The magisterial “History of the Peloponnesian War” relates the calamity of conflict between the Greek city states of Athens and Sparta. The account includes an Athenian addressing the Spartan assembly before the outbreak of hostilities, making the case against a Spartan attack on Athens.
Bellicose Spartan allies had finished urging the Spartans to launch a war against Athens, but an Athenian invited to offer a response noted a compelling list of reasons why the Spartans should not launch a war. These included past Athenian victories over the Persians in two separate invasions of Greece, and a treaty requiring Athens and Sparta to resolve disputes by arbitration. The Athenian then predicted (correctly as events would later prove) that even if Sparta defeated Athens and took over the Athenian empire, Sparta would quickly lose control of it. Finally, the Athenian concluded:
Take time then in forming your resolution, as the matter is of great importance; and do not be persuaded by the opinions and complaints of others to bring trouble on yourselves, but consider the vast influence of accident in war, before you are engaged in it. As it continues, it generally becomes an affair of chances, chances from which neither of us is exempt, and whose event we must risk in the dark.
Unfortunately, the Spartans failed to heed this wise counsel and plunged Greece into the unimaginable horrors of a 27-year internecine war. Americans of various camps today would do well to consider the vast influence of accident in war, as far too many seem to march off to internecine conflict.
Corey Comperatore was shot and killed while sheltering his family from gunshots during the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro gave moving remarks about the loss of Comperatore and the need for the use of peaceful processes to resolve political disputes. In his remarks, Shapiro echoes the urging of the Athenian addressing the Spartans:
Political disagreements can never, ever be addressed through violence. Disagreements are okay, but we need to use the peaceful political process to settle those differences. This is a moment where all leaders have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity.
To which I can only thank Gov. Shapiro for his leadership and further say: Amen.
It wasn’t just Donald Trump who narrowly dodged a bullet; it may have been the nation as a whole. The past few years saw an assassination attempt on a group of Congressmen, a sitting Supreme Court justice, and now on one of the major party nominees.
I invite you, dear reader, to consider for a moment just how badly things might have unraveled if the bullet that grazed Trump’s ear had slain the former president. We live in a diverse and sadly polarized society. Gov. Shapiro of course is entirely correct that we can and should use democracy to settle our disputes. The Spartans should have honored their treaty obligation to resolve disputes through arbitration. They chose not to, and it brought a golden age of Greek civilization crashing into chaos, death and ruin.
No faction in our society should imagine anything good coming of a normalization of political violence. I know people who have spent decades trying to ban personal firearms, and I know other people who have spent decades collecting personal firearms. In an escalation of political violence of the sort that very well may have narrowly dodged, my only prediction: calamity. Consider again the quote:
Take time then in forming your resolution, as the matter is of great importance; and do not be persuaded by the opinions and complaints of others to bring trouble on yourselves, but consider the vast influence of accident in war, before you are engaged in it. As it continues, it generally becomes an affair of chances, chances from which neither of us is exempt, and whose event we must risk in the dark.
Tolkien’s Gandalf gave similar advice:
Practical steps such as an increased role for federalism, a reassertion of Congressional authority and a stronger commitment to pluralism could all help. An embrace of pluralism in education is a vital part of moving away from a zero-sum society. The nation’s founders never intended an imperial federal executive trending towards apocalyptic winner-takes-all presidential elections. More urgently and immediately, however, the country needs far more leadership like that provided by Josh Shapiro at the press conference linked to above.
We got a huge bit of good luck with the narrow failure of this assassination. Let’s consider carefully how we might depend less on the vast influence of accident, even relatively happy ones, and more upon wisdom and virtue.
