Some reader points on my comments on JPod’s comments about the Amish killings.
Q. Isn’t Eris the Goddess of discord, not hate?
A. Not being a classicist, I couldn’t say. Richmond Lattimore, however, was a classicist, and in his translation of The Iliad he says “the wearisome goddess of Hate” in the book 11 reference, and “strong Hatred, defender of peoples” in the Book 20 reference, so I have some expert support here.
Q. Do you really want us to emulate Bronze Age morality? Should we start taking enemy women as slaves, for example?
A. I kicked that one around some here. In brief: No, but I do believe it is foolish to attempt to deny essential human nature, of which the propensity to hate those who wrong us is an invariant component, today just as much as in the Bronze Age.
I’ll go a bit further than that. A civilization that can’t summon up some pretty widespread hatred for a man who lines up little girs and shoots them in their heads, after having been foiled in an attempt to molest them, is a civilization with a spring broken somewhere.