Currently in America 8

I'm not going to interpret all of Jim Morrison's songs. I'm just going to say that the "Jim Morrison" liberal is educated in Greek Literature and Philosophy, is both dark and light, brooding, and very educated in Eastern Literature and Philosophy. I've met students from Stanford, Harvard, St. John's college, and other institutions who are like this. BUT AGAIN, in terms of politics, they are not very far from Neoconservatism. They, too, are liberals who have been mugged.

Now, let me depart from the traditional line of Neoconservatism. Neoconservatives usually see Thucydides' Peloponnesian Wars as a primary text of Neoconservative philosophy along with Strauss. I actually see Homer's Iliad and Odyssey as the primary texts of Neoconservative philosophy. Thucydides' Peoloponnesians Wars is really the first book in so much as it is an accounting of historical events of ancient Greece that justifies the existential need for war. Ancient Greece was actually a very diverse society of competing city-states who fought amongst each other and also faced overwhelming forces from abroad. Ancient Greek warriors wore less armor than their enemies, but built superior shields and weapons due to their standards of excellence and honor.

The justification for war in ancient Greece had to do with the existential need for survival. I really believe that they were completely justified in their ways of war. And if certain individuals had not put their individual interests ahead of the concerns of their own polis, history may have turned out very different and better although one could argue that Rome completed what Greece could not.

Existential concerns have influenced American politics. I believe it is Truman who read the reread the Peloponnesian War during the Korean War. Previously, Truman decided to launch a nuclear attack on Japan due to his reading of the Peloponnesian War. These actions were the right action to take at the time. The economic behavior of Japan after the nuclear bombing proves that they still had Fascist ambitions even after the bombing. I also believe the Korean War, Vietnam War, the War of the Afghanistan vs. Russia were good wars. If the Russians had taken over, the world economy will be completely destroyed by now and a miltary state would have ensued.

Homer's Iliad obviously influenced Thucydides. In the Iliad, we are viewing a Pan-Achaean (Greek) struggle of the ancient Greeks against the Trojans. Achilles expresses the final Apollonian structurizing of the Greek military by winning the contest of who is "best of the Greeks." I will be following the logic of Professor Gregory Nagy and at the same time, departing from it somewhat.