I think Sparta does have an important lesson to teach our society, summarized: "The wealthy, if left unchecked, will suck society dry even as it crumbles around them. Even if the evidence society is crumbling is plainly obvious to everyone, they'll just keep right on sucking until there's nothing left."

Generation after generation the Spartiate class was shrinking, and the Spartan rulers did nothing to stop it. "Why?" is the question we should be asking, it's obvious that when you're part of an elite class dominating society, and the number of fighting age men your class can field is declining from thousands to hundreds, that that's going to be a problem some day... Yet they did nothing to stop it until the whole system crashed.

That's the lesson we should be learning from Sparta.

The best lesson from Sparta is that fascism is ineffective. Secret police don't suppress slave rebellions. Myths alone can run a society, but mostly just run it into the ground. Legislators should be selected by the populace, not appointed based on being an old angry man. Estate taxes are central to preventing austerity.

Mostly, though, fascism is ineffective.

Sparta was independent for over 500 years, and one of the most powerful cities in the Hellenic world for most of that time. If the US is that ineffective it will do very well and the US has the second longest run of unbroken self rule among extant states behind the UKGB&NI, counting England as its progenitor.

There has been one successful slave revolt in recorded history and it wasn’t in Sparta. Legislators can be selected any way that leads to state survival in the end. Estate taxes have bugger all to do with austerity.

The Spartans aren’t pawns in our current political drama. They existed for themselves not for us. A great deal in how they lived was odious but they were no more fascist than they were Christian.

The commenter you are replying to was probably referring to the Messenians, which were Spartan helots for a long time, but not forever.

I don't really like your "one successful slave revolt" statement, because it depends on the meaning of "successful" and "slave", so it seems interesting at first, but it is not really possible to think or argue about it without restating it in a clarified form first (even though there is some truth in the statement). I suppose you were thinking about the Haitian Revolution?

Congratulations, you've fallen for ancient propaganda. Educate yourself [0][1][2] and don't have weird links in your profile.

[0] https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypteia

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helots