PROLOGUE

 

1. As Max Weber observed, the “medieval knights made feudal social organization inevitable; then its displacement by mercenary armies and later (beginning with Maurice of Orange) by disciplined troops led to the establishment of the modern State.” Max Weber, Economy and Society (University of California Press, 1978), 904 – 908. It is also to Weber that we owe the idea that the State seeks a monopoly on legitimate violence. Max Weber, “Politics as Vocation,” in Essays in Sociology, ed. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Routledge, 1970), 77 – 78.

2. Frederick Turner, Natural Classicism: Essays on Literature and Science (Paragon House, 1985) and The Culture of Hope: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit (New York: Free Press, 1995).