Is this what Pompeo means by human rights and freedom of religion?
"So the Persians took Sardis and made Croesus himself prisoner, he having reigned fourteen years and been besieged fourteen days, and, as the oracle foretold, brought his own great empire to an end. Having then taken him they led him to Cyrus. Cyrus had a great pyre built, on which he set Croesus, bound in chains, and twice seven Lydian boys beside him: either his intent was to sacrifice these first fruits to some one of his gods, or he desired to fulfil a vow, or it may be that, learning that Croesus was a god fearing man, he set him for this cause on the pyre, because he would fain know if any deity would save him from being burnt alive."
Maybe not. At a guess, he knows almost nothing about Cyrus, except that he conquered Babylon and thereby released the Jewish aristocracy from captivity.
Recommend that Pompeo should read Herodotus. He'll discover Cyrus lived in an era long before human rights were imagined.
But I will offer a word of encouragement. Keep reading history. Nice to see something other than the Nazis and US presidents in American political discourse.
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