I'm still finding nuggets in Standpoint magazine's excellent first issue. Editor Dan Johnson has got a good little piece in the Counterpoints section about a concept that I hadn't heard of before called thumos: "a spiritedness and ferocity in defence of clan, tribe, city, or state".
It's a concept inspired by Plato and Aristotle and developed by Harvey Mansfield in this speech and Robert Kagan in this book. Johnson notes:
"Interestingly, the most characteristic modern example of thumos in action cited by Mansfield is actually a woman: Margaret Thatcher. But unless men — and it usually is men — preserve enough thumos to be prepared to die for their country, they become decadent and ultimately subservient. Without thumos, the West lacks the manly qualities that a civilisation requires to survive.
... Back in the Cold War, nobody talked about thumos. The omnipresent threat of mutually assured destruction did not leave much room for spirited temperaments at the helm. But the world since 2001 is learning the importance of sheer bloody-mindedness in seeing off a ferocious foe. Mansfield and Kagan are right: this is an old idea whose time has come. The answer to terror and tyranny may indeed be thumos."
Reviving thumos neatly sums up Standpoint's noble mission - a hugely important mission which I know we at ConservativeHome would heartily endorse.
