MOLON LABE

Go tell the Spartans, Passerby, That here, obedient to their laws, We lie. Simonides, Greek poet (556 BC - 468 BC) Epitaph for the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae

I'm having a patch made for my leathers:



and added a link icon on the main page:



So, what does it mean?

Well, most of you have heard of the battle of Thermopylae, whether you remember it by that name or not. It was the battle of ancient times when a very small group of hardened warriors held a mountain pass in Greece against an enormous army. An historical fact, it turns out that the battle was actually between 300 Spartans and perhaps 2000 other Greeks lead by the Spartan warrior king Leonidas and an army estimated at 200,000 lead by the Persian Xerxes I, who to that point had conquered most of the rest of the known world.

At the time of Persian invasion, Greece was divided against itself, with various principalities and city states squabbling amongst themselves for power and influence, unable to agree to join long enough to defeat the enemy. The Spartans, already widely known for a vigorous foreign-policy response to any threats, regardless of the weak-kneed self-interest displayed by the whining leftist Democrats other city-states of their semi-nation, lead a coalition of the willing and met the enemy in the pass at Thermopolye in August of 480BC.

King Xerxes, noting the vast difference in the size of the combatant units, sent an envoy to Leonidas with a message, which said in essence: "Throw down your weapons, and you will be allowed to live."

To which Leonidas replied:

MOLON LABE (mo-LONE lah-VEH)
which translates from the Greek as: "Come and get them."

Leonidas and his little crew killed (by most estimates) around thirty thousand Persians, including most of a large unit of "Immortals" (a hard-core batch of troops who were the cream of Xerxes' crop) and two of Xerxes' brothers, and stalled the entire Persian army at Thermopylae for five days until betrayed by the fucking French a traitor named Ephialtes (whose watery yellow seed may have eventually resulted in the modern French people -- or maybe not) who showed the Persians a path to the rear of the little band.

The Spartans were, of course, slaughtered to the last man, but the Persians never really recovered from the losses they sustained. While Leonidas and his crew were standing and dying in that gap in the mountains, Greece had the time to finally pull their shit together and face the Persians with a more-or-less united front, eventually running them off forever.

MOLON LABE, indeed. Now the gun nuts use it as a rallying cry, comparing their enemies to the Persian army telling them to put their weapons down. Eh, OK, I'll go for that. But I think the philosophy extends to us right-wing reactionaries in general -- and represents the rapidly hardening politics of those of us who feel like we're standing in the pass battling the enemy and waiting for the rest of you to get your shit together. I think that "MOLON LABE" combined with the snake on the icon on my page says it all, doesn't it?

To quote from another website:

"It signifies our determination to not strike the first blow, but also to not stand mute and allow our loved ones, and all that we believe in and stand for, to be trampled by men who would deprive us of our God-given – or natural, if you will – rights to suit their own ends."

A noble purpose. And fitting to one who, by the day, finds less and less grey in an increasingly black and white world.

In Our Next Episode: How To Become A Member Of The Vast, Right-Wing Conspiracy (VRWC).