An unusually patriotic film review

As an American, I take great pride in the actions of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at Thermopylae.

What? As an American? Greek-American, you mean? As someone of Greek descent, surely.

Of course I am someone of Greek descent. I’m an American.

Well, not all Americans are of Greek descent, unless, of course, you had immigrant ancestors, right?

Ah. You mean blood descent.

Yes! So you had ancestors from Greece, then.

Well, not that I know of. Possibly, but it would have to have been way back.

I’m confused; what are you talking about??

I’m an American; America herself is a child of Greece.

America is a child of England, if anyone.

Well yes; England, too, is a child of Greece.

Huh?

All of Europe, really.

I had an interesting experience watching 300. My history-student roommate filled me on some of the details that were botched (well, elided really) in the movie. For the most part I was rather pleased with Frank Miller’s story. I felt just a little annoyed by the Queen’s speech in front of the council, how much she repeated the theme of liberty, freedom; but I had no problem with the theme as it threaded throughout the entire movie.

Sure, it’s romantic historical revisionism; sure, Sparta was one of the cruelest societies to ever develop; but it was the blood of Sparta that kept Greece alive.

Greece. The birthplace of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; of natural philosophy; of natural science; of the citizen and democracy; the study of ethics and politics. Miller’s Leonidas has it right, and it was the Spartans who protected the birthplace of Liberty.

Greece, grandmother to Europe, ancestress of Western civilization.

It was an excellent movie. It was a martial movie, extolling all of the virtues of martial prowess: awareness, strength, ferocity, temperance, reason. But above all, the single most important virtue of all: indomitability.

I’ve been reading a science fiction book lately (yeah, where’s the news in that) which is set on a libertarian planet: minimum government, no restrictions on weapons, sexual activity (including prostitution), business activity, etc. It’s a very polite and safe society. One character in the book, when describing how a native friend of his needs to coddle another character, who is a recent migrant from Earth, describes it as “The first truly free human society in history.” In the context of the quote, that other character has just made a mistake as a result of which she has ended up hurting herself: she is not ready to be completely free, because, not having grown up that way, she is not yet ready to assume absolute, complete responsibility.

Responsibility: the other side of the coin from freedom; united by the concept of will. What comes back to me, for which I am responsible, is what I have willed; what I have willed is what I was free to do. I do not know that Spartans died for the philosophical ideals of Athens, and I do not know how democratic their society was. But I suspect that the taste of the freedom, and responsibility, that democracy brings did motivate Greeks; it had allowed their society to flourish as none other in the world had, and they had no desire to give that up.

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and of slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” Patrick Henry’s words echo down through America’s paltry two centuries of history; Miller has Sparta’s Leonidas proclaiming such a sentiment twenty-two centuries early.

But the Greeks surely felt it. Impressive as the warriors of Sparta no doubt were, they could count, and they could reason; they had to know how impressive the armies of Persia were. And certainly, a mere 300 could barely have expected to live long in the onslaught brought on by its swarms.

The Persians must have felt so, too. There are a number of amusingly scenes that are historically ironic, though I cannot doubt that they reflect something that might have actually occurred. Xerxes is telling Leonidas that his army will eradicate all of Greece; that the name of Leonidas, and the story of his Spartans will be erased from history.

I was astonished that I was the only one in the theater who actually laughed.

The Greeks had to know that there’s was a society that was unique in its makeup, a grand experiment in government of the people, for the people, and by the people. And they had to believe it was a way of life worth protecting, motivated by self-determination they had created for themselves, and refusing to give an inch of their way of life away.

Miller very much celebrates the Spartans. At one point his queen utters words that come almost embarrassingly close to the phrase “freedom isn’t free”; his characters know full well that their way of life is something better than what they could have under Persian rule; and they know that it is worth sacrificing even their lives for it.

It’s hard to imagine Miller as a liberal.

Patrick Henry words may have been heartfelt, but it is no doubt that the founding fathers were intimately familiar with John Locke, the British philosopher who clearly articulated a theory of individual rights and personal responsibility. As the first country explicitly founded on such principles, we are now, were then, the truest children of Greece, and the finest testament that history remembered the sacrifice of the Spartans.

We, more so than anyone else in the world exemplify what the Greeks so courageously fought to defend. Colin Powell said it best when addressing the United Nations: The United States may in fact be a young country; but we are also the oldest democracy in the world. We were made possible by Greece; we are their intellectual and moral descendents; and our society, our country, descended from them, strives more mightily than all her other children to honor the inheritance we have received from them.

And that is why, as an American, I feel a great patriotic pride, in the actions of Leonidas and his 300.