Syriza looking for help from the Brits in its struggle with the German bankers?
And what about those marbles, anyway?
Says BBC, the marbles were removed in 1801 by agents of the British diplomat Lord Elgin and in 1816 they were sold to the British Museum.
Did Elgin's agents buy them from someone?
Did anyone own them?
What happened?
The BBC account certainly makes it sound suspicious.
Did Elgin just steal them?
The Telegraph on the question.
Looks to me like Elgin owned them fair and square.
He and the British Museum did the world a favor, despite the malicious claims of the anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist left.
And that's why the Greeks backed down.
A general observation.
The world knows well that art, antiquities, and indeed anything rare that needs preservation is safe in the hands of the rich.
Safer than at the mercy of some governments, subject as they are to agendas.
Another reason to be grateful the Egyptian army pushed out the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps.
And to worry about Libya, Turkey, and even Syria?
An ethical question for cosmopolitan liberals, utilitarians, and other global leveling moralizers.
Isn't every penny spent creating and preserving cultural treasures that could be spent alleviating global poverty, diminishing global inequality, a penny misspent?
Did not Aquinas write and is it not Catholic teaching that everything a man has beyond what he needs belongs rightfully to the poor?
Is not the very existence of cultural treasures, including perhaps most poignantly religious cultural treasures, an affront to global social justice?
For those who are fans of such things.
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