Anthony Kaldellis: evaluation

Transcript context

…… feel represented? No, not get along. Not in a, in a silly way. I mean, sufficiently to where they wouldn’t… Warlords wouldn’t rise and break apart the system and- … or if there was those kinds of forces, they would come back together. Like, why is this such a great self-healing system? So you’re exactly right. So sufficient is the key word. We don’t want to idealize this, right? These aren’t, like, they’re not just dancing in the streets, holding hands and then direct… It’s so– Even when it comes to the tax system, they are complaining all the time. Of course, they’re doing so because they know that complaining gets you things. There’s no disincentive to complaining. You might not get what you want, or you might get it, but you know, no harm will come to you. So they’re complaining all the time. They have all of these civil wars. They’re like, “Okay.” So I think I would give you a two-part answer, so really quickly, as to why this held together so well. First is that an extraordinary effort was made by the authorities to persuade their subjects that they were ruling on their behalf, and I think, for the most part, actually tended to do so. And the second is that it had a very tightly unified identity as Roman and as Orthodox. In other words, for the most, most time, they knew that they were surrounded by enemies who were not those things. And they did not want to live under the power of non-Romans and non-Christian people. And so those two factors combined, I think, gave everybody reason to hold it together. The alternatives were worse. Yeah. I mean, that’s a really brilliant summary, and I think we should mention that both the rhetoric and the action are important. I think you’ve articulated that rhetoric is really powerful, like stating over and over and over- … that you represent the people, that you’re acting on behalf of the people and doing the action. But it’s not enough to actually do the action. You would think that’s all Machiavelli says, that’s the only thing that matters. But no.…

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