{"id":11548,"date":"2018-12-03T13:31:17","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T21:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11548"},"modified":"2018-12-03T13:31:17","modified_gmt":"2018-12-03T21:31:17","slug":"does-make-x-great-again-ever-happen-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/does-make-x-great-again-ever-happen-in-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Does \u2018Make X Great Again\u2019 Ever Happen in History?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"wpsdcp-drop-cap-default\">T<\/span>he short answer: Sometimes.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s one example. By 527 A.D., the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople seemed fated to collapse like the West had a near century prior. The Persian Sassanids were gobbling up Byzantine lands in the east. Almost all of old Rome west of Greece had already been lost.<\/p>\n<p>A growing and unsustainable administrative state exercised near control of Constantinople. Christianity was splintering into irrelevant factionalism. The law was a selective mess.<\/p>\n<p>Justinian was certainly an unlikely emperor: an outsider of peasant stock from the northern frontier, an Eastern Latin rather than Greek speaker (and likely the last native Latin-speaking emperor), who would marry an infamous but shrewd courtesan, Theodora.<\/p>\n<p>Yet in some 38 years of sometimes brutal rule, Justinian through the leadership of his brilliant generals, Belisarius and Narses, stabilized the eastern borders. He reclaimed for eastern Rome North Africa, Sicily, much of Italy, and some of Spain, often through small, well-organized armies and prudent alliances. He reformed the bureaucracy, systematized Roman law (<i>Codex Justinianus<\/i>), and built the magnificent Christian cathedral of Hagia Sophia\u2014the largest church in the world for a thousand years.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amgreatness.com\/2018\/12\/02\/does-make-x-great-again-ever-happen-in-history\/\">Read the full article here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness The short answer: Sometimes. Here\u2019s one example. By 527 A.D., the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople seemed fated to collapse like the West had a near century prior. The Persian Sassanids were gobbling up Byzantine lands in the east. Almost all of old Rome west of Greece had already [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1208,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-30g","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6355,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-siege-of-the-byzantium\/","url_meta":{"origin":11548,"position":0},"title":"The Siege of the Byzantium","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0National Review Online Today, August 15, marks the anniversary of Constantinople\u2019s victory over Muslim invaders in what historians commonly call the \u201cSecond Siege of Byzantium,\u201d 717\u201318. 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At least most of the names of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;April 2010&quot;","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5432,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/peace-to-whoever-follows-guidance\/","url_meta":{"origin":11548,"position":3},"title":"Peace to Whoever Follows Guidance","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"More al Qaeda double talk by Raymond Ibrahim National Review Online As with every message directed to the West, Osama bin Laden\u2019s most recent address begins and ends with his hallmark sentence: \u201cPeace to whoever follows guidance.\u201d What exactly are Americans and Europeans to understand by this simple statement? 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