The American Spectator

p>We don’t pay much in blood any longer as a proportion of our glutted population. The best and brightest this Nation has to offer go to law school to figure out how to suit doctors to get rich the easy way; most of the rest go into politics to figure out how to get rich without suing anyone. What’s left are fighting and dying another political correct limited war that was supposed to define our future, again. Our military may have the Spartan reputation when fighting an enemy out in the open but they share another characteristic with them too. They are a bit Spartan in numbers too. The early Romans or Greeks would not suffer this kind half arse incremental approach to war. The latter Empires wanted Peace; they got war. br> — Thom Bateman br> Newport News, Virginia /p>

Though lyrical, Mr. Cella’s moving panegyric omits a coda two centuries long.

Byzantium’s end is not to be found by the shores of the Bosphorus, but overlooking the blue Caribbean, in a churchyard not ten miles from the International airport where the Concorde used to land in Barbados.

p>There, still projecting from the hallowed ground of St. John’s parish, can still be read a stone bearing this inscription, chastely framed by a Doric temple portico: br> /p> blockquote>HERE LYETH YE BODY OF br> FERNANDO PALEOLOGOS br> DESCENDED FROM YE IMPERIAL LYNE br> OF YE LAST CHRISTIAN br> EMPEROR OF GREECE