Why would anyone teach, let alone anyone listen to the teaching of, grand strategy thru Shkspr’s...Henry IV Part 1–of all plays?! Why not Henry V or even (negative example) Othello? Richard III?
Why Shakespeare for heaven’s sweet sake & not the latest edited volume on IR theory?

https://twitter.com/thesubtlenotes/status/1367255103900688385

2/. First, to put it into context of a very ongoing heated debate abt the worth & purpose of GS from the pages of Foreign Policy to WOTR to the NSC to the service academies to transatlantic war rooms, as Andrew Ehrhardt & Marvel Ryan wrote last year, GS is indispensable

At the federal level, we spend ~$50 per student on STEM fields and...$0.05 per student on civics. Let that sink in. For decades, we’ve neglected civics & history & we now have a citizenry & electorate poorly prepared to understand, appreciate, & use our form of govt & civic life

https://twitter.com/thesubtlenotes/status/1368946292597088259

Educating for American Democracy initiative provides tools to state, local school districts, & educators to make civics & history a priority so we as a country can rebuild our civic strength to meet our national challenges.
Two vastly diff presidential administrations support it

Transfers of political power, Homer Edition:

So elegant, concise, & masterful you miss it if you blink, Homer gives a genealogy via allegory of the succession of rule & power among humans, the progress of power & authority—in Iliad, Bk 2–thru a description of two scepters. After Agamemnon gets the dream to call a political assembly after his & Achilles big fight, to reaffirm his Supreme Commander status, Homer pauses to tell us Agamemnon got dressed & picked up his 'golden studded scepter.’ /2

1/“An obvious but overlooked form of reading material for the officer are the foundational docs that define her obligations. Officers swear an oath to the Constitution & they receive a large elaborate copy of their commission w/every promotion, but they don’t always...read these 2/“The commission defines the basis & scope of an officer’s authority, its grounding in the officer’s ‘patriotism, valid, fidelity, & abilities,’ & that it’s to be exercised “within the laws of the US of A.’...The Constitutional Oath offers guidance...

Happy Shakespeare Birthday-Day!

Whether poetic, political, philosophic, rhetorical, whimsical, fantastical, historical, cultural, or even pop-cultural, he’s our guy. The man that built the words of America. There are too many kinds of Shakespeare threads to do, so here’s a (hopefully) delightfully chaotic one. In the spirit of these Coronavirus times, the @FolgerLibrary is free streaming an acclaimed production of Lincoln’s fav play at 5pm tonight, Macbeth. folger.edu/shakespeare-bi…

So in the 19c German historian, FH Frolich, decided to figure out all the military casualties & their survivability/fatality stats in Homer’s Iliad, partly to understand the Greek understanding of military medicine.

Turns out you prob wanted to be hit by an arrow, def not spear

https://twitter.com/thesubtlenotes/status/1218597487486947329

Out of 147 wounds mentioned, 77.6% (114) were fatal, w/largest # by spear (106), swords (17), arrows (12), slings (12). Only arrow wounds had mortality rate < 50%, perhaps why name for person caring for wounds, iatros, is rooted in old Ionian word meaning “extractor of arrows”