James Kierstead
1 min readOct 3, 2019

Thanks for speaking out! It’s interesting to hear what you have to say, since I’ve never taken part in any of the PI’s activities. At the same time, though some of the things you say sound pretty serious, I wonder about some of the others. For example, making a joke about FDR doesn’t sound so bad to me. (I guess some people don’t like FDR; or maybe they were just making a joke about him.) And the point that Jason Pedicone made about Gaul (that violence preceded stability) is one I’ve seen quite a few times in historiography, and is definitely arguable, though I think you’re right to think it raises important questions of moral philosophy.

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James Kierstead
James Kierstead

Written by James Kierstead

Senior Lecturer in Classics, Victoria University of Wellington. Ancient democracy, classical liberalism, Old Comedy.

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Sorry, I’ve just re-read the start and remembered these are accounts from several different people. (Thought that doesn’t affect the concerns I raised above.)

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