A lesson from History

"There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it." -William S. Burroughs
That incandescent quote cuts right to core of the modern quest for freedom. If the international market economy, which is undeniably the only real ruler for all of earths people, has made it impossible to be free, then why do we still insist on thinking it so important? Americans have always loved pretty words, actually living in accordance with the principles they represent- not so much. Hypocrisy took hold in this country to such an extent that we don't know what that word means either; its simply too much of our national character for most Americans to even identify. I find this particularly interesting from a historical perspective because every other successful Empire I can think of embraced the reality of their culture with unabashed pride and enthusiasm. The Mongols and Romans made no secret of their ambition to kick the shit out of anyone who stood in their way; so what's our deal? I think the answer lay buried a few thousand years back in an often discussed but rarely understood place and time- 5th Century Athens. Essentially the Greeks had fought off the massive Persian Army after being almost completely conquered in one of the most epically awesome conflicts in History. At this juncture the Athenians kept pursuing the war to reclaim all Hellenic territories that had been conquered. All the Greek city-states of the Aegean formed the Delian league, under Athenian leadership, to liberate their fellow Greeks. Now, most of the small members couldn't afford to field ships of their own and were often incapable of contributing any significant numbers of troops. So what they ended up doing was just paying Athens to do both, which it happily did because Athens was a hardcore militaristic Democracy with the largest navy and plenty of people to send off to war. Well, eventually the Persian threat was pretty much over and people sort of began to wonder why Athens still insisted on exacted tribute from all the Delian League members, and so some decided to stop paying. Well, the Boule(βουλή)decided that they didn't want to give up their dominate position and thus voted to punish those that tried to secede. Now the Boule was a lot like the House of Representatives, except that the members were randomly selected from the 10 different tribes of Athens. They didn't necessarily think of themselves as Imperialists, but that didn't mean that in essence that wasn't exactly what they were doing. They thought that their democratic ideals and visibly superior culture meant that it was somehow different when they did essentially the same things that they had denounced the Persians for only a short time before. Long story short the Spartans called shenanigans and after a protracted war put them in their place. If you can't see the parallels between this first recorded experiment with democracy and our own circumstance then I'm truly amazed you can bear the smell, because you must have your head firmly and deeply located up your own ass.