I absolutely loathe feminism. It is an intellectually bankrupt ideology and its ideas, when enacted practically, are damaging to society, both at the individual level and as a whole. Feminism is tyrannical at its core and is not about seeking “equality”, it is about double standards for its adherents. The quicker it dies, the better off we will all be.

As for 300, I definitely plan to see it. Hope it lives up to my expectations!

Alex, my husband plays the occasional video game. He tells me it is far better entertainment than wasting his time on the vapid “I am woman, hear me roar” type of sitcoms and dramas that fill evening TV.

I’m a woman and I certainly want to be defended when my physical security is at issue. I’ll do that myself, if necessary, but I would prefer the intervention of a male defender, if at all possible. Reason: most men are stronger than I, due to the obvious differences between men and women. Even a 16-year old male can fight off an attacker better than I. One of feminism’s most glaring problems is that the philosophy negates physical differences between the sexes, and casts aspersions on the natural ability and desire of men to protect and defend women and children. If you’re hearing anything else, it’s most likely the result of mind-mush directed at normal people by abnormal academics and social “scientists.”

Then again, you might be as out of touch with women’s ideas as I am; I remember reading somewhere in here that you try to avoid women as much as possible. Still, I’m curious as to whether or not other women think the same way. Judging from what I hear – at work and around – it seems as thought they want defenders – but female defenders.

Why they want this I’m not sure.

You make some excellent comments that I felt too. I don’t think that the Spartans were exactly the ideal of liberty – what interests me about them is their physical courage and ability to fight such odds.

I should also mention that boys who were not found to be fit to lead and fight were thrown off a cliff.

Not exactly a good basis for Western society. :=\

Haha. Ilana, your comments? [You’ll have to wait to read my WND column.]

They were able to devote themselves wholly to military practice only because they sat at the top of a economic structure built on one of the most brutal slave regimes the world has seen. The Spartans lived in contant terror of an uprising of the subjugated helots, and the initiation of young Spartan men involved creeping into helot villages and slitting the throats of any helots who demonstrated intelligence or leadership qualities.

The institutionalized pederasty of the Spartan system also seems at odds with traditional Judeo-Christian culture.

But what’s most perplexing is how a society in which nobody was allowed to own private money could be praised as some sort of model of liberty. There’s a reason many early 20th-century communists adopted the Spartans as symbols of strength through self-denial.

As for the Spartans standing with their Greek neighbours against the dastardly Persian barbarians, that was a very shortlived alliance. The Spartans quickly turned on their fellow Greeks, and enjoyed Persian support and sponsorship for the duration of the 27-year Peloponnesian War.

So we’re left with physical courage in the face of enormous odds. Which is admirable in itself, but surely no less admirable when practiced by Zulus, Ghurkas, or Sioux, than by Spartans.

Not so amazing when you think about it. To some, the courage of others is a reproach to them – for only too obvious reasons.

I see two reactions to heroic deeds and individuals: the deifiers and the deniers. The first would make demigods out of heroes, the latter would deny their heroism altogether. But both have the same effect, they put heroism beyond our reach.

When you accept that heroes are men and women not too different from yourself, you also face the realization that when circumstances demand like behavior from you – you have no excuse not to rise to the occasion.

As for deniers; the need of many writers and historians to destroy the honor of the brave always amazes. They stand behind their keyboards and judge men who faced certain death and it can be supposed that they attempt to keep from coming up short in comparison.

I opened up the comments by saying “Heroes that one wishes he could die with.” Let me change that to read, These were heroes that men wish they could die with.

The military historian Hans Delbruck has a different, and equally courageous, explanation of the stand there. He argues the Spartans must have known that every pass can be flanked. There are always small paths around it, and bigger ones at a distance, and this was known of that pass in antiquity. Moreover, when the Spartans suggested Leonidas take more men, it is reported he refused, saying that he did not go to the pass to hold it, but to die there, and no sense taking more men with him.

Delbruck’s explanation is political. Persia had offered Sparta incredible terms. It would rule all of Greece, as a subject empire. No Persian troops would invade Sparta. The Spartan army would become a key part of Persia’s forces and be honored and rewarded accordingly. The rest of Greece trembled … if Persia and Sparta united, they were doomed. And one of Sparta’s two kings had already defected.

Thermopylae had an emotional significance. To Greeks, it was where Greek territory began. So the king of Sparta and 300 Spartan peers died in the pass, in a hopeless stand, to deny the Persians their first inch of Greek soil.

Any question now where Sparta stands?

The thing is, 300 is an excellent piece to make the point that Hollywood has popularize and overdo everything it does in order to make it trendy. The Spartan War was so fantastic, so epic, and so nearly unbelievable in it’s scope, meaning, and deeds and words of those who fought that there is absolutely no need to try to make it exciting. That’s the whole point of the Battle of Thermopylae; it was so epic and unbelievable that if someone created it in fiction, it would come off as being hokey.

In trying to make the unbelievable even more so, Hollywood seems to have again bitten the dirt. What a shame..