War had an entirely different social, religious, and political framework than just killing people. That comparison is really problematic. How societies justified warfare varied, but war is not just a larger scale of murder when talking about psychology and socio-cultural logic. 

I don’t think you can write off Livy, despite his biases, precisely because I know there are parallels in other Indo-European societies. I mentioned that in another comment, but “marriage by abduction” generally involves the consent of the women. That’s not proof Livy is telling the truth by any means, but the tribal…

I stated my “angle” clearly. You’re fueling the “dark past” myth by making broad generalized claims based on projecting modern information onto the past. It’s bad history.

They got married, and later were a key variable in brokering peace between the Romans and the Sabines because they didn’t want their husbands or their kin to die. The Sabines agreed to combine with Rome, and settled with the Romans. You could have found this out on Wikipedia.

I saw the downgraded numbers. I wrote a paper arguing that the invocation of R2P was probably invalid given the lower numbers, based on the initial paper proposing R2P. Though that was after the fact, and no one had any reason to doubt those numbers given Gaddafi’s behavior.

The brilliant philosopher of the modern right, everyone.

I’m not, it’s a problem, but the evidence it existed in the past is, as far as I know, thin. I’m sure it did happen in the past, there will always be abusive men, but on the level of the modern societies? No. The status of women fundamentally took a nosedive in the early modern period, removing legal rights they’d…

Most political nicknames are dumb. But it makes a good soundbite, and it’s stuck, so it’d be political malpractice to abandon it while it still has use.

Status and wealth matter. I’d argue ancient laws that provide no recourse for low status women who are raped, whether slaves or some other form of low status, isn’t terribly different than how police treat prostitutes now. They’re low status, often abuse and trafficked, and generally have no real recourse inside the…

It’s not impossible, but I think that framing is skewed. It can be technically true while still remaining misleading, particularly his usage. It’s also impossible to know. But it still feeds the “dark past” myth that people like King use to diminish their own dangerous views.

“Widely used and accepted” needs some citation behind it. Raping a slave was legal in Rome, for example, but only because slaves had no legal personhood. I’m not denying such things took place. I’m firmly denying it was normative. You’re talking largely about the modern era, which has a firmly different set of ideas…

Uh, you got a source on that? There’s a thorough debate on Neolithic levels of violence, the evidence is mixed, but you’ve shot way past that. This is that “dark past” myth I’m talking about.

Off the top of my head? In both Norse law and Early Irish law. Early Irish law includes having sex with a drunk woman as rape, though there’s some exceptions that are complex and related to status that I’d need a small paper to explain. 

Probably not. Abortion was a lot more common in the past than he thinks. Far more likely most of us have an illegitimate ancestor somewhere, if you’re from a part of the world that used that social structure.

You really can’t dis-aggregate misogyny from racism and other bigotries. They go hand-in-hand the vast majority of the time.

The failures after doesn’t change that the intervention stopped Gaddafi from mass murder. It’s not the US fueling Haftar, or that propped up so many militias (many formed after the intervention ended). It is the fault of the US that there wasn’t a better international diplomatic push to help build institutions in…

Couple of things. One, you think people would have been happier being murdered by Gaddafi? There’s no sign doing nothing would have led to less death. Could’ve led to a lot more.

This comment really brought out the rabid supposed “anti-imperialists” who love to screech the word “regime change” but don’t have the analytic depth to actually support their ideological position. It’s easy to justify your position if you don’t study any of the cases in detail.

He absolutely has indirect influence. But there’s a massive gap between that and directing or killing a story. In gossip-happy DC, that’d get out. It seems far more likely to me there’s individual bias working there. I mean, we’re on an article about Tanden, who is still fighting pointless battles as a “Clinton…

They hire the same set of insiders most big papers do, particularly for editorial stuff and on domestic politics. Their op-ed page has some awful folks. It seems to me like their recent swing leftward has had a lot of people forget they’ve always been an insider institution largely supported by wealthy elite class…