Quote Originally Posted by fishbum View Post

I wonder if the liberals in Hollywood and in the press understand what this movie really says.
Democracy only stands when good men die for it. Democracy must be defended and good men will volunteer to fight the fight and the people must stand behind them.
Reading this I am reminded of the phrase "history is written by the winners". The notion that Leonidas and the Spartans were fighting for democracy doesn't stand up very well to actual history.

Sparta at this time was a militaristic monarchy. There was no "Greece", but instead a splintered assortment of independent city-states, of which Sparta was probably the LEAST democratic. Sparta's ruling elite oppressed a slave class called the helots, and held an annual festival in which young Spartan men were allowed to kill a few helot slaves for fun.

In terms of a democratic society, the Spartans weren't much different, and sometimes worse, than the Persians they fought.