It was the 3rd century B.C.E. With the Roman army advancing across the Italian peninsula, the Greek city of Tarentum sent a desperate plea for help to King Pyrrhus of Epirus. Pyrrhus dispatched his ships across the Adriatic carrying some 20,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry, 2,000 archers, 500 slingers and 20 war elephants — the tanks of the ancient world.

Employing superior strategy and tactics, the Epirote forces defeated the Roman army in two successive battles. But those victories ultimately lost them the war. Although Rome suffered twice as many casualties, Epirus had no reserves left for another engagement.

"If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans," Pyrrhus said, "we shall be utterly ruined." Facing the inevitable annihilation of his forces, he fled Italy and sailed back to Epirus. A century later, the Roman Empire swallowed his kingdom as well, giving us this week's entry into the Ethical Lexicon:

Pyrrhic victory (pyr*rhic*vic*to*ry / pir-ick vik-tuh-ree) | noun

A triumph achieved at a cost so great that it leads to eventual defeat.

Centuries later, the Romans themselves learned the same lesson. Intoxicated by his own military and political victories, Julius Caesar indulged his lust for power until his own supporters saw him as a threat to the stability of the Roman Republic. The conspiracy led by his friend and ally, Marcus Junius Brutus, deposed Julius Caesar by murdering him. But the resulting power vacuum accelerated the collapse of the system the conspirators were trying to preserve.

Empowering our enemies to defeat us may be the most obvious form of Pyrrhic victory. But there are more insidious ways to lose by winning.

In the movie "Spy Game," the late Robert Redford plays Nathan Muir, whose operations for the CIA call on him to repeatedly violate the values of his own country and culture — always for the "greater good." In the end, the organization to which he's devoted his life prepares to blithely sacrifice Nathan's former protege for political expediency.

After failing to convince his boss to reconsider, Nathan remarks, "This used to be about something, didn't it, Troy?" In other words, when we become our enemy in the process of destroying our enemy, have we really won anything at all?

The scene flashed through my mind recently when I received a text from a friend, someone I like and respect, who has argued with me for years about the appropriate conservative response to illiberal ideology. He wrote, in part:

"Everything I said about how to destroy malignant leftism has found a champion in Trump. No compromise, no more BS about 'both sides do it,' no more efforts to compromise with evil and incivility."

Invoking the most polarizing and uncivil president since Andrew Jackson as a champion of civility is so absurdist it's hard to know how to respond. There's no question that far-left extremism poses an existential danger to any viable republic. But whatever battles we might win, we will inevitably lose the war if we become what we are fighting against. Refusal to seek common ground is as self-destructive a strategy as violence.

Days later, I came across a clip from Virginia State Rep. Nick Freitas, whom I have long admired and appreciated as a voice of reason. This time, however, he left me chilled:

"We aren't one people, are we? The truth is we haven't been for some time now, and there is really no point in pretending anymore, if there ever was."

The relentless attacks by the radical left on social policy, education and jurisprudence — together with so many of our foundational values and institutions — make it easy to empathize with these sentiments. But militant rhetoric only galvanizes progressive zealots while driving moderate liberals into their arms.

After the prophet Elijah rallied the people to repudiate the false priests of idolatry and overturn their temples, the Almighty warned him that enduring change never comes about through violent upheaval. Rather, it comes through the soft, still voice of moral clarity that builds gradually and irresistibly until it ultimately breaches the immovable wall of extremist ideology. We need to choose which battles to fight if we are truly determined to win the war.

See more by Yonason Goldson and features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists; visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Yen Vu at Unsplash