What Does Greek History Tell Us About Statists and Power-Hungry Politicians?

Euripides - Greek playwright and critic of the establishment.

History should teach us something and be relevant to the modern world. I read the following passage the other day, written by classicist Victor Davis Hanson, from his book Who Killed Homer? The problems the Greeks suffered in the decline of the polis rang true to the modern situation with our own government.

After the decline of the polis and its triad of yeoman-militiaman-voting citizen, the populace was taxed as never before....But taxes soon led to the disappearance of yeomen, the rise of corporate agriculture [i.e., with no private property], the depopulation of the countryside, and inefficiency in food production....As the Hellenistic world chased its tail, farmers went broke paying taxes, then hired themselves out as mercenaries, then found too few farmers able to pay them. Broke agrarians left failed farms and went to town, only to starve when the corporate harvest or public dole itself failed and the level of exploitation of the many reached proportions not seen since the murky dark ages of prehistory (pg. 125).

Substitute middle-class for yeoman, substitute corporate agriculture for state-run business and agrarians for workers and you get a pretty good idea of why Greece fell.

The role of the modern US conservative is to apply the brakes to more government power, to put the power back in the hands of the people, and to point out the follies of the statists. Thanks to Victor Davis Hanson, we can better understand from the Greeks where the US may be heading with rampant statism and uncontrolled taxation.