Global politics now moves inside a theatre of illusions. On one side, Alain de Benoist insists that liberalism is modernity’s sickness. It dissolves communities into markets, flattens politics into technocracy, reduces people to utility calculators. He folds Marxism into the same Enlightenment universe and declares both finished. What remains is not policy but identity, a cultural revolt promising rootedness in a world of flux. On the other side, Jeremy Waldron says rights are not dreams but law. They are duties written into treaties, cases, and statutes. They exist so that individuals can stand against states, markets, and majorities. His voice is careful, precise, but fragile. Because lists of rights without economic guarantees are thin armour, easily bent into tools of power.
Both positions circle the same wound. Liberal universalism offers dignity but slips into legalism. Anti-liberal metapolitics offers meaning but amputates redistribution. Neither resolves the hollow centre where politics once lived. And so, in practice, rights become provisional, bent by executive discretion, narrowed by courts that operate on emergency timelines. The law itself starts to move in the shadows, rulings that are interim but final in effect. Freedom becomes a slogan, not a condition.
In Washington the theatre is open. Republicans hold hearings about Europe’s platform rules, but the real censorship comes from home. Trump sues the press, bans books, intimidates critics. His allies call it protecting free speech. Nigel Farage is flown in as a witness, styling himself as defender of liberty, but flees when confronted with his own record of silencing reporters and praising autocrats. The contradiction is naked: those who shout loudest about censorship are the ones practising it. Free speech becomes propaganda, a badge worn by those who strip others of the same. The assassination of Charlie Kirk folds into this narrative war, violence reframed instantly as symbol, accelerating demands for exceptional measures. In the echo chamber, tragedy is not mourned but mobilised.
Across the Atlantic, Keir Starmer governs as the image of stability. The tone is managerial, the language procedural. Yet a quiet authoritarianism thickens around the edges. Statutory lines about online harms harden into administrative discretion. Public debate narrows, not with the spectacle of repression but with the slow constriction of space. Rights are clipped in increments, defended in speeches but eroded in practice.
In Britain the loop is tighter. The country lives inside stories it once told about itself. In the 1980s leaders embraced Hayek’s myth that markets could replace politics. They declared that the future was unknowable, so best to let the price system decide. But markets do not run alone. They are engineered, stage-managed by laws and bureaucrats. While governments claimed to retreat, they were constructing a vast experiment: tearing away protections, atomising communities, leaving the solitary individual connected only by receipts and database entries.
Chantal Mouffe calls this post-democracy: voting without choice. Red and blue blurred into one another, all promising modernisation. Then the crash of 2008 smashed the illusion. People wanted enemies, they wanted friends, they wanted to know who had stolen their future. Intellectuals called it the populist moment. Mouffe saw a chance to radicalise democracy. De Benoist said it was only a mood. In Britain both are right. Anger is real but containers are broken. Labour is hollow, the unions weak, new movements collapse into mistrust. Corbyn and Sultana, once icons of hope, become symbols of dysfunction. Online streams show the mess in real time. Trust evaporates. If a movement cannot keep its own mailing list safe, how can it govern a nation?
The far right steps in. One hundred thousand march, maybe more, waving flags, shouting about migrants, belonging to something at last. Clive Lewis admits a childhood friend was there. Not a racist in his own eyes, just hungry for pride. That is the trick: the left offers policy, the right offers belonging. Immigration becomes the vessel because it is close, tangible, mythic. Technocrats describe efficiency, GDP growth. Farage tells a simpler story: blame Europe, blame the elites, blame the outsiders. It sticks. Now Britain speaks in parallel monologues: the left with structures and crises, the right with pride and invasion. Beneath both lies the hollow field of market rule, four decades deep. Populism fills the gap with conflict and drama, but without organisation it devours itself. The country is still haunted by Hayek’s ghost, pretending the future cannot be planned while planning endlessly for markets. The left cannot build trust. The right offers identity without answers. Millions drift in suspicion, waiting for a story that makes their lives cohere.
This hollowing is not local. It belongs to a global battlefield of perception. The U.S. Marine Corps University calls it political warfare. Information becomes weapon. States and mercenaries deploy bots, deepfakes, troll swarms. The goal is not persuasion but destabilisation: degrade trust, sow doubt, fracture alliances. Tragedies like assassinations are instantly folded into this warfare, images of chaos reinforcing the sense that only strong hands can restore order. Sun Tzu’s maxim holds: the highest victory is to win without fighting. Now it means subduing populations by corrupting their sense of reality itself.
The resolution, if any, cannot come from law alone, or from culture alone, or from economics alone. It needs all three at once — and something else. A resilience against the permanent condition of influence warfare. Transparency around emergencies. Guardrails against executive shortcuts. Platform governance that protects integrity rather than ideology. Civic institutions that reduce the precarity on which manipulation feeds. Without this, the triangle hardens: right-wing metapolitics without Marx, liberal legalism without economics, managerial centrism without democracy. Each claims freedom while unravelling it.
Liberal Haunting
Moderator: atreestump
Forum rules
No spam, no porn, no gore. Be Respectful.
No spam, no porn, no gore. Be Respectful.
-
kFoyauextlH
- Posts: 950
- Joined: Sun Jun 15, 2025 3:53 pm
Re: Liberal Haunting
It was written:
"
It needs all three at once — and something else. A resilience against the permanent condition of influence warfare. Transparency around emergencies. Guardrails against executive shortcuts. Platform governance that protects integrity rather than ideology. Civic institutions that reduce the precarity on which manipulation feeds.
"
This is about a hypothetical piece of fiction featuring "furries", nothing in the following should be taken seriously and nothing should be applied to real world events even if those are used as references for creative inspirational purposes:
How would ordinary people outside of the loop manage to have such occur and to maintain such? How would those inside any loops profiting, in their selfish and shortsighted greed, be motivated to work on doing that, and cynically "why should they"? They can not be made to see why they should work in favor of things that help more people, and the people are letting people with severe vision problems steer their ship, because they are busy with surviving at the end of their ropes, they must then let those at leisure due to their wealth do all that stuff which in reality puts their lives at risk while robbing them blind and practically imprisoning them one way or another.
People will not likely be convinced to do anything drastic even if their entire lives are clearly at their ends, as demonstrated by every h*l*caust(ic) event thus far.
The people at leisure are held hostage too, with inordinate fear that they will be more easily harmed by the public if they help strengthen them and taken out and cut off from their sometimes criminally acquired funds by others of their ilk, which may be how, besides just psych*pathic levels of total selfishness, they are kept "thick as thieves" among their criminal class and others in their conspiracy.
This is why genuinely mentally defective people are the only possible saviors of humanity, since sane people are locked and can not reasonably put themselves at risk, even as things close in on them, the logical calculation is that we should enjoy what little life we have left and leave the future for the trash heap we'll be spared from by an ideally natural death.
The only people who can be heroic now are those who don't value life, don't believe in death, and have hope in things that few, if any, really believe and prioritize over anything.
Mentally defective and dimwitted narcissistic people, ancestrally trained with a propensity for glory over life, the "brave" and the "braves", who want to live life as a picture, rather than life as alive, or with any concern about being deemed good or bad, need to offer themselves for sick selfies that they've been encouraged to take, they need to be dared to be daring by people who don't love them, unlovables sent to fight a war that otherwise can't be won by the precious or the precocious.
Even in such a mind war with the last expendables the brainwashers have the advantage. They've anticipated such and will even make it so themselves to rush out their response that they are so excited about, which is to lock themselves away and herd people using machines that can not be easily fought against, while the people are stripped of even facial gestures for fear that it will get them scanned as a potential threat to be rapidly surrounded.
If witchcraft was real, now is the time, for every one of those on the inside to turn against the other, for children to turn against their parents, for cannibalism in the hidden places so that animalism leads to delays and a lack of "noble" heirs to evil.
If a lycanthropic turn inwards amongst the elite does not spare us, in only a few short years, maybe months, there is practically no future, and then the only hope is in angst and boredom from the winners and their families, that they simply want to keep changing things for the sake of changing them, but maybe that os what it has always been, with the peasantry never being much more than pageantry.
https://geneticsunzipped.com/blog/2022/ ... -relatives
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cannibalism
"
When it was clear that Caesar had defeated the Gallic rebellion, Vercingetorix offered to sacrifice himself, and put himself at the mercy of Caesar, in order to ensure that his kinsmen were spared. After the defeat, Vercingetorix was brought to Rome and imprisoned for six years before being brought out to adorn Caesar's triumph over Gaul and then publicly executed. Today, Vercingetorix is seen in the same light as others who opposed Roman conquest; he is now considered a national hero in France and a model patriot.
"
"
In De Bello Gallico 6.21–28, Julius Caesar provides his audience with a picture of Germanic lifestyle and culture. He depicts the Germans as primitive hunter gatherers with diets mostly consisting of meat and dairy products who only celebrate earthly gods such as the sun, fire, and the moon (6.21–22). German women reportedly wear small cloaks of deer hides and bathe in the river naked with their fellow men, yet their culture celebrates men who abstain from sex for as long as possible (6.21). Caesar concludes in chapters 25–28 by describing the Germans living in the almost-mythological Hercynian forest full of oxen with horns in the middle of their foreheads, elks without joints or ligatures, and uri who kill every man they come across.
However, the distinguishing characteristic of the Germans for Caesar, as described in chapters 23 and 24, is their warring nature, which they believe is a sign of true valour (6.23). The Germans have no neighbors, because they have driven everyone out from their surrounding territory (6.23). Their greatest political power resides in the wartime magistrates, who have power over life and death (6.23). While Caesar certainly respects the warring instincts of the Germans,[3] he directs his readers to see that their cultures are simply too barbaric, especially when contrasted with the high-class Gallic Druids described at the beginning of chapter six.[4] For example, Caesar writes that robberies committed outside of the state are legalized in hopes of teaching young people discipline and caution, an idea nearly offensive to the judicial practices of the Romans (6.23). Caesar's generalizations, alongside the writings of Tacitus, form the barbaric identity of the Germans for the ancient world.
"
Weird, this clown thing is coming up a lot.
"
PapiriusCursor
•
9y ago
•
Edited 9y ago
I don't think there can be any question the Germans and Celts/Gauls were generally larger than Italians: that was the literary sterotype and the literature being written by and for (upper class) soldiers it could not have been completely made-up, and that these northern barbarians were generally large seems to be accepted by modern authorities (Todd 35).* The Roman literary cliche went something like this:
"The nation, which is now approaching, in a disorderly march, is one to whom nature has given minds and bodies of greater size than strength: for which reason, they bring to every contest more of terror, than of real vigour. The disaster of Rome may serve as a proof of this; they took the city, when every avenue lay open; but still a small band in the citadel and capitol are able to withstand them. Already tired of the slow proceedings of the siege, they retire and spread themselves over the face of the country. When gorged by food, and greedy draughts of wine, as soon as night comes on, they stretch themselves promiscuously, like brutes, near streams of water, without entrenchment, and without either guards or advanced posts; using at present, in consequence of success, still less caution than usual." (Livy 5.44)
This was part of a speech allegedly (it's a literary construction) given by Camillus to the people of Ardea whom he was trying to motivate to fight the Gauls who had taken over most of Rome in the aftermath of the disastrous Battle of the Allia in 390 BC. There are many similar references in Roman writers (especially in Livy), but this one contains all the usual cliches: the Gauls/Celts/Germans/etc are very large, brave and strong, and are formidable fighters, but their courage is not of the enduring sort. They lack discipline, endurance and training. That is to say, of the two core Roman military virtues they possessed virtus but not disciplina, and it was the latter that was considered peculiar to the Romans (Mattern 203, Phang 38). Their virtus and their physical size and strength made them very formidable, especially in the early stages of battle, but made them unsuited to extended fighting where wounds and exhaustion would cause their animus to fail them, a direct result of their lack of disciplina. Livy's account of Hannibal's march through the Italian swamps after the Battle of the Trebia in 217 BC emphasises this lack of physical endurance:
"...for [the Gauls], it had been found, want firmness to support fatigue. The troops in the van, though almost swallowed in mud, and frequently plunging entirely under water, yet followed the standards wherever their guides led the way, but the Gauls could neither keep their feet, nor, when they fell, raise themselves out of the gulfs, which were formed by the river from the steepness of its banks. They were destitute of spirits and almost hope; and while some, with difficulty, dragged on their enfeebled limbs, others, exhausted by the length of way, having once fallen, lay there, and died among the cattle, of which great numbers also perished. But what utterly overpowered them, was the want of sleep, which they had now endured for four days and three nights..." (Livy 22.2).
Here the Gauls are specifically contrasted with professional soldiers, the mercenaries that made up the majority of Carthaginian armies. 'Real' soldiers, as the Romans (quite rightly) considered themselves, were trained and had physical and moral endurance, which the Gauls lacked, despite their physical abilities and courage in battle.
However, the Romans of course did not cede superior virtus entirely to the Gauls: note that of the two major accounts we have of duels between individual Romans and Gauls (Titus Manlius Torquatus and Marcus Valerius Corvus), the Romans win. The Romans must have been very proud of these stories, though they were not necessarily typical: we might not expect Livy, a staunch patriot, to recount every instance in which such a fight did not go in the favour of Romans. There is clearly some tension on the part of Livy at least regarding physical appearance: regarding the duel of Titus Manlius c. 361 BC, Livy specifically mentions that while the Gaul was enormous the Roman was of "a middling stature for a soldier" (7.10). Livy also makes several mentions in later books of particular acts of bravery by Roman centurions, and he especially emphasises the remarkable physical size of these men (25.19, 26.5). Size was clearly viewed as an impressive military quality, for obvious reasons. That the Gauls appear to have had size in abundance was therefore a legitimate reason for them to be respected as warriors, but an even better reason for the Romans to take special pride in their humiliation and defeat.
I would say then that the Germans and Celts/Gauls were very much, on average "bigger" than the Romans, but they were not necessarily "better at fighting". As the Romans considered the essential military virtues to be not only manly courage or virtus but also the physical and moral quality of disciplina, a product of training and hard work, that the Germans and Gauls/Celts did not possess the latter was really a damning indictment of their military ability. They were good fighters, and the Romans respected them as such, but the Romans did not view them as having the qualities of soldiers. Rome's consistent success on the battlefield against Germans and Celts/Gauls after the 3rd century BC (with the prominent exception of Arausio) to some extent must validate the Roman view that organisation, order, training and discipline are at least as important as physical ability and courage in winning battles. Of course, while the Romans (especially Caesar, who mentions Gallic virtus a lot: see Rawlings 179) were often impressed by barbarian courage, that is also not to say they viewed them as more courageous than themselves: merely that they were worthy enemies, making it all the more impressive a victory for the Romans.
The question of whether the Germans and Gauls/Celts were better fighters than the Romans aside (wealthy Gauls/Celts who were similarly equipped to legionaries would have been particularly formidable fighters), there is however no question that the Romans possessed "superior military organisation". They had superior manpower, superior training, superior logistics and superior tactics. The Romans had the capacity to recruit, train, organise and deploy effectively innumerable numbers of well-equipped, good-quality soldiers for extended periods such that they had no close military competitors after the Second Punic War. That the Romans lost battles against 'barbarians' at all is a testament to the impressive military power of less well-organised but formidable peoples such as the Senones, Teutones or Cimbri. But these reverses made the Roman military organisation no less superior, only fallible.
*The literature may not seem like proof to some people, but that many military writers who actually lived at the time and encountered these peoples consistently wrote that they were generally quite large I think is fair evidence that this was a reality. The burden of proof in my view is really on those who don't believe the accounts of those who were actually there to provide conflicting evidence. There is however some good follow-up on this matter in the discussion below from u/Aerandir, u/XenophonTheAthenian. u/Steko has linked an interesting PhD paper on the matter. Annoyingly, this issue does not appear to be specifically addressed in the books I have consulted on the topic.
Sources:
Mattern, Susan P., Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1999.
Phang, Sara E. Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Rawlings, Louis. Caesar’s Portrayal of Gauls as Warriors, from Julius Caesar as Artful Reporter: The War Commentaries as Political Instruments eds. Kathryn Welch and Anton Powell, London: Duckworth/The Classical Press of Wales, 1998, 171-192.
Todd, Malcolm. The Early Germans: Second Edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
track me
Upvote
313
Downvote
u/KingDeath avatar
KingDeath
•
9y ago
Why would a part time soldier, who for most of his life works as a farmer, be even remotely comparable to a trained soldier when it comes to martial skill? Physical size might be because of genetics but is there any archeological evidence for the superior size of celtic/germanic people? Wouldn't a functioning state with a huge trade network hypotheticaly guarantee a much more constant level of nutrition (which is related to size) than a fractured, premodern agricultural society ever could?
"
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-people-ob ... -and-glory
https://legendsofwindemere.com/2024/12/ ... vs-infamy/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%2 ... _from_Hell
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_B ... tch_trials
"
More than 100 suspected witches in North Berwick were arrested. Several confessed under torture to having met with the Devil in the church at night, and devoted themselves to doing evil, including poisoning the King and other members of his household, and attempting to sink the King's ship.[3] In February 1591 James VI instructed David Seton or Seaton of Tranent to find accused people who had fled to England. The English ambassador Robert Bowes wrote that these fugitives were "the worst sort of witches".[8] David Seton's servant Geillis Duncan had been one of the first accused.[9]
Two significant accused persons were Agnes Sampson, a respected and elderly woman from Humbie, and Dr John Fian, a schoolmaster and scholar in Prestonpans. Both initially refused to confess and were put to severe torture. Sampson was brought before King James and a council of nobles. She denied all the charges, but after torture, she confessed. By special commandment, her head and body hair was shaved and she was fastened to the wall of her cell by a scold's bridle, an iron instrument with 4 sharp prongs forced into the mouth, so that two prongs pressed against the tongue, and the two others against the cheeks. She was kept without sleep and thrown with a rope around her head. After these ordeals she confessed to the 53 indictments against her. She was finally strangled and burned as a witch. According to Newes from Scotland, (1591), Sampson confessed to attending a Sabbat with 200 witches, including Giellis Duncan.[10][11]
Dr. Fian also suffered severe torture. His fingernails were forcibly extracted, then iron pins were inserted. He was tortured with the pilliwinks, and the boot. Fian was finally taken to the Castlehill in Edinburgh and burned at the stake on 16 December. Fian's testimony implicated Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell in a supernatural conspiracy, bringing a political element into the ongoing trials. According to Christopher Smout, between 3,000 and 4,000 accused witches may have been killed in Scotland in the years 1560–1707.[12]
"
"
In March 2022 Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, apologized for the persecution of alleged witches during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The Scottish government had not apologized previously.[25]
"
The "Witches" are the ones who are manipulating the general public in order to protect themselves.
"And Thatcher Is Still Dead", lol barely.
People are dying as they make sounds, just sounds, cockadoodledoo!
Masked even.
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/bl ... lationship
"
It needs all three at once — and something else. A resilience against the permanent condition of influence warfare. Transparency around emergencies. Guardrails against executive shortcuts. Platform governance that protects integrity rather than ideology. Civic institutions that reduce the precarity on which manipulation feeds.
"
This is about a hypothetical piece of fiction featuring "furries", nothing in the following should be taken seriously and nothing should be applied to real world events even if those are used as references for creative inspirational purposes:
How would ordinary people outside of the loop manage to have such occur and to maintain such? How would those inside any loops profiting, in their selfish and shortsighted greed, be motivated to work on doing that, and cynically "why should they"? They can not be made to see why they should work in favor of things that help more people, and the people are letting people with severe vision problems steer their ship, because they are busy with surviving at the end of their ropes, they must then let those at leisure due to their wealth do all that stuff which in reality puts their lives at risk while robbing them blind and practically imprisoning them one way or another.
People will not likely be convinced to do anything drastic even if their entire lives are clearly at their ends, as demonstrated by every h*l*caust(ic) event thus far.
The people at leisure are held hostage too, with inordinate fear that they will be more easily harmed by the public if they help strengthen them and taken out and cut off from their sometimes criminally acquired funds by others of their ilk, which may be how, besides just psych*pathic levels of total selfishness, they are kept "thick as thieves" among their criminal class and others in their conspiracy.
This is why genuinely mentally defective people are the only possible saviors of humanity, since sane people are locked and can not reasonably put themselves at risk, even as things close in on them, the logical calculation is that we should enjoy what little life we have left and leave the future for the trash heap we'll be spared from by an ideally natural death.
The only people who can be heroic now are those who don't value life, don't believe in death, and have hope in things that few, if any, really believe and prioritize over anything.
Mentally defective and dimwitted narcissistic people, ancestrally trained with a propensity for glory over life, the "brave" and the "braves", who want to live life as a picture, rather than life as alive, or with any concern about being deemed good or bad, need to offer themselves for sick selfies that they've been encouraged to take, they need to be dared to be daring by people who don't love them, unlovables sent to fight a war that otherwise can't be won by the precious or the precocious.
Even in such a mind war with the last expendables the brainwashers have the advantage. They've anticipated such and will even make it so themselves to rush out their response that they are so excited about, which is to lock themselves away and herd people using machines that can not be easily fought against, while the people are stripped of even facial gestures for fear that it will get them scanned as a potential threat to be rapidly surrounded.
If witchcraft was real, now is the time, for every one of those on the inside to turn against the other, for children to turn against their parents, for cannibalism in the hidden places so that animalism leads to delays and a lack of "noble" heirs to evil.
If a lycanthropic turn inwards amongst the elite does not spare us, in only a few short years, maybe months, there is practically no future, and then the only hope is in angst and boredom from the winners and their families, that they simply want to keep changing things for the sake of changing them, but maybe that os what it has always been, with the peasantry never being much more than pageantry.
https://geneticsunzipped.com/blog/2022/ ... -relatives
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cannibalism
"
When it was clear that Caesar had defeated the Gallic rebellion, Vercingetorix offered to sacrifice himself, and put himself at the mercy of Caesar, in order to ensure that his kinsmen were spared. After the defeat, Vercingetorix was brought to Rome and imprisoned for six years before being brought out to adorn Caesar's triumph over Gaul and then publicly executed. Today, Vercingetorix is seen in the same light as others who opposed Roman conquest; he is now considered a national hero in France and a model patriot.
"
"
In De Bello Gallico 6.21–28, Julius Caesar provides his audience with a picture of Germanic lifestyle and culture. He depicts the Germans as primitive hunter gatherers with diets mostly consisting of meat and dairy products who only celebrate earthly gods such as the sun, fire, and the moon (6.21–22). German women reportedly wear small cloaks of deer hides and bathe in the river naked with their fellow men, yet their culture celebrates men who abstain from sex for as long as possible (6.21). Caesar concludes in chapters 25–28 by describing the Germans living in the almost-mythological Hercynian forest full of oxen with horns in the middle of their foreheads, elks without joints or ligatures, and uri who kill every man they come across.
However, the distinguishing characteristic of the Germans for Caesar, as described in chapters 23 and 24, is their warring nature, which they believe is a sign of true valour (6.23). The Germans have no neighbors, because they have driven everyone out from their surrounding territory (6.23). Their greatest political power resides in the wartime magistrates, who have power over life and death (6.23). While Caesar certainly respects the warring instincts of the Germans,[3] he directs his readers to see that their cultures are simply too barbaric, especially when contrasted with the high-class Gallic Druids described at the beginning of chapter six.[4] For example, Caesar writes that robberies committed outside of the state are legalized in hopes of teaching young people discipline and caution, an idea nearly offensive to the judicial practices of the Romans (6.23). Caesar's generalizations, alongside the writings of Tacitus, form the barbaric identity of the Germans for the ancient world.
"
Weird, this clown thing is coming up a lot.
"
PapiriusCursor
•
9y ago
•
Edited 9y ago
I don't think there can be any question the Germans and Celts/Gauls were generally larger than Italians: that was the literary sterotype and the literature being written by and for (upper class) soldiers it could not have been completely made-up, and that these northern barbarians were generally large seems to be accepted by modern authorities (Todd 35).* The Roman literary cliche went something like this:
"The nation, which is now approaching, in a disorderly march, is one to whom nature has given minds and bodies of greater size than strength: for which reason, they bring to every contest more of terror, than of real vigour. The disaster of Rome may serve as a proof of this; they took the city, when every avenue lay open; but still a small band in the citadel and capitol are able to withstand them. Already tired of the slow proceedings of the siege, they retire and spread themselves over the face of the country. When gorged by food, and greedy draughts of wine, as soon as night comes on, they stretch themselves promiscuously, like brutes, near streams of water, without entrenchment, and without either guards or advanced posts; using at present, in consequence of success, still less caution than usual." (Livy 5.44)
This was part of a speech allegedly (it's a literary construction) given by Camillus to the people of Ardea whom he was trying to motivate to fight the Gauls who had taken over most of Rome in the aftermath of the disastrous Battle of the Allia in 390 BC. There are many similar references in Roman writers (especially in Livy), but this one contains all the usual cliches: the Gauls/Celts/Germans/etc are very large, brave and strong, and are formidable fighters, but their courage is not of the enduring sort. They lack discipline, endurance and training. That is to say, of the two core Roman military virtues they possessed virtus but not disciplina, and it was the latter that was considered peculiar to the Romans (Mattern 203, Phang 38). Their virtus and their physical size and strength made them very formidable, especially in the early stages of battle, but made them unsuited to extended fighting where wounds and exhaustion would cause their animus to fail them, a direct result of their lack of disciplina. Livy's account of Hannibal's march through the Italian swamps after the Battle of the Trebia in 217 BC emphasises this lack of physical endurance:
"...for [the Gauls], it had been found, want firmness to support fatigue. The troops in the van, though almost swallowed in mud, and frequently plunging entirely under water, yet followed the standards wherever their guides led the way, but the Gauls could neither keep their feet, nor, when they fell, raise themselves out of the gulfs, which were formed by the river from the steepness of its banks. They were destitute of spirits and almost hope; and while some, with difficulty, dragged on their enfeebled limbs, others, exhausted by the length of way, having once fallen, lay there, and died among the cattle, of which great numbers also perished. But what utterly overpowered them, was the want of sleep, which they had now endured for four days and three nights..." (Livy 22.2).
Here the Gauls are specifically contrasted with professional soldiers, the mercenaries that made up the majority of Carthaginian armies. 'Real' soldiers, as the Romans (quite rightly) considered themselves, were trained and had physical and moral endurance, which the Gauls lacked, despite their physical abilities and courage in battle.
However, the Romans of course did not cede superior virtus entirely to the Gauls: note that of the two major accounts we have of duels between individual Romans and Gauls (Titus Manlius Torquatus and Marcus Valerius Corvus), the Romans win. The Romans must have been very proud of these stories, though they were not necessarily typical: we might not expect Livy, a staunch patriot, to recount every instance in which such a fight did not go in the favour of Romans. There is clearly some tension on the part of Livy at least regarding physical appearance: regarding the duel of Titus Manlius c. 361 BC, Livy specifically mentions that while the Gaul was enormous the Roman was of "a middling stature for a soldier" (7.10). Livy also makes several mentions in later books of particular acts of bravery by Roman centurions, and he especially emphasises the remarkable physical size of these men (25.19, 26.5). Size was clearly viewed as an impressive military quality, for obvious reasons. That the Gauls appear to have had size in abundance was therefore a legitimate reason for them to be respected as warriors, but an even better reason for the Romans to take special pride in their humiliation and defeat.
I would say then that the Germans and Celts/Gauls were very much, on average "bigger" than the Romans, but they were not necessarily "better at fighting". As the Romans considered the essential military virtues to be not only manly courage or virtus but also the physical and moral quality of disciplina, a product of training and hard work, that the Germans and Gauls/Celts did not possess the latter was really a damning indictment of their military ability. They were good fighters, and the Romans respected them as such, but the Romans did not view them as having the qualities of soldiers. Rome's consistent success on the battlefield against Germans and Celts/Gauls after the 3rd century BC (with the prominent exception of Arausio) to some extent must validate the Roman view that organisation, order, training and discipline are at least as important as physical ability and courage in winning battles. Of course, while the Romans (especially Caesar, who mentions Gallic virtus a lot: see Rawlings 179) were often impressed by barbarian courage, that is also not to say they viewed them as more courageous than themselves: merely that they were worthy enemies, making it all the more impressive a victory for the Romans.
The question of whether the Germans and Gauls/Celts were better fighters than the Romans aside (wealthy Gauls/Celts who were similarly equipped to legionaries would have been particularly formidable fighters), there is however no question that the Romans possessed "superior military organisation". They had superior manpower, superior training, superior logistics and superior tactics. The Romans had the capacity to recruit, train, organise and deploy effectively innumerable numbers of well-equipped, good-quality soldiers for extended periods such that they had no close military competitors after the Second Punic War. That the Romans lost battles against 'barbarians' at all is a testament to the impressive military power of less well-organised but formidable peoples such as the Senones, Teutones or Cimbri. But these reverses made the Roman military organisation no less superior, only fallible.
*The literature may not seem like proof to some people, but that many military writers who actually lived at the time and encountered these peoples consistently wrote that they were generally quite large I think is fair evidence that this was a reality. The burden of proof in my view is really on those who don't believe the accounts of those who were actually there to provide conflicting evidence. There is however some good follow-up on this matter in the discussion below from u/Aerandir, u/XenophonTheAthenian. u/Steko has linked an interesting PhD paper on the matter. Annoyingly, this issue does not appear to be specifically addressed in the books I have consulted on the topic.
Sources:
Mattern, Susan P., Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1999.
Phang, Sara E. Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Rawlings, Louis. Caesar’s Portrayal of Gauls as Warriors, from Julius Caesar as Artful Reporter: The War Commentaries as Political Instruments eds. Kathryn Welch and Anton Powell, London: Duckworth/The Classical Press of Wales, 1998, 171-192.
Todd, Malcolm. The Early Germans: Second Edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
track me
Upvote
313
Downvote
u/KingDeath avatar
KingDeath
•
9y ago
Why would a part time soldier, who for most of his life works as a farmer, be even remotely comparable to a trained soldier when it comes to martial skill? Physical size might be because of genetics but is there any archeological evidence for the superior size of celtic/germanic people? Wouldn't a functioning state with a huge trade network hypotheticaly guarantee a much more constant level of nutrition (which is related to size) than a fractured, premodern agricultural society ever could?
"
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-people-ob ... -and-glory
https://legendsofwindemere.com/2024/12/ ... vs-infamy/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%2 ... _from_Hell
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_B ... tch_trials
"
More than 100 suspected witches in North Berwick were arrested. Several confessed under torture to having met with the Devil in the church at night, and devoted themselves to doing evil, including poisoning the King and other members of his household, and attempting to sink the King's ship.[3] In February 1591 James VI instructed David Seton or Seaton of Tranent to find accused people who had fled to England. The English ambassador Robert Bowes wrote that these fugitives were "the worst sort of witches".[8] David Seton's servant Geillis Duncan had been one of the first accused.[9]
Two significant accused persons were Agnes Sampson, a respected and elderly woman from Humbie, and Dr John Fian, a schoolmaster and scholar in Prestonpans. Both initially refused to confess and were put to severe torture. Sampson was brought before King James and a council of nobles. She denied all the charges, but after torture, she confessed. By special commandment, her head and body hair was shaved and she was fastened to the wall of her cell by a scold's bridle, an iron instrument with 4 sharp prongs forced into the mouth, so that two prongs pressed against the tongue, and the two others against the cheeks. She was kept without sleep and thrown with a rope around her head. After these ordeals she confessed to the 53 indictments against her. She was finally strangled and burned as a witch. According to Newes from Scotland, (1591), Sampson confessed to attending a Sabbat with 200 witches, including Giellis Duncan.[10][11]
Dr. Fian also suffered severe torture. His fingernails were forcibly extracted, then iron pins were inserted. He was tortured with the pilliwinks, and the boot. Fian was finally taken to the Castlehill in Edinburgh and burned at the stake on 16 December. Fian's testimony implicated Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell in a supernatural conspiracy, bringing a political element into the ongoing trials. According to Christopher Smout, between 3,000 and 4,000 accused witches may have been killed in Scotland in the years 1560–1707.[12]
"
"
In March 2022 Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, apologized for the persecution of alleged witches during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The Scottish government had not apologized previously.[25]
"
The "Witches" are the ones who are manipulating the general public in order to protect themselves.
"And Thatcher Is Still Dead", lol barely.
People are dying as they make sounds, just sounds, cockadoodledoo!
Masked even.
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/bl ... lationship
-
atreestump
- Posts: 857
- Joined: Sun Jun 15, 2025 3:53 pm
That’s too easy a surrender. To say only the “mentally defective” or suicidal can resist is to let the powerful write the ending for us. It’s the logic of the executioner: convince the condemned they are already dead, and they’ll stop struggling. Elites thrive on that passivity, on the idea that ordinary people can’t act because they are too tired, too precarious, too busy surviving. But history keeps proving them wrong. Revolts don’t come from leisure or safety — they come from desperation, from the moment when people decide they would rather risk everything than live one more day in chains.
The wealthy are not untouchable, they are brittle. They are locked in their own fortress of paranoia, clinging to wealth that isolates them from the world they fear. That’s not strength, it’s weakness disguised as control. If the rest of us accept the story that only monsters or fools can be heroes, then we’ve already ceded the ground. The truth is more dangerous for them: ordinary people don’t need to be flawless, or fearless, or even particularly united. They just need to stop believing in the inevitability of decline. The elites’ greatest weapon isn’t money or machines — it’s the story that nothing can change.
The wealthy are not untouchable, they are brittle. They are locked in their own fortress of paranoia, clinging to wealth that isolates them from the world they fear. That’s not strength, it’s weakness disguised as control. If the rest of us accept the story that only monsters or fools can be heroes, then we’ve already ceded the ground. The truth is more dangerous for them: ordinary people don’t need to be flawless, or fearless, or even particularly united. They just need to stop believing in the inevitability of decline. The elites’ greatest weapon isn’t money or machines — it’s the story that nothing can change.
-
kFoyauextlH
- Posts: 950
- Joined: Sun Jun 15, 2025 3:53 pm
Re: Liberal Haunting
Should we produce stories, art like images and music, that suggest positivity and a positive future? Would that be enough? What are some un-provocative and legal ways that individuals with very little resources or connections can pragmatically make things better than where they seem to be headed, without convincing people who seem "weak minded" furries to throw their lives away, including their time, their hard earned money, and without using many or any skills, which they may not possess, such as social ability or natural charisma or s*x appeal or anything else?
What can, lets say a furry who works all day in extended hours who barely can pay their bills, finds little to no time in leisure ir entertainment, who has a family they care about and are attached to, has no mental illness, is relatively logical but not particularly creative or "bright" or manipulative, just an every or any person sort, can't even cook due to fear their costume might set ablaze, what could they do pragmatically? Where could they find the time to do anything that would have any impact?
If it can't be them, then, and again this is for a Zootopia type scenario, what kind of person and what kind of conditions would be necessary, and what would that particular person matching up have to do, and how could they be convinced, or what would make it convincing for them to do anything different abd moreover what may be necessary according to what you suggest might work?
My choice for the story, were vile narcissists, and whispering into their ear that what would really get them top billing is if they stirred things up a bit, they could choose to be known that way, or to ride the chaos, or know that they were the ones who changed the world. It would be their ego called upon, and they would be moved to disconnect their thinking from any pragmatic concerns, like that they might not make it to enjoy their "success". Promoting a lack of education and more importantly belligerent levels of stupidity so that they become unmanageable for anyone, and making this the mainstream so that control of a drone becomes unthinkable. Meanwhile, hyper exclusive convoluted systems and code being necessary for operators of any technology, to effectively separate more and more and as many as possible from ever being able to wield or manufacture such things.
The idea is that the thing we despise the most, dumb f*cking brocolli style haircuts, might save everyone in the end.
Of course if there are more sensible ways than exaggerating what already seems to be metastasizing, like finding cures to the cancer, or at the very least way pleasant way to die, I'm eager to hear your best suggestions on the matter.
Personally though, even though this is hypothetical and for the purposes of fiction or furction rather, I would never be able to do any of what I'm suggesting here, and would only hope perhaps that whatever the winning strategy may be for good furs, there are people working at it, since I can only do things I think are directly moral, and would not metaphorically "bloody" or "sully" my hands, even if inaction from a lack of just options leads somehow to corruption overtaking the world, where in such a nightmarish case, I would not expect much of any of that to last as any sort of norm, and would think the depravity would reach such levels as to lead to self-furstruction.
What can, lets say a furry who works all day in extended hours who barely can pay their bills, finds little to no time in leisure ir entertainment, who has a family they care about and are attached to, has no mental illness, is relatively logical but not particularly creative or "bright" or manipulative, just an every or any person sort, can't even cook due to fear their costume might set ablaze, what could they do pragmatically? Where could they find the time to do anything that would have any impact?
If it can't be them, then, and again this is for a Zootopia type scenario, what kind of person and what kind of conditions would be necessary, and what would that particular person matching up have to do, and how could they be convinced, or what would make it convincing for them to do anything different abd moreover what may be necessary according to what you suggest might work?
My choice for the story, were vile narcissists, and whispering into their ear that what would really get them top billing is if they stirred things up a bit, they could choose to be known that way, or to ride the chaos, or know that they were the ones who changed the world. It would be their ego called upon, and they would be moved to disconnect their thinking from any pragmatic concerns, like that they might not make it to enjoy their "success". Promoting a lack of education and more importantly belligerent levels of stupidity so that they become unmanageable for anyone, and making this the mainstream so that control of a drone becomes unthinkable. Meanwhile, hyper exclusive convoluted systems and code being necessary for operators of any technology, to effectively separate more and more and as many as possible from ever being able to wield or manufacture such things.
The idea is that the thing we despise the most, dumb f*cking brocolli style haircuts, might save everyone in the end.
Of course if there are more sensible ways than exaggerating what already seems to be metastasizing, like finding cures to the cancer, or at the very least way pleasant way to die, I'm eager to hear your best suggestions on the matter.
Personally though, even though this is hypothetical and for the purposes of fiction or furction rather, I would never be able to do any of what I'm suggesting here, and would only hope perhaps that whatever the winning strategy may be for good furs, there are people working at it, since I can only do things I think are directly moral, and would not metaphorically "bloody" or "sully" my hands, even if inaction from a lack of just options leads somehow to corruption overtaking the world, where in such a nightmarish case, I would not expect much of any of that to last as any sort of norm, and would think the depravity would reach such levels as to lead to self-furstruction.