Palmyra

I don’t understand the handwringing and breast-beating over the destruction of the antiquities in Palmyra, Syria. It seems to me the very same people who demand that antiquities be repatriated to their countries of origin are complaining when the people of those countries, some of whom not only do not values those antiquities but consider them blasphemous, destroy them.

By what right do the Syrians or Egyptians claim these antiquities? The present populations of those countries are by and large not the descendants of the people who built them so there’s no blood-right. The Coptic Christians in Egypt and the the Maronites in Lebanon are probably the nearest relatives of the people who built or created them and those people are hanging on to their places in their own original home countries by their fingernails.

Presumably, they claim them by right of conquest. It would seem to me that the most recent conqueror (mostly the British) have as much right as the next most recent (the Turks) or the most recent after that (the Arabs).

You can’t have it both ways. When you give precious things to people who view them as abominations, don’t be surprised when they destroy them.

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    I’ll note that there’s a movement afoot that wants to destroy various monuments, statues, and such in this country, again with the goal of destroying all things blasphemous. Not that the people so inclined would think of it in those terms, of coure, as such language is for cretins.

  • You mean like the General Lee? Or statues of Robert E. Lee?

    While I deplore the actions, when they start destroying World Heritage sites, I may worry.

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    The General Lee is wasteful. Insisting on destroying all the statues & monuments. There have even been calls for destroying the Jefferson Memorial. (Eventually they’ll figure out Washington owned slaves, and then the Monument will need to come down, too.) It’s the same basic impulse.

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