively punished commanders, though of course this and that are both guarding mistakes, whereas Machiavelli was more talking about when their strategy loses a battle.
Yeah, it doesn't really seem to be a Roman thing, actually. I was thinking of Pulcher and Varro, but Pulcher was merely exiled and Varro didn't seem to face any repercussions. Varus, Brutus, Cassius and Cato the Younger all fell on their sword but mostly to avoid the consequences of their capture rather than out of shame of defeat. I'd dig up the original column but it requires rooting around in the Wayback Machine.
the Athenians have this really famous instance at of executing Admirals over... Argoustai or something, I never remember the name because it isn't like anything you would know in English. It was later in the Peloponnesian War, after Thucydides' narrative is taken up by Xenophon. In short it was felt they didn't try sufficiently hard to save sailors after the battle. It was a crazy thing to do.
that said failing to guard a site at all is quite a bit different from employing a bad strategy. Romans wanted their generals to have a free hand to try strategies etc and not worry that if they did anything unconventional they would be executed if it didn't work out.
Romans also just generally had a lot of legal protections and a strong court system whereas the mob could more or less decide anything