Richard M. Weaver Quotes
Man is constantly being assured today that he has more power than ever before in history, but his daily experience is one of powerlessness. If he is with a business organization, the odds are great that he has sacrificed every other kind of independence in return for that dubious one known as financial. Modern social and corporate organization makes independence an expensive thing; in fact, it may make common integrity a prohibitive luxury for the ordinary man.
Richard M. Weaver, 1910-1963, Political Philosopher, Ideas Have Consequences
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Shortly after his presidential term expired:
This audacious general and Queen of one of the Roman Provinces conquered most of the area including Egypt. Then she declared her independence from the Roman Empire itself. A master of multilateral coalition leading, she was able to attract nearby provinces to join her. The Roman Emperor Aurelian himself set out to subjugate Zenobia—the Roman, Latin name. In the first battle, the Romans won a tactical victory for some territory but lost many men. The Emperor asked Bat Zabbai to surrender, but she refused in this famous reply. She was counting on the fact that the Romans would not accept the high losses she was inflicting. See Aurelian’s letter to the Roman Senate {606345}. The Romans did however did pay the price and eventually conquered Bat Zabbai and brought her to Rome as a captive. However she was very much admired by Roman society and after she pledged to not revolt against Rome, she was allowed to live in Rome—but not go back to Syria where she might raise another army. She became a major celebrity of Roman society and married a Roman Senator. Her exploits although well known at the time lapsed into obscurity in that later Roman Christian society did not see her as a fitting Christian female example, and when Islam developed in Syria, she was not considered a model Muslim woman. So a key figure in Roman history was ignored by most of the cultures until recently where the original documentation of the time has been made more widely available.
The historical relationship between Greece and Turkey is as complicated as any. Ypsilantis was born in the Greek section of Istanbul, then the Turkish capital and became the military commander of the cultural Greeks in the Istanbul Turkish area in the battles between the two nations and cultures for control and dominance of the culturally Greek areas of the Ottoman Empire. So geographically he was a Turk, but always identified with Greece.
Wikipedia was at the time the only one of the most utilized websites that was operated by a non profit corporation. The site, with its huge usage rate, could glean billions in advertising revenue, but as a matter of philosophy and policy the chose not to as Wales and others believed that there was no way to accept advertising and still maintain their total editorial independence.
Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as an intellectual historian, political philosopher and a mid-20th century conservative and as an authority on modern rhetoric.
