{"id":2602608,"date":"2026-05-14T09:35:54","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T13:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/without-the-ancient-greeks-wed-have-no-america-250-to-celebrate\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T09:41:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T13:41:06","slug":"without-the-ancient-greeks-wed-have-no-america-250-to-celebrate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/without-the-ancient-greeks-wed-have-no-america-250-to-celebrate\/","title":{"rendered":"Without Ancient Greeks, We&#8217;d Have No America 250 To Celebrate"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwithout-the-ancient-greeks-wed-have-no-america-250-to-celebrate%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2602608&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Going to Washington, D.C. for America\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/americas-250th-birthday-will-be-a-commemoration-not-celebration-in-virginia-because-leftists-dont-think-its-worth-celebrating\/\" title=\"...s 250th Birthday Will Be A \u2018Commemoration,... Not \u2018Celebration... In Virginia Because Leftists Don...t Think It...s Worth Celebrating\">250th anniversary<\/a> highlights monuments and documents tied to self-government, and the article argues there\u2019s a deep debt behind them to ancient Greece. it claims early American leaders and thinkers, including Jefferson and writers in *The Federalist Papers*, drew on Greek examples when considering virtues and failures of representative rule. The piece also contends that modern critics who focus on exclusion in Greek democracies miss the larger past importance by dismissing Greek political achievements as \u201csterile.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It argues that Greek political life-especially in athens-helped establish a recognizable foundation for representative government. Reforms attributed to Cleisthenes are presented as shifting proposals and authority toward the demos, with elites still retaining property but needing to persuade a broad portion of citizens. The article further links this system to practical benefits, such as choosing leaders more by ability than status and reducing aristocratic rivalries through public debate.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond politics, it emphasizes Greek cultural cohesion despite city-state independence: shared language, religion, myth, and major traditions like Delphi and the Olympic Games. It describes a \u201cconnected\u201d Greek identity that, in the author\u2019s view, resonated with the later revolutionary claim that Americans formed one united people with common principles and customs.<\/p>\n<p>On war-making, the article contrasts Greek forces with those of Persia, portraying Greek soldiers as a true <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-brief-history-of-the-roman-empire-part-3-land-reform-and-the-era-of-gracchi\/\" title=\"A Brief History Of The Roman Empire, Part 3: Land Reform And The Era Of Gracchi\">citizen army<\/a> bound by a distinctive code of honor and recalling defining moments like Marathon, Salamis, and Thermopylae as parallels to foundational American narratives.<\/p>\n<p>it highlights greek cultural and aesthetic achievements-especially architecture such as the Parthenon-as influential models for later Western (including American) design. The piece closes by arguing that the founding generation absorbed both Greek political ideas and Greek moral\/cultural confidence, and that modern audiences should acknowledge this influence when viewing national heritage.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>If you go to Washington, D.C., this year to celebrate America\u2019s 250th anniversary, you\u2019ll probably visit the Capitol Building or the Lincoln Memorial. I\u2019d hope you\u2019d go and see the signed copy of the Declaration of Independence in the National Archives. And, if your tour guides on the National Mall are worth their salt, they\u2019ll remind you of the unique blessings of our representative form of government. To all of these, we owe a debt of gratitude to the Greeks.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Jefferson declared that \u201cevery citizen\u201d should be a soldier, because\u00a0\u201cthis was the case with the Greeks &#038; Romans and must be that of every free state.\u201d <em>The Federalist Papers <\/em>are filled with references to the Greeks, both as examples of what to do and not to do. As bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas E. Ricks argues: \u201cThe <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-left-thinks-western-civilization-itself-is-white-nationalist\/\" title=\"The Left Thinks Western Civilization Itself Is &#039;White Nationalist&#039;\">classical world<\/a> was far closer to the makers of the American Revolution and the founders of the United States than it is to us today.\u201d This semiquincentennial, we would do well, like our founding fathers, to remember the Greeks.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The Beginnings of Representative Government<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>As classical historian Adrian Goldsworthy argues in his excellent new book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basicbooks.com\/titles\/adrian-goldsworthy\/athens-and-sparta\/9781541619982\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece<\/em><\/a>, democracy, a political system that until recent history was uncommonly rare, emerged among the Greeks. Today, woke critics who exemplify what C.S. Lewis called \u201cchronological snobbery\u201d complain that the Greek democracies were exclusionary based on sex or status. Goldsworthy labels this complaint \u201csterile.\u201d From one city to another, which citizens enjoyed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/no-consensus-on-the-degree-to-which-pornography-is-harmful-to-children-report-from-u-n-agency-unicef\/\" title=\"\u2018No Consensus On The Degree To Which Pornography Is Harmful To Children...: Report From U.N. Agency UNICEF\">political rights<\/a> varied based on nobility of birth or wealth, and could include, as in Athens, all free males. Compared to just about every other polity on the planet in the ancient world, this system of government was remarkable and unprecedented. Greeks assembled to make all manner of political decisions, including going to war.<\/p>\n<p>In Athens, the reforms of Cleisthenes (c.\u2009508-507 B.C.) meant proposals were submitted to an assembly of the people. \u201cIn the process the basis of the Athenian political system for the best part of two centuries was established, placing the people \u2014 the demos \u2014 at the centre of public life as the ultimate authority,\u201d Goldsworthy writes. \u201cThis was democracy (<em>demokratia<\/em>), the rule of the people, or at least so it would be remembered and called by later generations proud of what Athens went on to achieve.\u201d The results will sound familiar to anyone who understands the constitutional order established by the framers: While aristocrats were permitted to retain their property, they were also required to persuade a significant percentage of the populace if they wanted to realize any of their political objectives.<\/p>\n<p>Such reforms, for a time, initiated unparalleled prosperity. Military leaders, for example, were more often chosen not based on social privilege but on their actual martial ability. Aristocratic rivalries were checked, as factions were forced to negotiate and debate in the public square.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>A Common People Sharing a Common Story<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Our debt to the Greeks goes far beyond sowing the seeds of representative government. The Greeks were a deeply localist and self-sufficient people. \u201cThe community was everything,\u201d writes Goldsworthy, who explains that citizenship and kinship networks were deeply tied to ownership of property. Unlike other large kingdoms founded by dynasties common in other ancient civilizations, \u201clots of communities developed, culturally close but politically separate.\u201d These <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >communities prized citizenship based<\/a> on kinship, so much so that it was rare for outsiders to move into a settled Greek community and acquire citizenship and thus political rights.<\/p>\n<p>The Greeks also shared a common language, religion, and mythology that bound them together as a greater people, even if separated into a preponderance of unique city-states. This is evident in the great epic poems of the <em>Iliad <\/em>and <em>Odyssey<\/em>, the oracle at Delphi, and the Olympic and Pythian Games to honor Zeus and Apollo, respectively. The fact that we still read of and honor such cultural markers, thousands of years removed from the ancient Greeks, points to their striking ability to speak to universal qualities of the human condition. The power of these share cultural anchors is also echoed in John Jay\u2019s assertion in <a href=\"https:\/\/avalon.law.yale.edu\/18th_century\/fed02.asp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Federalist No. 2<\/a> that \u201cProvidence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people \u2014 a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Unlike their foes the Persians, who relied on conscripts and mercenaries, the Greek military was truly a citizen army, \u201cteenagers standing shoulder to shoulder with men in their sixties.\u201d Greek armies included \u201caristocrats, farmers, former slaves, and \u2026 craftsmen.\u201d These men were bound by a code of honor that was also unique in the ancient world, and certainly in contrast to the Persians, who, during their attempted conquest of Greece, murdered captured Greek soldiers to bring good fortune. The Greek victories over the invading Persians at places such as Salamis and Marathon \u2014 and even the courageous defeat at Thermopylae \u2014 were, for them, defining civilizational moments not dissimilar to Lexington and Concord or Washington crossing the Delaware, which are foundational moments in our own national \u201ccreation narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><strong>A Civilization of Beauty<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Returning to qualities widely visible in our own nation\u2019s capital, the Greeks created marvels of aesthetic glory that still inspire today. The Parthenon (and other celebrated Greek architecture) was not only beautiful but brilliant, its columns, walls, and joints built in such a way that their angles appear perfectly aligned when, in fact, they are not. Centuries later, a Roman architect would describe texts written by the Greek architects explaining how they accomplished such a magnificent feat; sadly, those texts have not survived for historians today to study.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Athenians\u2019 greatest and most famous monument, the Parthenon, celebrated the glories of their city and its democratic system, not some abstract sense of Hellenic culture,\u201d writes Goldsworthy. \u201cWhile in design and decoration this monument \u2014 at which we still marvel today \u2014 drew upon concepts and taste shared with other Greeks, it was meant to parade the glory of the Athenians as greater and better than everyone else.\u201d It is an argument in marble and stone that stands to this day, and whose influence is ubiquitous across our national architecture, not only in D.C. Playwrights such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Euripides in turn developed Greek comedy both to delight and to provoke discourse and debate politics.<\/p>\n<p>All of these played a decisive, indelible role in the political and cultural consensus of our founding generation, who quite self-consciously drew upon ancient wisdom. They borrowed not only the political principles and aesthetic beauty of the ancient Greeks, but their appreciation for what set them apart culturally and morally from other peoples. We would be foolish (and ungrateful) to overlook that wisdom in shaping our own national heritage.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He is a regular contributor at many publications and the author of three books, including the upcoming &#8220;Wisdom From the Cross: How Jesus\u2019 Seven Last Words Teach Us How to Live (and Die)&#8221; (Sophia Institute Press, 2026).<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you visit Washington, D.C., you\u2019ll likely see the Capitol, Lincoln Memorial, and the signed Declaration<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":658,"featured_media":2602609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Copy-of-Untitled-96.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[78099,79659,79661,79660,53986],"class_list":["post-2602608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-american-independence","tag-ancient-greece","tag-classical-studies","tag-history-education-2","tag-western-civilization"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Copy-of-Untitled-96.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2602608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/658"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2602608"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2602608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2602612,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2602608\/revisions\/2602612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2602609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2602608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2602608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2602608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}