What does it mean to be “equivalent” anyway? I mean, the fact that we’d have to do some funky normalization to the standards of the era is itself an indictment of Spartan values, right? Every major power of even somewhat recent history is very decadent by their standards, including the Soviet Union. If somebody thinks Soviet feats were impressive, they should just adopt Soviet values instead I guess.
The claim was that liberal democracy not Sparta created nukes and stealth bombers, when Sparta didn't exist in the modern age, and couldn't have created such things no matter how they organized their society. This isn't a promotion of Spartan ideals, rather it's just pointing out that the comparison doesn't work for obvious reasons.
