First, let no one be confused about Sparta and Athens. We think of Athens as the cradle of western democracy, but this only worked in Athens or Sparta for members of minority ruling classes who controlled a military might which, it was thought, could conquer and enslave the rest of the world by divine right. Those city-states, and the Roman Empire that followed them, much more closely resembled Nazi Germany than any modern democracy.

Getting the vote about which peoples to subjugate next does not make a democracy a better or more just form of government. In fact, that license to hide behind a plurality undermines the whole conceptual foundation of democracy: look at Rome.

None of this makes Xerxes look any better. That is not a slur on Persia or Persians, but a condemnation of the whole mindset. European and American history, too, is full of the same wrong choices and psychopathic atrocities we condemn elsewhere in the world.

Cyrus the Great was a wise, revered and benevolent king, but the ambitious son Xerxes he spawned was the ancient equivalent of what Enron might have become — had it been allowed the persuasive tactic of summary executions, and commanded vast armies and nuclear weapons.

The other (more current) irritant is this insane national flap about the mosque proposed near Ground Zero. (There is already a mosque just as close). Even friends of mine who are much more “traditionally” conservative agree this one has been milked shamelessly by survivor groups and associations. KKK-style religious and ethnic prejudice may well be a minority viewpoint in the United States, but it refuses to die.

When western democracies find themselves pressured to ban religious and ethnic institutions like a mosque, or customs like the burka for crying out loud, I think it’s fair to ask how the west possibly expects to have any credibility in brokering peace in the middle east.

If you were waiting for the other shoe to drop (the problem with Israel), it is complicated, it is unquestionably two-sided, and continued blind, blank-check support of Israeli posturing has become legally and morally indefensible.