Bitter-Enders

This paragraph in Richard Cohen’s column today on why Hillary hasn’t dropped out puzzled me a little bit:

In the end, no one begrudges a bitter-ender. Robert E. Lee is not vilified because he fought on too long, wasting lives and all of it, mind you, in the cause of slavery. In Israel, Masada is venerated because the zealots held out and killed themselves rather than surrender. Thermopylae is not considered a defeat but a lesson to us all: Never give up!

Hm. Well, I am by no means an expert on the history of the Civil War, but I’m pretty sure that a.) there are plenty of people in the northeast/west who do vilify Lee, and b.) he wasn’t really a bitter-ender, surrendering to Grant at Appomattox instead of engaging in a suicidal charge with what remained of the armies he still had in the field. And Masada is revered by the nation of Israel today because it represents a stirring moment of Jewish resistance to foreign occupation and the destruction of the state, its people, and its religion–a key moment of which, I suppose, is the supposed suicide of the remaining survivors.

But the line on Thermopylae really threw me. The lesson at Thermopylae wasn’t so much “never give up” as it was “some things are worth dying for.” The 300 Spartans (and their oft-forgotten Greek allies) marched to the hot gates because they knew they would die, and in so doing buy time for the rest of Greece and awaken the wrath of the full Spartan army. I mean, I guess “Never give up!” is part of that willingness to commit the ultimate sacrifice. But it’s certainly not the main lesson.