On the heels of this earlier interview, don’t miss this Dartmouth Review article reporting on the recent “just war” debate between Professor Hanson and popular Dartmouth adjunct history professor Ronald Edsforth. Included in the article is this interesting report:

Edsforth proposed that the human race has learned the dangers of war, especially after the blood-soaked twentieth century. ?Evolution [of human behavior] is a fact,? he said. ?It didn?t stop back in ancient times? We are capable of learning as humans and changing our environment in such a way that that which we abhor is less and less likely.? . . . He proposed that the United States adopt a foreign policy for ?the twenty-first century, not the fifth century B.C., not the nineteenth century, not 1941.? The world sees ?war as a legacy of the imperialist era,? he added.
Hanson, though, maintained that the human race has not changed significantly in the past several thousand years. ?Human nature is set,? he said?it was ?primordial, reptilian,? adding that man is always ?governed by pride and fear and envy.? He cited Thucydides, who wrote that his works would remain valid through the ages precisely because human nature is unchanging. ?We have not reached the end of history.?
Whether human opinion changes is irrelevant to the question of human nature, Hanson said; . . .
At a question-and-answer session at the end of the debate, this view of human nature was the subject of much disdain by many members of the audience. One fellow questioned whether ?you and Homer and Thucydides two-thousand years ago? were cut out for modernity. Another asked Hanson when the war in Iraq would come to end??when will we reap the benefits of preemptive war???and wondered whether ?Pericles would have any advice for defeating suicide bombers in an urban environment.? Actually, Hanson retorted, the juxtaposition was poorly-chosen, as Peloponnesian War lasted for ?twenty-seven and a half years.?
During one of the lighter moments, Hanson jokingly observed that the Iraq war had made some unlikely allies. ?I never thought in my lifetime that Noam Chomsky and Pat Buchanan would have an alliance of convenience,? he said, smiling.