Trump declared Antifa a terrorist organization in response to Charlie Kirk assassination, this number one Calypso show broadcast from Barbados. I tell you, though, I disappoint a general response to this crisis in the wake of political assassination escalation. This is Man of Power episode 197, Caribbean rhythms. I will talk live for Emilius Paulus, ancient Roman. Last time I talk one of most decadent Romans, actually. One of most decadent men of all time, Elagabalus, the emperor. Now I talk classic Roman virtue hero from Republican era still. This is man who conquered Macedonia for Rome, immediate successor state to Alexander, and brought, well, there was still mop-up operations. Rome had to take over fully Spain and fully finish off Carthage by this time. This is around 170 B.C.

But anyway, that's in second part of episode. I am disappointed in much of what Trump doing this week reintroducing stupid random tariffs idea. It is huge distraction. I warn you. I wish Menaquin on four came back. He says much good on this warning on tariffs warning on China. I'm warning you again that you are putting at risk the concrete good that you can do in terms of immigration and of suppressing the far left, which are attainable goals within this administration, but you put them all and the future of United States at risk by meddling with economic matters that not only do I think you are wrong about them, but even if you were right, they are too risky to fix right now. They would take years to see benefits. You don't have years.

Maybe leave them off for future events or whatever Eric Prince directorate to take care of the economic reorganization of United States, which I repeat to you, you cannot do without addressing the genocracy problem. But that's a big subject for another time. There are missed opportunities in addressing the crisis looming now in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination. On one hand, I want the Trump administration to take its time. Who wants to see them react quickly in a symbolic way and that would just satisfy emotions without, You know, I want them to deal a death blow to the far left in America. It means arresting a large number of their operatives, freezing the funds of a lot of their NGOs, banning their NGOs, seizing the assets of billionaires who have funded this.

And it's what Trump frankly should have done in his first term during the Floyd riots when he had to go after their leaders and funding. And instead of doing that, now tell me what the left would do if far-right mobs started to burn down cities and police stations around the country. And let's say they were self-identifying openly as neo-Nazis and dark Nazi billionaires, so called, were funding it. Because that, in 2020, was a well-organized color revolution thing. It was not spontaneous. They were just waiting for the pretext, which happened to be Floyd. And because of Trump's inaction during that time, now not only, I don't want to blame it of course, yes, I think they would have shot Charlie Kirk regardless and probably will shoot many others.

But that was the time to have taken them on. There's still time though. Do it now. The lives of great many Americans are at risk also from far leftist terror. I don't think the statute of limitations though has gone out on what happened in 2020, Mr. Trump and the people who funded the burning of Minneapolis and other American cities, who organized a mob to storm the White House and kill Trump in May of 2020. They tried this with, by the way, the passive collusion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States military, who made a statement before the mobs entered Washington, D.C., that they would stand down. You had before and you have now plenty of cause to go after all these people finally to cleanse the top brass of the military. This was Bolsonaro's mistake also.

Now he going to jail forever because, and I don't know if it would have been within his power to do it, but he had to cleanse the top ranks of the military. By the time of the election, it was too late. You see, he tried to get the military to intervene during the COVID lockdowns because he had constitutionally the authority to order the governors not to lock down. They disobeyed him. He told the military to move in and the military disobeyed him because they listened to maybe United States, some say, maybe China, they are in any case compromised men, and he should have cleansed, reformed the top ranks of the Brazilian military well before then, but he did not. Again, maybe I say too much, I don't know enough about Brazilian structure of government to see if he could have done so.

But certainly in America it can be done, you engineer a crisis or a scandal, this is what the tailhook scandal in the early 1990s was. I tell you that the far left represents existential danger for America, if you know, I've known some of these people since I was 18 and before, they are murderous cunts. The absurdity of their aims aside, I even think the aims are entirely a pretext for the outpouring of human bile. In this case, more than other historical instances of the left that I know of, with the possible exception again of Argentina in the 20th century, there is just something about the new world that can let out, I think, the worst excesses of murder. I feel it intuitively, I can't prove it.

If it hasn't happened so far, it's only because in South America, you always had various dictators stepping in at the last minute, stopping it. And in the United States, it just hasn't accelerated yet. Now Trump making statement about Zohran Mamdani, Mahdi or whatever his name is in New York, where Trump is saying he will not fund leftist measures. But everyone knows that Mamdani or equivalent coming to power regionally or in a city, it's not about, they can't do their promises of leftist supermarkets and so on. And I think deep down that voters know that also. See these kinds of warnings don't work because leftist voters vote generally for the same reasons the rightist ones do because they want to stick it to the other side.

And then leftist politicians like Mamdani, AOC, and so on, they cannot achieve legally their promises of whatever free Twinkies for their obese, retard, beige-eyed masses and so on. can do is neuter the local police, have them stand down and turn the city into a giant shithole. The second thing they can do is redirect public resources and funds to leftist NGOs, informal Antifa organizations, and have the city basically as a base of operations for the far left. And this is how the far left in South America understands its role also. This is how the president of Argentina before Millet, I think it was Fernandez, he was some rat-like looking person. He was not able to achieve socialist promises of any type. The country was in a tailspin.

But he had Argentina available to the international left to meet, to organize, to plan takeovers in other countries. They are not interested in achieving governance aims, so to threaten them on that is pointless. You have to change the way you think to a war footing. I'm not saying use war, but a war type of thinking. In any case, it was not the case, by the way, with European Marxism, where everyone involved basically was a murderous, they happened to be murderous in practice, but there were individuals there who I think were genuinely convinced by the world historical, call it fate or providence or scientific inevitability of dialectical materialism to deliver the workers' paradise. They saw themselves as a vanguard of history through the workers' revolution and the justice

of that, and didn't seem to be motivated by any overt, seething need for revenge. They ended up being murderous too, but they weren't, I think, fundamentally, in all cases at least, or even in many prominent ones, driven primarily by that, whereas in the New New World, they are is what I'm saying. I've seen nice upper middle class kids frothing at the mouth with the need for blood and to kill. It's really subhuman types that the modern world for whatever brings up to the surface. And in whose case, in the case of these types of human beings, the leftist ideology is a pretext. I'm telling you, it has the potential, even if 1% of this evil potential, if this is actualized, It will be a bloodbath in America. And if you let things out of hand and you let them come to power, in some situation

it can happen. Let's say a left-wing administration takes America in a future election. Maybe there's a recession or depression. They take over maybe even as soon as 2028 and it gets out of hand because even the libtards don't see what they've allowed to happen in their inner ranks. And then they lose to the radicals internally, as often happens in these situations. That's what took place both French Revolution, at first there were the moderates and then the hard core took over and same in the Russian Revolution in 1917. The left radical side of those revolutions eventually took the helm and it can get out of hand very fast if you get even a few years or even a few months reign of terror with a very high kill count.

In my intuition, it can tell me, if it happened in America, my intuition is it would be worse than what you can imagine and than what happened in Europe, again because of the particular character of the left, its purely murderous psychological orientation in the new world. Think the types of people that Rittenhouse accidentally shot at the BLM Floyd riots, where he shoots into a crowd of people pursuing him, by chance hits three kiddediggler convict communists with deformed faces out of orc Lord of the Rings. And if you want people like that in your neighborhoods, leading squadrons of newly deputized federal police after your local police has been disbanded. And yes, I'm very sure you'll resist them, your neighbors will form, you know, with guns.

I mean, you never have before and you have no organization or experience of organization. But look, I'm being sarcastic. I have no doubt some people would resist and even effectively. But then they call in drones guided by trannies at the center in Tampa. And look, my point is you don't want it to get to that. You must avoid at all costs things getting in that direction. And the thing is, what I see in response to Charlie Kirk's assassination is not inspiring so far because, granted, I hope the Trump administration has assembled a team and it's carefully compiling a list of targets and a plan of action. I mean, I hope this, yes, they are doing this, I hope, but that doesn't mean that while you do that and you take your time to do actually effective things. It doesn't mean you need to be

in the meanwhile a big lumbering sucker and stay with your arms hanging by your sides while you're taking further punches in the face. I mean the attacks on ICE and other officials are being carried out now. It accelerated in the open since the Charlie Kirk administration and actually you can arrest those people doing that right now okay if they're terrorists maybe you can even move them to a center in the Yucatan, I don't know, have the, outsource the questioning to the Sinaloa brothers. Outsource it, I don't know, to Guantanamo, but outsource it to your friends in Montenegro. I don't know, do something. The organization, you don't need to take punches in the face from masked left-wing radicals who call themselves Antifa communists and they're attacking government agents.

I'm sorry, think about if it was the other way around. for a moment and you had neo-nazi self-declared attacking federal buildings, attacking police officers. They would use machine guns on neo-Nazis, okay? You know that they would. Spare me this about, oh, they're American citizens and you can't do, okay, maybe you can't do machine guns. You can do something, you can just shoot a couple of rubber bullets in their leg and then they become a martyr, it's complete stupid. The organizations they work for, you can raid right now, provisionally, arrest the staff working there, arrest the billionaires funding them, as carrying out an insurrection against the United States government, as you would absolutely do with the applause of all the right and the left

if this was again being done by self-declared neo-nazis. They did that to grandmothers, not to neo-nazis, grandmothers who were given a tour of the Capitol on January 6th by Capitol Police, okay? Completely peaceful protest, They tore down their gates and brutalized them in prison. Well, you can just do that now to these crowds of Antifa terrorists. But what really gets to me in all of this is the reaction, not so much of the American government, which, okay, you can say that they will do something, they've already done plenty. I send congratulations that they did declare Antifa a terrorist organization, which is what I recommended last time on this episode. It was done very swiftly. That's powerful. Let's not look gift horse in the mouth.

Trump administration doing more than any historical administration I would have dreamed of. I can congratulate them on that and let's hope they actually follow through in the coming weeks and months. Let's see. However, in the meantime, what gets to me is not this US government, but Charlie Kirk's own friends and family. See, they are not the government. They are not under the same constraints and where the administration should act in a cold and strategic way. I prefer frankly that they do that to having Mr. Miller come on TV and emote. Enough of the emoting and loud talking. I love Stephen Miller. The people around him I hear are extremely serious people and what he's doing in this administration is amazing, but I don't enjoy the emoting on TV. Leave that to others.

you are the leaders of the government, but so they should act cold and strategic, but Kirk's friends by no means should. He's your friend, and how can you just stand there? Where are the rallies? I'm not saying do violence or something, but what are rallies with his college men chanting death to Antifa for killing your friend and leader? And if that's too foreign and scary for you of a chant, why not liberty or death, something that's within American norms. You can carry a portrait of Kirk and come out to the show force and send a strong message that he will be remembered and avenged and that you are driven by energy. What are the self-defense organizations where the squads being organized by his supporters in the wake of his assassination?

You have you had before, frankly, but you certainly have political cover or capital now. It's also, I think, a big abandonment of responsibility to not have further rallies and then to protect them with your own people. Have they even announced that, yes, this is a real danger that any one of us could have been shot. Let's organize judo and self-defense squads at least. It's not shooting squads where you train shooting, which I see nothing wrong with. That's not violence. But how about judo self-defense squads and advertise the creation of Turning Point USA self-defense gyms in response to this? and then a big, some, a few public shows of force. Instead, you're all acting like a bunch of dopes, and then to top it off, the pathetic response from the conservative pundits

and the heads of the Department of Justice, the vapid MILF, Pam Bondi, who should be doing bank boss gangbangs, she should not be in government, who made statement blaming the assassination, she blamed it on nihilism, and she called for the government, if you can believe this, to target nihilism and irony, I suppose, For Chris Rufo, who I hear is an effective PTA activist, has made similar statements that memes are to blame. Internet memes. This is what I hear also that in Washington, maybe you could dismiss this with Rufo and other influencers. Yes, one just wrote, I think it was for First Things or some other magazine like this National Review, he blamed Charlie Kirk's assassination on internet pornography, the danger of internet at pornography in turning people into assassins,

if you can believe that is their priority. Now, you can say, well, these are lame pundits, they're blowhards, they need a take, they need some content to write an article. I understand that, people say all kinds of things. But it's not just them doing this. It is, again, Pam Bondi, head of whatever she is, Justice Department, she's Attorney General, right? And then, it's not just that. I hear from people in Washington, D.C. I have ears and eyes in every major and minor city in the United States. I hear in D.C. especially, this is a very powerful type of thinking in the political circles also, especially older, old-trune Republicans trying to shift the blame on the internet, on freedom of expression. They don't call it, They don't call it that freedom of expression on the internet.

They use dark words like memes corrupting our youth's minds. Same thing as satanic messages in the 1980s in rock music, you play it backwards. There's not much more of this I can take. Megyn Kelly, or whoever it is, blaming it. I'm not making it up, she's blaming it on witches, saying that feminist witches, literally using black magic, feminist black magic made a spell and placed it on Charlie Kirk before his assassination, and she's blaming it on that, you know, or jerking off on the internet. Yeah, that's what, you know, I don't know, I don't know. I can't say I enjoyed the memorial service either. It's not my thing, okay? It's kind of sentimental church lady emotism, and it sends a message of weakness, I will say. That's not my kind of right wing. My kind is I like Roger Tranquer.

I refuse to pronounce it correctly because I am Soviet block peasant. It's spelled T-R-I-N-Q-U-I-E-R. He's Frenchman. Look him up, French special forces commander in the 20th century. Wrote book called Modern Warfare, and you can find it on the United States military websites. It's in PDF. You can read it in one or two sittings. Short book, easy reading. I hope somebody in White House understands the kind of thinking necessary here. It isn't because, oh, it's a war book, and oh, that means you need to send tanks on the streets. That's not what the book means or what I'm saying. It's not tactless, heavy-handed things. It's quite the opposite. It's a way of thinking about politics. War, fundamentally, correctly understood, war is a way to think about politics.

And modern war is clandestine war. And it's simply the extension of Clausewitzian thinking about politics, which is apparently completely foreign, especially to the conservatives in the United States. for all their talk of Carl Schmitt and this, that's another part of the discourse now, you hear in a Reason magazine or whoever having a debate about Carl Schmitt, and basically both his supposed promoters on the right and the people criticizing them have no idea apparently what Carl Schmitt says or means. This is the state of discourse. Please have another conference on the Antichrist. We can discuss 2,000-year-old Judean mythology prophecies. This apparently what we must all talk now, or rehash debates about Carl Schmitt from 2004. It's big intellectual stuff, you know?

But listen, yeah, Clausewitzian thinking about politics, which is real politics, it's complete alien in many ways, unfortunately, to the conservative movement mind. But you need a team that takes that seriously, you know? not demons in my iPhone, and memes did this, and I need to read Carl Schmitt, you know, so let's control what our children see on the internet, and that thing, you need, you need Erik Prince and Roger Tranquer, this other stuff is a dead end. It's made, it's made much easier for you, because as you can see from this book, and Tranquer had extensive experience guerrilla, counter-guerrilla warfare in Indochina and Algeria, and he was in difficult situations, similar to American situation in Iraq and Afghanistan having to do with counterinsurgency.

That's hard. It's not hard in the United States sense. Okay, why? It's made much easier for you, just circumstances you find yourself in domestically, because usually in a counterinsurgency, modern warfare situation, clandestine warfare, the big problem is you cannot identify the enemy. So you have to create society-wide, counter-terror, civilian self-defense structure, which the United States did not do in Iraq or Afghanistan, really. But that's what you must do, both to protect the people from attacks and also to identify the enemy. That's what, by the way, organically and without this background of theory, the secret societies in South Vietnam before the Americans got in, and the secret societies in South Vietnam

were basically mafias, and they were very effective at keeping the communists out of South Vietnam before, I say, the United States got in and destroyed them. Why were they effective? Because they had block by block, house by house level knowledge of their urban territory. And that is how you defeat an insurgency. You need to have district commander, civilian organization where the district head has basically photos of everyone living in every house, understands who they are, knows their family history. That's how you identify the enemy. But in this case, you don't need that because of the leftist, far leftist, even of the nature of the United States for decades now. When you have these people have been operating in the open, they declare themselves to be

anti-fied at times. And it's, you don't need this pseudo-proto-totalitarian identification structure that would, and even Roger Tranquere says there are dangers, you know, if we form such self-defense civilian structures to find the terrorists, we will be called totalitarians and indeed there's a danger that the structure could be used for something else, but if it's honestly just used to defend the population and identify terrorists who are carrying out in some cases in these places, Indochina and Algeria, they were carrying out daily murders, attacks on civilians. It was in the civilians' own interest to defend themselves. So he say, if it's limited to that and disbanded after the crisis is over, it's okay.

But even he recognizes it could be used for totalitarian purposes and it would be attacked as such. But you don't need that in the American case is my point, so read the book anyway. But if there was an honest effort, I mean by a serious team in the White House, you could identify decisive nodes, you could take them down in a week once they're identified for funding and facilitating violence in the United States. There are no excuses to not do this. You know you would do it, you know the left would do it, if shoe on other foot, so-called, if the neo-Nazi mobs burning down police stations, attacking law enforcement. You know what they would do, and you know what you would do. The difficult part of guerrilla war, in that sense, is already pre-solved for you. You need to round up, I think,

just a few hundred ringleaders, maybe arrest initially 1,000, 2,000 foot soldiers, eliminated organizations and fronts, eliminated funding, that would be the end of that so far as it can be done under current norms and without escalating to some things that would look too alien to the American people. But instead the effort, as you can see, is to blame irony, nihilism, godlessness on the internet. It's really, if this were a wartime thing, and it should be because it is, if it were understood as that, what things like Mr. Rufo and Pam Bondi are doing would be understood as intentional demoralization of a war effort, when you say it's not the left that did it. It's internet nihilism. And I have to point out also the incredible cynicism behind this, whether it's conscious or not.

A lot of this attempt to blame it on the Wild West of the unregulated internet comes from conservative pundits, again like Mr. Rufo, but many others. just have his article in mind but and I say it may not be conscious but whether they know it or not there are two ulterior motives and goading this on is they never like the free internet okay and I remember these kind of thirty-something ladies coming online two three four years ago with big mouths trying to become the face of the dissident anti left movement and to reinterpret it as a kind of cable TV for internet you know and then they start to to have kids, of course, I have to know about their travails as if that's an achievement, and then they say things like, okay, now that they have kids, of course,

their plan is to utterly mold and shape their kids as if they are their possessions, okay, and to prevent evil thoughts from entering their kids' heads, right, because they possess those heads. No, no, they have to control, curate all information going into the precious heads of their children. Total control. So this is just so distasteful and maybe they've forgotten what it was like to be 10, 11, 12, 13 years old. I remember it, do you remember how annoying any parental suggestion or let alone attempts to control things like that are, okay? Because thankfully it was, I had relative freedom compared, I suspect, to how children are raised now because most parents are such narcissists, They simply can't accept that their children may have their own minds.

I grew up relatively free range when I was still in Europe. I was shocked by how children are raised in the United States even when I came. I was given free reign of a city. I mini-ganged with my friends at six, seven years old. We roamed the streets and the parks by ourselves. Apparently, that's not done anymore in the developed world. I don't know. Children have their own minds, you know, even before the age of 10, and maybe I read Plato and I decided he was the key to the best society and that I believe in a kind of communist space-faring Borg-like regime, which is what I believed when I was 14 years old. And nobody taught me that, no, the internet didn't. I happened to read Plato's Republic, okay, maybe you can burn, maybe you can burn that

book and you can carefully curate every aspect of your children's education. obviously your toy you know you gave life to them and aren't you such a religious person you know god didn't give this person life and their own soul and capacity for reason you you obviously did that so how dare the internet put evil thoughts into their heads which are your creation and possession don't you dare let those evil vortex of irony thoughts enter your head dear satanic so you know i i remember these pile driving ladies who've come online to mouse off against the woke left and in their empty brains feeling entitled that they reproduced, you know, they use that word, do you like this, would you like when you are 21 years old or

something to know your mommy or something referred that they reproduced and they put on the internet that they reproduced, they contributed to the solution of the natality crisis, you know. I'm sure people very much appreciate knowing that that's why they came about. But anyway, now they say, and I'm quoting almost verbatim, from what I remember these ladies I've been discussing, they came online and they were saying things like, I don't want my child going online in a few years and finding high verbal IQ psychopaths, leading them down strange views, okay? Almost verbatim quote, I think, by which, okay, they mean me and my friends, okay? On top of which, aside from this family issue, these people have never been able to compete in the sphere of pure ideas on the anonymous internet.

They are enormously uncomfortable with that because they've always seen their career path as normal activist pundit blowhards. They can only understand traditional curated media, cable news 2.0, and just see the internet as a vehicle for that, for whatever they feel was denied to them through the normal studio system you see so it's not I'm sure they mean well you know and I'm not even conscious of what I've said now but it's it's always the solution you know it's always how can we restrict freedom on the internet and also oh I had a major a lot this guy writing about porn causing Charlie Kirk's death Charlie Kirk's assassination he had his poor I'm sure this guy you know oh to speak in his voice, yeah, had a maybe major gooning or masturbation problem that he overcame

through subscription to the National Review and First Things and a Vowel of Belief in Christ and now he will post about how it's pornography that also caused leftist assassination of course because it's it's all caused by by that because that's the center of his mental universe too, you know, so it's but see See this is the path of least resistance. Things will move into this direction unless there are serious people in the White House. This is the solution that will be imposed to the problem, which of course detours around the entire festering of the far left terror networks and will instead be again how can we ban BAP and his friends from infecting our children's minds with nihilism and wink wink we need some affirmative action against these rowdy anons on the anonymous people

on the internet. People pay too much attention to them and they're not serious. They need to pay attention to me, of course. I overcame my pornography jerk-off addiction with Christ and I put on pancake makeup and go on YouTube TV. And I remind you that the English draconian law that so restricts internet speech in that country in the United Kingdom, restricts freedom. It was not passed by the left. It was passed after a conservative Catholic MP was killed by a Muslim radical. So it was not in response in that case to leftist terror and not enacted by leftists. It was enacted in similar situation. They took advantage of a similar crisis, not to solve it, but to restrict the ability of young people to resist state and parental

surveillance and resist indoctrination, to stop young people essentially also from simply forming friendships, networking with each other based on shared interests. Discord is not causing this, okay? It's just a medium of communication. Many young people will trade Discord ID now instead of phone number, you see. So I strongly suggest you read in the article Jacque's, excuse me, the title is Zoomer Culture for Dummies. I haven't slept in four days, by the way. Excuse me, if I'm sometimes tongue tied on this episode, is this okay? Yes, I know the episode is late. You want me to split my wrists in? This is what you must do with a girl, by the way. This is my advice. If ever a girl becomes difficult in a relationship, you immediately threaten suicide. No, I don't do that. But

I've heard from some gentleman friends that it does work. Anyway, it's called Zoomer Culture Culture for Dummies, it's in J'accuse magazine, it's by my friend Ulith. It's one of the best, most detailed descriptions of how online culture works, how memes work, how memes get repurposed, what means nihilism and irony online, and therefore the absurdity of believing that people would carry out violence and assassinations in the name of online memes, it's just a complete misunderstanding both of what the internet is and how terroristic political violence happens. So you know, I will read for you, I'm going to read for you at the end of this article, okay? The cynically deployed rhetorical tricks exploit confused at, scared by, and ignorant of the

current, excuse me, confused at, scared by, and ignorant of the current digital culture in order to agitate for pointless and intrusive censorship measures while also deflecting blame from their own ideological brethren. You should not be so quick to believe that people have done drastic action for subconscious reasons when a conscious explanation is immediately obvious. If it seemed unbelievable to you that somebody could carve onto a bullet, hey fascist, catch, without the idea that they would be shooting a fascist, then that is because it is unbelievable. Cultural illiteracy allows you to be transferred into a world of farfidets and phantasms where the sub-rational demoniacs perched themselves on rooftops and fire away

wildly on account of grievances they do not even believe themselves to have. That's kind of the end of the article but he goes into some detail about the absurdity of discourse about oh it was the internet or irony that did it. Anyway look now I'll be right back to discuss briefly also the problem of religion in the modern political scene as it's related to this. Listen you may have heard for example on Tucker Carlson but they are repeated also on much conservative media that there is supposedly a religious revival a great awakening previous times American society happens some every few decades apparently people get supposedly some religious mania they start rededicating themselves to spiritual matters and so forth and they're saying this is

apparently happening now especially among zoomers it's been repeated so much I assumed myself that it was based on real evidence. I thought it was probably true. Turns out they're completely made up I need to bring up now because That memorial service for Charlie Kirk as well as the heavy messaging since then which as I see it It's one thing if religious religion brings people motivation and resoluteness in faith and Stability in God and helps them in the real world and supposed to do that yes, God with us, got mit uns metamund hotels, this battle cry of deutonic nights for Byzantine nights, that's where it comes from, Byzantium, the Byzantine Empire relied on heavy cavalry as its elite core, they had this. I have

no problems with that, you know, but it's not being used that way at the moment, it's being used to short-circuit a rational or healthy reaction to leftist terrorism. Instead of resoluteness against the left, it's leading to nonsense about demons, a fight against abstractions like nihilism or godlessness. It was more stupidity than the so-called war on terror and the desultory bushiers, which also had the same overwrought religiosity as a cope to avoid taking on real problems. So I need to address this for a moment, in particular the pretense again that there's this broad religious revival especially among the youths. I direct you to two articles by my friend Gildhelm on substack. They're free. They're very well written, very short and you can read fast. Please read them. The

titles are The Apostates They Deserve and It's No Great Awakening is what they're called and it's the latter. It's No Great Awakenings that I talk about briefly. Now he goes it's just gildhelm.substack.com. I'll repost them on on my Twitter account, and on my substack, by the way, you can check there for various articles and so forth. But in this, Guildhelm goes through two extensive broad-scale recent relative high-quality surveys to show, in fact, the opposite is the case. That's also my experience of seeing actual zoomers worldwide as well as what I see from the United States. I'm sorry, but if you think otherwise, based on your anecdotal experiences, those may not be representative. As a highly politically engaged person who might know about me or listen to this show,

your experiences may not be what America looks like, okay? Because the opinions of politically active conservative youth that you might have run into, they're not a telling sample. And what you see on Twitter, especially is largely contrived as well. Twitter is very much astroturf. Sometimes it has genuine engagement and many times complete fake. It used to be let's say in 2015 or 2016 and even after that, that the energy and opinion on Twitter was at times a leading indicator that's changed drastically once mass bannings took place. And I've been warning you for years that they were banning us to replace us with entirely fake pretenses, especially to religiosity, that are actually mere copies of the same

thing that has always existed in the GOP and in Karl Rove and so on, now just presented with more assertion and bravado. But it's the same thing as before. And it's no doubt a substantial minority of America and a firm majority of intellectual conservative movement, as well as the conservative activists and donors and so on, they are like this. true for youth at large, and for all the screaming about Teal. The fact is that Peter Teal, who is himself like this, by the way, he's a mystical Christian in his case, who is very much concerned with this thing with the Antichrist, I'm not interested in that, but whatever. The problem is, he doesn't actually fund anything. So a lot of people who felt spurned by that when they expected his funding, imagine that

he must be funding others, and they make up stories about this supposed influence because they feel jealous such and such is getting attention and I'm not so therefore it must be a conspiracy and Thiel must be behind it because he didn't give me money and this is how they think. But I'm sorry I don't see that, I don't see his supposed influence in terms of the funding I mean but the Dunn brothers in Texas and the Wilkes brothers they fund enormously and And no one ever talks about them, you will see, but they are real bible-banging evangelical revival types. I believe nobody talks about them, they were told not to. They spread enormous monies on the right, and I suspect that I cannot prove that they

are behind a lot of the fakery among the so-called dissident or new right face fag influencers that for the last couple of years, especially in the run-up to recent election. But anyway, you know, that's par for the course. If you don't play that tune that they want, you don't get the support. That's always been, though, the case in conservative circles. This whole thing about the supposed secular right among a Straussian cabal is also just stupid lies. The Strausians are religious right, okay, in terms of their public activity in the United States. If you're talking about private belief, I don't know about that, but they were initially actually conservative Catholic intellectuals in the 1950s, the Strausians, then they became

often Jewish conservatives who not infrequently themselves by the way converted to Catholicism. That's a very established thing in that group and regardless of their personal beliefs or not in the conservative activist world, the think tank world, not to speak of congressional staffing and such, any public objection to religiosity would get you immediately ostracized. This is the disconnect between the conservative activist class, which has very little to do with Trump, and also very little to do with the voters for the GOP in general and voters in America. They're their own thing. And so it's quite misleading to pay attention to what they do. Their religious identity politics is the GOP's bread and butter is my short way of saying this. Okay.

There is no secular right to speak of in America. There was none anyway. The secular right is Mussolini and certain German factions before 1950. Let me not get into that, but it's actually incredibly potent thought, the secular right I mean. If allowed to be said openly, to be spoken about openly, it's always in the modern era immensely attractive to a substantial percentage of intelligent youth and intelligent anyone, which is why the religious conservatives, to them I'm the Antichrist or one of its emanations. That aside, if you read these articles by Gildhelm, let me not get too far too far carried off course on tangents that there is no stoppage in the decline in religiosity among the young more generally for the last few decades or among anyone, but including the young.

At most, there is a deceleration in the abandonment of religion, but even that's very iffy and very slight. The point is that decades long decline in religiosity continues to our time by every metric, not just church attendance, but also self-reported belief, self-reported importance of religion, how important is religion to you in making decisions in life. Here I will read you briefly a summary of the findings. What about metrics of piety, such as prayer, church attendance, and the importance of religion? Here we see an identical outcome, a dramatic decrease in the 2000s and 2010s, followed by a plateau in the 2020s without a revival in sight. Daily Prayer is stuck around 45%, down from 58% in 2007.

An acknowledgement of religion as very important is lingering at about 38%, down from 56% in 2007. While it wasn't surveyed previously, the 2024 iteration found an interesting return that That while 92% of Americans make moral decisions from reason and 75% from scientific information, only 53% do so from religious beliefs. That's very recent high quality studies showing marked decline even just from 2007. It's not just church attendance or formal religious identification with the denomination, which then you could dismiss that by saying, well, the institutions are corrupt, but people People still hold to, they are returning to spirituality in their hearts, they hold to religion in their hearts, no they don't.

I heard a friend saying in reply that it's like this, but it's not, nor is it the case that younger people hold on to religious identity now as a kind of defiance against the supposed abuses of the left against religion as a form of protest, right? That's an argument that I've seen made. To that I say, where is your evidence? All the evidence shows the opposite, a decline in religious self-identification and self-conception quite aside from church attendance or prayer or any institutional thing. And then the counter that I remember, I've been in the most libtarded, lyftoid environments in America. I've never remembered actually attacks on religion at all. This is something imagined by religious conservative movement that they want to think of themselves

as especially targeted and oppressed and such. It's not true at all. In fact, the attacks are on racism primarily, and then associated phenomena such as toxic masculinity or whatever. And sometimes they they may catch so-called traditional religion expressions in that, but it's not really a tax on religion. Religious people have enormous political and social protections in the United States. You saw this during the pandemic. They got special exemptions that were not available to secular people who wanted also to avoid the vaccines or many other such things on natural grounds. And then there continued rote public piety, even from the part of Biden, Pelosi and others. They would never dare question the sanctity and importance of religion in public. Please spare me.

And I've met plenty of very far left people who are religious, both Christian and Jewish. And it actually goes very well with far left beliefs. I found hardcore religious believers, Orthodox Jews who were far left and I don't know what denomination they were, but they seemed awfully fanatically Christian and they interpreted the social gospel and so on. Some of the most committed Antifa Marxists that I've met had a Christian interpretation of it. They were never given trouble over that by other Antifa because they were with them on the important things. anti-racist and so on, which is what matters to the left, pro-immigrant, against the hegemonic whatever. Not to speak of the many reminders in these articles by Gildhelm pointing to enormous

contributions in our own time as well to mass replacement migration on the part of religious organizations, entire denominations, not like some NGO here and there that calls itself Catholic, but NGOs that have archbishops and so on on their boards, basically the entire Catholic Church, the Lutheran and other Protestant councils in the United States, not to speak of course of Jewish organizations, everybody knows that, but all united in supporting mass migration into the United States and Europe. The whole thing about specter of Christian nationalism, that's an invention, I would say even a collusion between nefarious factions on both left and some on the right basically play acting on Twitter, but it bears no relationship to religiosity and actual life and politics

in America and Europe, religiosity functions as a left-wing force, I'm sorry to tell you. Now it will be objected, everything I've just said that, well this is part of what I'm getting to, that actually religious people are an extremely important base for the right. And that without them there would not be a lasting constituency possible for the right in America. And that even when it comes to immigration restriction views, they are more often found among conservative Christians than any other demographic, any other large demographic, let me put it that way. And so on. And I agree with that. I've said so many times myself, it doesn't contradict what I told you before. The reason is because that's only a sociological fact, it's a sociological correlation.

In fact, these very people who are by no means to be spurned or insulted, and I've always maintain that there's no need whatsoever to insult genuinely religious people. I insult instead those who have appointed themselves, their representatives, most often on the conservative side of things in the United States, but sometimes on the left. The people who claim to speak for the religious, they're Jesse Jacksons. It's these people and their pretensions that I attack. But these people, let's say religious white evangelicals and now white Catholics in the the upper Midwest and such, insofar as they support, let's just say, migration restriction now. They're not doing so as a result of their religious beliefs or affiliations, okay?

It's a sociological phenomenon and they themselves abandon explicit religious mobilization. That's the point. They themselves don't want public religiosity and a Jesse Jackson snake oil salesman speaking for them. In 2015, during the Trump campaign, they abandoned this kind of identity politics, religious mobilization. And this explains the desperation of the conservative movement since then, and those who aspire to be in the conservative movement, not the paid pundits as well as the wannabe paid pundits. They've been never able to accept this and they respond simply by doubling down. Mr. Ted Cruz did not win the primaries, Rubio campaigning on this showy religious thing did not win. Trump won. And he won while advertising irreligiosity and being attacked as a New

York values playboy degenerate by Cruz and others. And he won actually, not that I agree with what I'm about to tell you, but he won campaigning openly on gay marriage actually. Maybe they forget that they want to sweep that under the rug, but he ran on it. He was the first Republican primary winner to run on that. And I disagree with that position as I do with many, Trump, he's not good on gun control. I believe in total gun and machine gun freedom. I think it's simply outrageous for the government to try to control any of, you can't buy a tank or a machine gun, but Trump, I think, does have a kind of New York instincts on that, unfortunately. You know, and many other things I disagree with him on, the tariffs thing, can you please just stop that? I need to repeat this.

me, hiring capital investments is not doing well. You're putting entire agenda and future of America at risk by engaging in this pointless economic policy. But anyway, Trump unabashed, I think, for such almost secular, at least, yeah, secular campaign that the first that the GOP ever had in many decades, if ever. I don't know about historical GOP politics before, say, I don't know, Gerald Ford or such. 2012 election, actually. And Paul Ryan was heavily religious signaling during that campaign, which, of course, now the religious conservatives want to sweep that under the rug and to pretend, oh, well, he was not effective. Who said he was effective? But Paul Ryan, for example, during his pathetic debate with Biden in 2012 and got down into

the details about abortion and women's rights, not women's rights, but women's bodies and whatever. It was a huge mistake. He made himself look like a fool doing that, and everywhere that religious right, by which I mean not again religious people, but they're a self-appointed Pharisee, Jesse Jackson's in the conservative movement. When they try to double down on this kind of thing, it leads to electoral disaster. Recent elections have shown this. They've tried to push the abortion thing. They've not only failed those questions in red states, in red states even, but brought defeat to any Republican that was running at the time in red states. So this is why I say I think there is disaster coming after Trump, possibly, because almost nothing has changed around him.

The conservative social scene, the religious core of the activist GOP has just decided to wait out Trump. Nothing's changed since 2014 or even 2004. They took all the wrong lessons from Trump's victory in 2015. The wrong lessons being they thought he won because of style. So it's that New York chutzpah, the panache, the assertiveness. So that's, you know, that's what we need to copy. That's what they've been doing. I'm not talking about Kirk, by the way, Charlie Kirk was doing awesome work mobilizing college students canvassing, doing voter drives. It's an invaluable loss to the right in America because of his organizational skills. I'm talking about the variety of minstrel religious face fag influencers that they sent

on Twitter or now they're sending on the talking circuit to pretend to have an audience and scream at the top of their lungs about, now they're doing about religion, theology, the Jews and all this stuff. Yes, I'm pretty sure it's contrived by the same people who fund the Daily Wire and Prager University and so on. But then not Charlie Kirk himself, but the face fag influencers around him, Matt Walsh and this kind of thing. But look, let's not dwell on that. The unfortunate truth is, after Trump, all remaining factions on the right, from what I hear, are firmly religious right. And excuse me, at least Mr. Vance has whatever his private beliefs and I believe he's a religious right man or from what I know as a traditionalist Catholic. That doesn't matter.

At least his public messaging has not been too heavily in this direction. That's a good thing. But there is going to be enormous pressure on him and on others to go down this religious path. And if they actually do go down during the next elections, it will be very bad for the right and a help to the left. Because the truth is the opposite of what they think. Yes, on one hand, you absolutely need the evangelicals, especially without them, the Republicans cannot win national elections. They vote for Trump at the same rates, not quite maybe, but almost the same rates that blacks vote Democrat, they vote some 80-90% Republican. So you absolutely need them and cannot offend them. But two things to keep in mind, first that the introduction of explicit religiosity in

political discourse can actually hurt you here, because they have to keep other religious denominations also, especially Catholics, and the genuine introduction of religiosity could mean sectarian conflicts that break apart the right-wing coalition based on these stupid things, which is in my view why bad people, and maybe it's the left doing this, I would do it if I was the left. Maybe it's others, but bad people have been astroturfing this fake anti-Semitic Catholic thing online, which has no reality in American life, but almost is perfectly designed to alienate evangelicals from Catholics in the right-wing coalition and to have entirely fake debates populate public discourse where they're arguing. So second to this, close related to this, evangelicals did not vote for Trump again

based on religious messaging or campaigning. More on this in a moment, but they themselves rejected religious signaling in public life or embraced secularism for, you know, just take a step back. If you're religious, why, why would you, you know, politics, government is about solving public problems. Why would you need a politician catering to your group identity or your personal beliefs in public? That is the foundation of the most, the base type of, yes, it's the basis of leftist identity politics as well. It's about respect and this kind of thing. Why would you want that? But see, evangelicals, I don't think want that. That's why they voted for Trump and not Ted Cruz. Third, evangelicals also voted for Romney though at similar or almost similar rates, I think also for Bush in 2004.

I'm not sure about the 2008 election with McCain, but it's almost the same rate. So you see, they're necessary, absolutely, but they're not sufficient to win. And so Trump did not win due to the evangelical votes. He won, actually, this is what I'm getting at, he won on the opposite. He won swing states precisely because many people who would otherwise never vote GOP, they held their nose, okay, they said, okay, I'll vote for the party of Mike Pence and Karl Rove and the pedo preachers who I find deeply distasteful, but I'll do it because Trump only. I'm speaking in voice of a lot of people who voted for Trump in 2016 and now. And I think it's specifically, I would say, because of the New York values degenerate

playboy thinks, specifically because he signaled not only no religiosity in his public messaging, but even the opposite. This kind of New York, no nonsense, no bullshit, we are here to solve particular problems. I'm not here to flatter your group identity and to pretend to go to church with you and write again this identity politics of the GOP. It's their own Jesse Jackson thing, you see. So I'm not 100% on this. I will look on the statistics in these elections and try to get micro information on what made Trump win, for example, in upper Midwest or Nevada at times and so on. But I think if you look at election data and so on, at least what I've seen so far on This is true the particular stories also forgive to repeat if I've said before but

Reporters going to Nevada rallies in 2016 and there would be a guy with tattoos the leather jacket his wife You know dressed leather jacket chewing gum and this kind of David Lynch type couple They've never voted before they they played band at night in clubs or whatever. They were swingers. It's an American type Okay The rock and roll whatever their swingers and they they were voting for Trump as the only time they've ever voted and it's an extreme case what I just gave you but it demonstrative of a broader range of types that specifically would be turned off by what the GOP is normally without Trump people people are motivated in politics more by what they hate I think than what they love that that's a problem and also an opportunity with Trump it was

different it got these people to come out and they'll hold their nose the other he's got this pedo preacher Mike Pence that Karl Rove 2.0 with him but But you know, they're very turned off by the religious signaling. I'm warning you deviate from the Trump path at your own peril. Why would you? It's a proven path of victory. But you see, it's an empty warning because I'm not certain that in 2028 there's anyone you see any personality that would be able to mobilize that coalition of American constituencies and types that Trump is uniquely able to simply because of who he is, the unique mix not only of style, but it's the content style synergy, you know, the content, you know, it's not Not just about style is what I'm saying.

So the conservative movement core, which unlike the American people, religiosity has always been a major litmus test for the conservative movement leadership core, and public Pharisaic pronouncement has always been the bread and butter. I'm saying that as they continue that, very surely so now, I don't know what will happen. The only lesson they took from Trump in 2015 is again stylistic, that they need to be pushier and more annoying. We strong assertive and scream louder. We know what time it is huge misunderstanding. Be careful I will be right back to discuss men of power Paulus Emilius Palate from life of Elagabalus last time a man of Syriac ecstatic self castrating shaman ancestry He became most decadent Roman Emperor and one of the most extravagantly

homo decadent men who ever lived ruled Rome again from 218 to 222 AD and if you go back in time almost 400 years to republican times to give you an image I want of very opposite kind Roman. In the old sense, Roman Aemilius Paulus who conquered Macedonia, the successor state to Alexander in Europe, conquered it for him in 172 BC, had a long life where a move from From success to success, fortune to fortune, at the end suffered great catastrophes in his private life. I will talk to him now, a true man of power, and I rely for Plutarch on account who parallelized Plutarch talk, again, a great Greek Roman statesman and generals, and he pairs always a Greek with a Roman to compare their lives then. Alexander versus Caesar, so you can compare what was different in their excellent characters.

And Emilius Paulus, actually, I think that comparison doesn't let me look. But I think Emilius Paulus, he compared with Timo Léon, who I have a whole episode on, episode 31 of Caribbean Rhythms, Timo Léon having been savior of Sicily, both from its internal corruption at the hands of mafioso tyrants and from takeover by the Carthaginians, essentially preserved that island for the Greeks and therefore for Europe, in a way for Europe as Rome later became the protectors of the Greeks in Greater Greece, South Italy. But he had an amazing life of adventure where he was disgraced at home in his home city of Corinth or saddened by the death of his brother. He was called later in life on this great adventure, a crusade for Greek civilization. I'm talking about Timoleon now.

He was called to help the daughter cities or colonies of Corinth that were in so much trouble and had a swift military campaign attended both by great luck and by his very energetic genius in which speed above all characterized all his actions and Plutarch sees Aemilius Paulus who conquered Macedon as what I'm saying is the Roman counterpart of this man's this Greek man's I talked before Timo Leon and one thing you should keep in mind is in this brief talk is that Plutarch is Greek okay I mean he's he's writing hundreds of years later from these events but as you might expect well wouldn't he be mad at the Romans that they conquered Greece and not at all first of all because even if they even if it had been so you have to be pretty petty you have to be petty to

keep that kind of grudge as a historian centuries later to have a chip on your shoulder he treats Alexander Plutarch treats Alexander very the great hero even though Alexander destroyed Thebes Thebes being the Greek city the power center in Boeotia that part of Greece where Plutarch himself was from and he does say that Alexander felt very bad about that the destruction of Thebes throughout the rest of his life he tried to make amends for it nevertheless you see this is the thing to keep slightly in mind is that this account of Emilius Paulus I am basing on Plutarch and Plutarch as a Greek a Boeotian the Greeks didn't like being ruled by Macedon okay so they felt the Roman conquest of Macedon was a liberation. But anyway, Aemilius Paulus was born around 230 BC, so about a

hundred years after Alexander of Macedon made his conquests, and it took from that time to 172 BC when Rome conquered Macedon. It took, in other words, about 150 years for the Macedonian state essentially to exist in that condition. It had existed before, course the Macedonian kingdom, but from the conquests of Alexander, the world conquest really to the disappearance really of the Macedonian state under Roman rule, 150 years. It's not very long, but the successor states lasted, I think, they lasted longer, the Seleucids, the Ptolemies and the like. Aemilius Paulus came from the Aemili, one of the most distinguished patrician families of Rome. His father was one of the Roman leaders who died at Cannae against Hannibal. And his sons, Aemilius Paulus, he had two sets of sons with two wives.

His sons by the first wife, he divorced her and one of them was Scipio the Younger who ended up destroying Carthage in the third and final Punic War and also subdued Spain finally for Rome in the Numentine War. The Numentine war about 135 BC. So this episode will discuss the father of this man, Scipio the Younger, who destroyed finally Carthage, different from the other Scipio who defeated Hannibal. And his brother Fabius, Paolo Emilius' other son, was also a distinguished leader. He was governor of Sicily, I think, for a bit, and then fought extensively also in Spain against the Numentines. These were a kind of Celtic and I guess Lusitanian tribes under Viriatus. These were I think mostly Celtic tribes that were ruling Iberia at the time.

Someone posted this ridiculous map showing the Celtic spread in Europe which was extensive at least from Spain all the way to the Carpathians and so on. I think even beyond that they extended into at times Anatolia, at least there were outposts there and they said that Caesar destroyed them and that this is why they are now let's say confined to small corners of Europe such as Brittany Ireland Wales and so forth I think this just complete stupid okay it is not true at all they were not genocided he did happen to kill a lot of Gauls Caesar during the conquest of Gaul but the other Celts were not genocided they just integrated into the Roman Empire and started to speak Romance languages and they are still there. They just anyway, but yes the both the brothers

These are Emilio's Paulo's sons the the man I'm talking on this episode I'm going to call him Paulo. Okay be for ease. I can't just keep saying Emilio's Paulo's throughout the Episode but Paulo his sons distinguished sons were tutored by the famous historian Polybius and And he had a descendant also named after him, his name also Emilius Paulus, who much later was a close associate under Augustus, a senator and consul at the beginning of the empire proper. Though, as I always like to remind you, the Romans didn't distinguish between the republic and the empire as we do. They always insisted they were a republic. Even so much later under Byzantines in a way, they had all kinds of fetishes about the supremacy of the law to being ruled by a man.

And so this, yes, my advice to so-called monarchists in the United States, which is so anti-kingly in about the same intensity that Rome was, maybe you don't call it monarchism or king, maybe you be more tactful. I like to think that Erik Prince, after 2028, lead director of constitutional convention, reorganize America's regulations, preserve integrity of its constitutional traditions. That's a national new constitutional convention process, may last even 10, 20 years, with Erik Prinz as its head, you see, but as a director under that pretext. So do you like this idea? Anyway, Emilius Paulus, Paulus, his family, the Emili, extreme power family throughout Roman history, father died at Cannae, son destroyed Carthage, other descendants, part of Roman history under Augustus and so on.

And it's very interesting this family traced their ancestry back to Pythagoras, the philosopher, believing that the founder of their family or clan, I think named Mamercus or something, was a son of Pythagoras. And there was a tradition at Rome that Pythagoras was the tutor also of the Roman king Numa. You may remember Numa was along with Romulus, one of the founders of Rome itself. Romulus was the wild wolf youth. He led a wolf-packed mannerbund, outcast criminals to founder Rome. And meanwhile, Numa was the king that followed that, the second king of Rome, who founded its laws, its customs, its marriage rights, all the arts of peace. This very powerful story, the war leader is the first founder, Romulus, then comes the peace king and the actual legislator, Numa.

And there are various traditions or stories about Numa, including that he was tutored by a water nymph, but apparently also this other that he was tutored by the philosopher Pythagoras. It would make then Rome, this is remarkable, but it would make Rome a kind of sister city to revolutionary Thebes, you see. Thebes, again, this city in Boeotia in Greece, very old city in Greece, but it was reformed in the 300s BC by Epaminondas and Pelopidas, who are Pythagoreans. They reformed the city and its laws and customs in accordance with Pythagorean philosophy. They are the first, Thebes was the first under this new revolutionary Pythagorean regime to destroy essentially Spartan military power, they destroyed Sparta, they held to radical democratic ideology.

They were vegetarian, gay, militarist, Buddhist, Nazis basically, sorry to put it that way, but look, I'm just making joke, okay, but it would be amazing thing to think of Rome also, in some fundamental way, a sister city, a Pythagorean experimental revolutionary state in that sense. Well, I don't know, let's maybe not go that far. But anyway, so Emilius Paulus started his life in Roman patrician way, you know, there are various positions, and you run for office eventually. In his case, he started as an aedile, this basically a city administrator. They had several of these, the management of the day-to-day operations of the city. It was the first position he tried to run for, and he won, and then he became augur,

one of the priests of ancient Rome, and it is constant in his life, where like Xenophon, if you look in Xenophon's book Anabasis, who was basically the student of Socrates' leading military expedition and becomes its leader, and he was a pagan religious fundamentalist, that he will simply not make any decisions at all without augury and oracles confirming that it's good, that it will go well. And this is something that from what I can see, Paolo also carried out. It's Paolo. Paolo did the same thing as Xenophon did, which at every battle, every great decision, you took augury before the event in front of the other commanders and soldiers. But here's the thing, here's how you do it. you sacrifice bulls or chickens or whatever, you check the entrails, the organs,

or other such, you check the flight of birds, or whatever, whatever method you use doesn't matter. If the answer is no, if it's not propitious, then you just keep doing it, okay? You keep doing it until you get the propitious signs from the gods that you want. It's not cheating, it's not like, oh, you had to do it nine times before you got it. That's not how the ancient mind perceives it. If you got it once, that's good, that's a sign you can do it now. Before, it was not the time, but now it's the time. You can do it nine times in a row, okay, now you can do it. So it's important that the soldiers and their captains feel this is on their side, that fortune, the gods are on their side in this war with fortune. So then before his conquest of Macedon,

he had several other great achievements, Paolo. He was sent, as his sons after him would be sent some 50 and more years later, he was sent to Spain. And Plutarch just mentions casually that Paolo fought pitched battles, killed 30,000 of the Spaniards in battle. These are probably Celtic tribes, took 250 cities. So, pitched battle is not easy. Not all barbarians fought pitched battles, you know. There's fighting at close quarters. And after this glorious and difficult win in Spain, Rome had not completely taken over Spain by this time, but was well on its way. But he did what he would do later in all his campaigns. he got a reputation for being incorruptible, did not take any booty or plunder for himself from that expedition. And later, this quality of his brought him much praise,

but also got him in trouble, because men are corrupt and they don't like those who are too correct in their behavior. And so, if I may, my grandfather, I may have mentioned him before, was like this. It's why his career in communist government of country X, whose government he helped to found, actually, after World War II, but his upward trajectory in that was very limited because he was fanatically incorruptible, and that makes you hated, you see. And it ended up making Paolo, Emilius Paolus, hated later in his life, where after the victory in Macedonia, they took some plunder from Western Greece, they destroyed the kingdoms of Epirus, and took plunders going back to Rome, and then he redistributed the wealth of that country to the Roman soldiers who were in his employ,

but it ended up being not enough, and he took nothing for himself. And so the soldiers and many people who were in that business for this word graft now, I don't like this word, but they complained that he had considerable difficulties in his political life coming back to Rome, almost did not have a triumph to celebrate his victory over the Macedonians because of his incorruptibility. He just would not plunder enough. People were dissatisfied because of that. But regardless, whatever business or political you are in, in your future, if you're not a team player in corruption with others, may make you hate it. Anyway, Paulo then, after this campaign in Spain, was very successful and established his reputation for incorruptibility. He had a second military campaign against the Ligurians.

This is before his attack on Macedonia. The Ligurians are the people living around the present-day Genoas, you know, northwest Italy, kind of southern coast of France extending into northwest Italy. And these were pirates, and they were being a nuisance to everyone in the Mediterranean at this time. They made quite sturdy ships that would go as far as Gibraltar. The raid commercial shipping caused much damage. So he goes out there with force of 8,000 men, subdues 40,000 Ligurian troops with Roman strength, but then, you know, and this is good, actually I'll read it so you can see not just Roman clemency, right, the famous Roman clemency in action, but the signature quality of this people and of Paolo also throughout his life, famous for his, it's not quite mercy,

it's clemency, but not just that, but strategic thinking this passage shows you, the strategic strategic thinking of every Roman and the Roman generals, strategic thinking, not emotion. I will read now. At the time, they had also laid hold of the sea with piratical craft, referring to the Ligurians, and they were robbing and destroying merchandise, sailing out as far as the pillars of Hercules, Gibraltar. Accordingly, when Aemilius came against them, they withstood him with a force of forty thousand men. But he with eight thousand men, all told, engaged their fivefold numbers, and after routing them and shutting them up in their walled towns, gave them humane and conciliatory terms. For it was not the wish of the Romans to extirpate altogether the Ligurian nation,

since it lay like a barrier or bulwark against the movements of the Gauls, who were always threatening to descend upon Italy. Accordingly, putting faith in Amilius, they delivered their ships and cities into his hands. Their cities he restored to them, either doing them no harm at all or simply raising their walls. but he took away all their ships and left them no boat that carried more than three oars. He also restored to safety those whom they had taken captive by land or sea, and these were found to be many, both Romans and foreigners. Such then were the conspicuous achievements of his first consulship of Aemilius. Yeah, like many pirate coastal peoples, they would raid for slaves and so on, so he freed those. But yes, you see, this is smart.

This is what the Romans continued to do forever, by the way, into the Byzantine Empire. And that's how you can maintain a 1,000-year Reich with an indefensible border like the Byzantines had. You know, they realized very fast we have limited troops. Our troops are more limited than they were during properly Roman times, the Byzantines, now I'm talking. And we have to invest a lot of time to train these very highly skilled heavy infantry and especially heavy cavalry. That was the backbone of the Byzantine military, these heavy cavalry, they're valuable. And these are frightful people on the steppe bordering us to the north, let's say the Pechenegs, and they're quite strong. And even if we were to commit to an all-out war, wipe them out or totally subdue them,

there's this problem of the steppe that remains, which is vast, it's infinite. It seems to be an engine of endless savage people that just keep coming. So we can take these ones out, but we'll be exhausted when the next ones arrive. Better not to take them out completely. Lutefak makes this point. Humble them if they get uppity, But otherwise, keep them there. Pay them off, cajole them, ally with them, make them your ally, use this enemy as a buffer and a tool against the countless others, maybe even the more frightful others. Use them as a stepping stone into the step where there you can play them off against each other. Anyway, then after these eventually, these successes, Paolo was given control eventually against Macedon. The war against Macedon quite a bit later

was not going well for the Romans. Some unfortunate convulsions had taken place. The former king of Macedon had been induced to kill one of his own sons. At this time, the king was Philip, same name as Alexander the Great's father, you know, common Macedonian king name. And technically he had been subdued by Rome, but in secret he had built up vast wealth in a vast powerful military and he was ready to go against Rome soon, but he ended up committing suicide because he was induced, this is just some minor court intrigue, he was induced to kill one of his own sons, his eldest son, by another one of his sons under a pretext kind of intrigue, false information, and then he found out that, oh my god, I killed my

son, he was not a traitor, it's actually this other son who was worthless who induced me to kill him, he's the traitor, and these kind of rumors, I don't know if they're even true, they tend to, this kind of thing, when you hear this kind of thing, tends to be unreliable in history. So many political factions make up things about their opponents, so who knows. But so he found out this son who got the father king to execute the brother under pretext of treason, and he found out this son was not even his real son, but a bastard, imposter, something like this. So, in any case, after the king's suicide, Philip's suicide, this son became the king, supposedly the imposter, his name Perseus. So the last king of Macedon was Perseus. And the defining quality of Perseus was avarice.

He was just a man, aside from his many other bad qualities, which was cowardice and just being a nasty mean man, but he was so cheap that he repeated throughout, actually had opportunities maybe to defeat the Romans I mean at least to make his kingdom last much longer but he desperately always wanted to save money save money so save his treasure so he cheated mercenaries and others out of their promised funds and so on but at this time actually before Emilius Paulus was sent to take charge of the war against Macedon Perseus despite his cheapskate nature and many personal faults he actually had had considerable victories against the Romans already. That's how good and powerful the Macedonian military was. The campaigns

of the Romans in that region were not going well at all. So this is what you don't know. The Romans suffered frightful defeats many times of a kind that America has never suffered in battle. I don't know that the United States has actually ever suffered a battle defeat against a foreign enemy, not to the extent that Rome, even at its height, did not once but multiple times, right? Just before this, in these events I'm talking now, some decades before this, at Cannae was a huge disaster for Rome. Plutarch says the Roman people were outraged during the conquest of Macedon because in that conflict, in the Second Punic War, they ended up prevailing against Hannibal, one of the greatest generals of that time,

a formidable man who had invaded Italy, dealt them frightful defeats, but they ended up winning against him and then they defeated the Seleucid Greeks in Asia under Antiochus who were much stronger than the ones who remained in Macedon, a much bigger empire. And so they were outraged at suffering repeated reversals against this new King Perseus, I'm saying, in the 170s BC. So look, on this matter, on one hand you can say the United States has not suffered such defeats and that must mean that it's much more powerful, that it's much more successful in its own world than Rome was in its world. Do you believe that, that America's more successful, more hegemonic as a power than Rome was? I don't know, you know, but maybe it is, maybe to the point where a believable adversary

does not even exist for the United States. Who is America really afraid of in terms of military? You know, the Romans at this time were afraid of Gaulish invasion, they had suffered defeat from Carthage. I mean, maybe China, but nobody in America is afraid of China, I mean, I think they should be, but nobody's really afraid of China or anyone else, just the disparity between the American military and everyone else is so great, but, you know, I mean, the unbelievable adversary has not existed for decades, you can say. On the other hand, you can claim, no, the United States doesn't have either the imperial ambitions of Rome to get into such actual wars in the first place. Second, it would not have the resilience to recover after these kinds of, let's say, equivalent major setbacks.

I mean, imagine a battle like Cannae scaled up, right? The Romans lost 80,000 of their best men and they lost leaders, including Paulus Emilius' father, and they lost, you know, they lost everything. that up to what the effects would be in the United States if it lost, I don't know, four or eight entire divisions, let's say, or much more than that scaled up, right? Because my point is, there were only a few hundred thousand Roman citizens at this time of the Battle of Cannae, okay, they lost 80,000 soldiers. And then the Romans lost another big battle the next year against the Boii, an Alpine Gallic tribe. And then, after two enormous defeats that would destroy any other country, the Romans refused terms.

Hannibal offered them some kind of peace terms and they refused, they refused to surrender. They fought for 15 more years, now think of that, 15 years after two enormous defeats until finally they defeated and destroyed Carthage. That is resilience of a type that, that's the strength of Rome and, well who knows, but it's hard to imagine the United States or any modern nation doing that. I think they would collapse within themselves fast, not cease disappear, sorry, they attack my brain with lack of sleep, but yes, not to cease to exist, but I think any modern nation would fold after those kind of defeats. But Rome didn't, and it's a great example that it's never too late though, it's all in the mind really in some sense, it's never too late, but it takes a Roman kind of blood

to be able to realize that. But so anyway, the Romans are losing repeated battles in Macedon, now this is later in the 170s BC, and so they end up electing Aemilius Paulus, a commander already with many victories to lead the war effort. And there's this beautiful passage that I posted on Twitter which shows you how the Romans thought about meritocracy, why they believed in it. Here I read for you, it was the customs of those who obtained the consulship, they had elected him consul again, to return thanks, as it were, for the great favor in a friendly speech to the people from the Rostra. But Aemilius, having gathered an assembly of the citizens, said that he sued for his first consulship because he himself had wanted the office, but now for his second one because they wanted the general.

Therefore he was under no obligation to them. On the contrary, if they thought the war could be carried on better by another, he resigned the conduct of it. But if they had confidence in him, they must not make themselves his colleagues in command, nor indulge in rhetoric about the war, but quietly furnish the necessary supplies for it since, if they sought to command their commander, their campaigns would be still more ridiculous than they were already. By these words he inspired the citizens with great reverence for himself and with great expectations of the future, and all were glad that they had passed by the flatterers and had chosen a general who had resolution and frankness of speech. Thus was the Roman people, to the end that it might prevail and be the greatest in the

world, a servant of virtue and honor, to the end that it might be the greatest in the world. Yes, you see, if modern nations treated their great men well, they could exceed all things. But as it is, the modern democracies, I think, return to the sorry status quo of the entire history of mankind, which prefers to keep down its capable and great men, even if that means mediocrity and ultimately, subjection to others. But the Roman people was roused up by the repeated failures and actually the Roman military by this time had fallen into some lack of discipline. It's not a continuous story of heighten the republic and then a linear progression to linear decline through the empire or whatever or up to the point of empire and then re-establishment and then decline again.

It was continuous cycles, sometimes from decades to decades of things fall into disrepair and you need reformers all the time and you need to empower them. This is what they did with Paolo at this point because the Roman military had become quite unruly. This part of why he gave that speech I just told you because he was saying, I can accept no partner in my authority. You need to give me absolute authority. I will reform your military, I will bring you victory, I will make you great again. And they did so. And they were roused up by news of repeated failures against Perseus of Macedon and also when they realized this king Perseus was stirring up the Gauls and the Illyrians and others to invade Italy itself, paying them off, pushing them to invade Italy.

So I won't go into the details actually of Aemilius Paulus' campaign in Macedonia because Because it's not book report, you read it. You can read it in a couple of hours this whole life. I want to give you just commentary here, but Paolo ends up winning, winning big time at the Battle of Pydna, P-Y-D-N-A, which it's funny, the lead up to this battle, this was around Mount Olympus, okay, there was not sufficient water for the Roman camp. So Paolo orders his engineers to dig up wells to find water, right, for the soldiers and And Plutarch then goes into this funny, wonderful aside, speculation on natural science. He does this sometimes in these historical biographies. And to a modern reader it's funny because you see ancient peoples, Plutarch, trying

to understand in this case why water gushes up from under the earth sometimes when you dig. And he presents various arguments that were current at this time, the main one being the truth and what you know, there are reservoirs of water under the earth, there's a water table and so on, and springs, even underground rivers and lakes also exist. But there was also minority position around in his time that he considers, which is that there isn't water underground, it's only one element earth, but that water is only emitted by the earth through the friction from digging it. So the stirring up of the earth, whether by man digging it or messing with it or by natural phenomena of some kind, that it's that friction that causes moisture to condense in the otherwise

It is funny, he compares it to sucking breast milk, you know, the milk from the female breast that is not there, but it's stimulated by the suckling and the friction and that some say maybe water comes from the earth by the same principle, I believe, did you believe in this? But he dismisses it saying, oh, well, you know, actual underground reservoirs and rivers and caves have been discovered by people, but you can laugh at this, but don't laugh at it. the Greeks was trying to find the natural causes of things considering ideas and arguments They were not like like every other people in history talking about how you know First of all being completely incurious and then say oh, it's a bang-dong-doo He did it you know Kwan

The the god bang-dong-doo or Kwan was the the cause of the water because in an old faggot priest told you so you know And so, you know, but look who knows maybe someday unusual theories like this will be proven right in a sense anyway. Yes, I'll be right back. Think about that. There's water and milk, milk and honey are gushing out, breast milk gushing out of the bosom of the earth. I'll be right back. Yes, I had to take tea break, tea with cream. I am considering switching entire to tea as per Nietzsche's recommendations in Ecce Homo saying that coffee darkens the whole day. I do think coffee makes me jittery, even though you can use today certain supplements. Theanine is one, cat's claw is another, to take the edge off whatever is in coffee besides the

caffeine. Tea doesn't have that effect, it's more calming, but it does have fluoride. Be careful, the tea plant takes up a lot of fluoride from the ground. Anyway, the battle of Pygna, in which which Rome finally conquered Macedonia. I mean, actual annexation was a few years away, but it was total victory at Pidna. After this, Greece is liberated, feels gratitude to Rome, and Macedonia abolished, not complete as the state of Prussia, the modern state of Prussia is abolished. But eventually, I think the state of Macedonia was similar, broken up into different sections. So I think if you look on Wikipedia, the date given for this Battle of Pydna, so important battle in history, is 168 BC. But actually the online version of Plutarch's lives at Perseus' website has very interesting

note on this, and whoever made the note dates it to 172 BC, so four years before the traditional date. And it's worth to say a moment why this is significant, because it's a kind of very nice detective story. How do you date this battle? Plutarch says it took place in late summer during a lunar eclipse and that came about after the soldiers had taken their dinner and before they went to sleep. So this was dated to a lunar eclipse found in 168 BC but the problem is that doesn't fit. June is not late summer. The Eclipse also on that date in June 2nd 168 BC I think is too early in in the night, not only for it to be after dinner and before bedtime, but apparently in June at that time, in that part of the world, it's not even dark at all

outside yet at whatever hour that lunar eclipse took place. So by contrast, there is a much better candidate in that same part of the world. See, because a lunar eclipse, harder to date than a solar one, it can only be seen in certain, so it's not as certain, but there's a much better candidate 172 BC and that takes place in September of the year and it fits for other reasons too and the node convinced me This must be the real date and the reason this is important is because actually this battle and what I'm talking about the dating of this battle as per this Lunar eclipse this eclipse is one of the few certain things that are used to date antiquity at all You see it. It's one of the main reference points for dating antiquity everything else

When a historian gives you dates and they're usually from the founding of such and such a city, or the number of kings and their reigns, that is very uncertain. Each one of those numbers can be off for so many reasons. And so you have to go after a few knockout facts. And the knockout facts are things like solar eclipse, and a few other certain things like this lunar eclipse. And I don't know this, but this particular battle is up. I didn't know it's actually used as a major reference point for chronology of antiquity in the first place this battle I'm telling you now that there's considerable disagreement on it and actually as I tell you the still accepted date of 168 BC does not fit Plutarch's description for all kinds of reasons. Anyway, the battle itself

It's one of the most rousing descriptions of what it was like to fight against a Macedonian phalanx So, I'll read it for you now because it's very often ancient military writing, it's a bit confusing. This is more vivid, clearer than usual, and I don't know, I found it very frightening. Let me read it. First, the Thracians advanced, whose appearance, Nausicaa says, was most terrible. Men of lofty stature, clad in tunics, which showed black beneath the white and gleaming armor of their shields and greaves. These are the Thracians, the allies of the Macedonians. and tossing high on their right shoulder's battle-axes with heavy iron heads. Next to the Thracians, the mercenaries advanced to the attack. Their equipment was of every variety, and Paeonians were mingled with them.

Next to these came a third division, Spicked Men, the flower of the Macedonians themselves for youthful strength and valor, gleaming with gilded armor and fresh scarlet coats. As these took their places in line, they were illumined by the phalanx lines of the bronze shields, which issued from the camp behind them, and filled the plain with the gleam of iron and the glitter of bronze, the hills too, with the tumultuous shouts of their cheering. And with such boldness and swiftness did they advance, that the first to be slain fell only two forelongs from the Roman camp. As the attack began, Aemilius came up and found that the Macedonian battalions had already planted the tips of their long spears, they used very long pike.

The Sarissa planted the tips of their long spears in the shields of the Romans, who were thus prevented from reaching them with their swords. And when he saw that the rest of the Macedonian troops also were drawing their targets from their shoulders round in front of them, and with long spears set at one level were withstanding his shield-bearing troops, and saw also the strength of their interlocked shields, and the fierceness of their onset, amazement and fear took possession of him, and he felt that But he had never seen a sight more fearful than this. Often in after times he used to speak of his emotions at that time and of what he saw. But then, showing to his soldiers a glad and cheerful countenance, he rode past them without helmet or breastplate.

The Romans, when they attacked the Macedonian phalanx, were unable to force a passage. And Salvius, the commander of the Pelignians snatched the standard of his company and hurled it in among the enemy. Then the Pelignians, since among the Italians it is an unnatural and flagrant thing to abandon a standard, rushed on towards the place where it was, and dreadful losses were inflicted and suffered on both sides. For the Romans tried to thrust aside the long spears of their enemies with their swords, or to crowd them back with their shields, or to seize and put them by their very hands, while the Macedonians, holding them firmly, advanced with both hands and piercing those who fell upon them, armour and all, since neither the shield nor the breastplate could

resist the force of the Macedonian long spear, heard headlong back the Pelinians and the Maruchinians, who, with no consideration but with animal fury, rushed upon the strokes that met them and a certain death. When the first line had thus been cut to pieces, those arrayed behind them were beaten back, and though there was no flight, still they retired towards the mountain called Ollochrus, so that even Aemilius, as Posidonius tells us when he saw it, rent his garments, for this part of his army was retreating and the rest of the Romans were turning aside from the phalanx, which gave them no access to it, but confronted them as it were with a dense barricade of long spears and was everywhere unassailable. Yes, do you like this? I mean, how do you fight against this?

That image of the long spear, there was no armor or anything that they were pushed by the ranks behind them. So there's nothing that could stand in the way of that. That's why the Macedonians ended up ruling the known world before the Romans, okay? There was no defense against this kind of thing, like a human tank with spears bristling and there's nothing anywhere to the east in Asia and so on. The horses are of no use against these very long pikes either and that neutralized the basis of the Persian Empire. So eventually the Romans won and according to Plutarch won this battle quite relatively few losses if I'm not misreading his final account, it's hard to believe that. But yes, they won because this is often given as textbook example, maybe you've listened

to history, there's this history of Rome podcast. I don't want to cover things as others have talked about, but essentially the Romans got into the gaps in the Macedonian phalanx and there were gaps caused when the phalanx went to uneven ground and, you know, places where there weren't spears. So the more mobile Roman troops were able to insert into that and cut up the phalanx from the rear with swords and so on. The Macedonian swords were not as good as the Roman ones for that kind of sword fighting. But the problem with that explanation is in the past times the Macedonian phalanxes had always had small gaps caused by the accidents of battle. It was the job of the Macedonian cavalry to patch those up.

Alexander did this with the companion cavalry and it may be that this battle was special I don't know. It may be a particular battle that the Macedonian King Perseus fled the battlefield before the battle ended some say out of cowardice other satyrs because he was a Wounded but anyway, yes Rome wins and they captured actually Perseus the last Macedonian ruler of Greece And of the Balkans actually who was such a sheepskate man He has that he screwed over numerous allies. They he could have turned the battle his way the Bastarnai These were a Gaulish tribe on the Danube They were apparently going to furnish him with a Celtic tribe with 10,000 cavalry and this was not like other I mean all the Celts were war warlike tribe, but this one was especially so and especially apparently

Skilled at fighting not just warlike but successful and skilled at fighting mercenaries and 10,000, you know, they had no other occupation in their lives except war and riding horses and he just refused to pay them. So you know, they didn't fight for him that day. And many other stupidities of avarice and cowardices, including when eventually Emilius Paulus, Paulus was given a triumph in Rome to celebrate this victory and Perseus ended up being paraded as a captured leader in Rome, the Romans, you know, this is Roman custom they did that too. You know, it's very primal. You exhibit in triumph the captured leader of your enemy and whenever they could do this, they did. But Perseus had been given numerous

opportunities to kill himself both before his capture and after. And Paolo kind of rubs it in saying, you know, you have a way out of this if you want. He tells him right before the triumph, but Perseus never does, never kills himself. So, you know, the Romans did not respect this leader at all. I mean, obviously, in that situation, you have to, you have to do it. But in reflecting on his victory, Paolo gives the young soldiers a speech I found to be moving. It's very ancient, very Roman in spirit. And it's maybe not usual everyday popular understanding of what Rome is. So I will read it for you now. I like this speech. This is Paolo now talking to his soldiers after the capture of Perseus and the end of Macedonian kingdom and the victory in this battle.

For what occasion have men to be confident, when their conquest of others gives them most cogent reason to be in fear of fortune, and when one who exalts in success is thrown, as I am, into great dejection by reflecting upon the allotments of fate, which take a circling course, and fall now upon some and now upon others? Or when, as the succession of Alexander, who attained the highest pinnacle of power and won the greatest merit, has fallen in the space of a single hour, and has been put beneath your feet. Or when you see kings who but just now were surrounded by so many myriads of infantry and thousands of cavalry, receiving from their enemy's hands the food and drink requisite for the day, can you suppose that we ourselves have any guarantee from fortune that we'll

avail against the attacks of time? Abandon then this empty insolence and pride of victory, and take a humble posture as you confront the future, always expectant of the time when the deity shall at last launch against each one of you his jealous displeasure at your present prosperity." End quote. So, do you like this melancholic, this is tragic worldview, I like this melancholic reflections about the turn of fortune. You can find in Carmina Burana famous song lyrics, the one that's played in all the Anyways, this constant theme that discourse, the turn of fortune, and then man's changing attitude to fortune in modern times is a very telling thing, fortune with a capital F. But I also see in this speech something else, something despite Paolo's personal distaste

for the last Macedonian King Perseus as a man, as an individual man who was an unworthy man in all kinds of ways. But there is a variation I hear in this speech I gave you of the reflection that Rome in promoting its own greatness was also destroying greatness in others. The preconditions for greatness was destroying rivals and rivals for who, you know, not Perseus himself as a man, but collectively in this case, the progeny he calls in the succession of Alexander, the successors of Alexander, who had laid the world low before him. And Paolo has a lot of respect for that. And it's like the eclipse of that greatness makes him sad and the inconstant fortunes of greatness. Maybe not just because it shows the terms of fortune, but also because there's a logic

here where the men he respects or admires the most are those he's forced to fight and destroy as rivals. And he doesn't really want to see others who are probably unworthy cheering that on. It's a restatement of the same understanding in Hegel of the confrontation between two masters they have to oppose each other in rivalry but the resolution of that conflict in the death of one of them doesn't bring satisfaction and then if he doesn't die the submission of the other as in this case with Perseus you know in face of the fear of death he submits rather than die and that also doesn't bring satisfaction maybe even less so because that man has been revealed as unworthy and not great and not your rival there's also

Also seen, I think it's in Sanjuro, movie of Kurosawa, is a famous duel where one samurai kills another. They're great rivals and antagonists. And after he kills him, the younger companions cheer and he snaps at them angry saying, you idiots, just shut up. This is a great man. He was my equal. I'm not happy he's dead at all. You are nothing compared to him. Go away. And they are chastened and saddened to hear, chastened to hear that. I see some of that in this speech also. So anyway, Paolo's life did not end well in a sense because his second set of sons, he had two sets of sons. One lived a long time, became very successful and so on by his first wife who he divorced. He divorced her apparently for people who were asking him, why would you divorce this wife?

She's a beautiful woman and virtuous woman and she's a good person. Why are you divorcing her? And she's like, he says, when you have a special set of boots and they are great boots and they look to everyone like great boots, but only you know the way that they really annoy you in this particular, that they annoy your foot in this particular way on the inside. Saying essentially small irreconcilable differences can lead even two very good people apart in divorce and so on. So his first set of sons end up doing very well and becoming famous, but they are adopted, They're his biological sons, but they're adopted into prominent Russian families, the famous Russian family. Yes, they're adopted into prominent families.

His second set of sons, two sons by his second wife, who were his heirs, they both died just about the time of this victory. So it was a very mixed time, end of his life for him. His first two sons leave, become great, and his second heirs died. So I will not I don't want to end on that dark note here though is here is Plutarch on the Romans liberation of Greeks and how it was experienced by the Greeks. This is a happier thing to focus on this. Finally Greece is liberated from from Macedonia. The Greeks never liked that say well you say well they weren't really liberated. They were not given their sovereignty. Now they're ruled by Rome. Yes and no. Listen, for one small thing, it's always better to be ruled by the farther boss

than the nearer one. I think people forget this also in many discourses about women today too. When the conservative says, well, why would a woman want to work in an office job instead of at home for her husband, well, if you have to ask that as the obese Chesterton writer, the big knower of female nature, Chesterton, the obese Chesterton tried 100 years ago asked the same thing. Well, if you have to ask that you don't understand, not just female nature, but human nature at all. Of course, they prefer a boss in that sense than to be beholden to a husband who is much harder to disobey and escape if you are dependent on him. There could be some of that here, but also the Romans were more clement. They had the art of governance of others.

They knew how to manage others in imperial fashion, meaning you do not dominate, you are clement. They reduced taxes, for example, greatly on those who had previously been under Macedonian rule. I think that Plutarch says they ended up paying a third in taxes of what they had paid before. So anyway, I'm reading now. After this, he gave his army a chance to rest while he himself went about to see Greece. He went on a tour, occupying himself in ways alike, honorable and humane. For in his progress he restored the popular governments and established their civil polities. He also gave gifts to the Greek cities, to some he gave grain from the royal stores of Macedonia to others' oil, for it is said that so great stores were found laid up that

petitioners and receivers failed before the abundance was recovered and exhausted. At Delphi he saw a tall square pillar composed of white marble stones on which a golden statue of Perseus was intended to stand, and he gave orders that his own statue should be set there instead for it was meet that the conquered should make room for their conquerors. And at Olympia, as they say, he made that utterance, which is now in every mouth, that Phaedias, the sculptor, had molded the Zeus of Homer. When the ten commissioners arrived from Rome, he restored to the Macedonians their country and their cities for free and independent residence. And they were also to pay the Romans a hundred talents in tribute, a sum less than half of what they used to pay to their kings.

So it was not a third, it was less than half, still that's, you know. He also held all sorts of games and contests and performed sacrifices to the gods, at which he gave feasts and banquets, making liberal allowances therefore from the royal treasury, while in the arrangement and ordering of them in saluting and seating his guests, and in paying to each one that degree of honour and kindly attention which was properly his due, he showed such nice and thoughtful perception that the Greeks were amazed, seeing that not even their pastimes were treated by him with neglect, but that although he was a man of such great affairs, he gave even to trifling things their due attention. And he was also delighted to find that, though preparations for entertainment were ever so

many and splendid, he himself was the pleasantest sight to his guests and gave them most enjoyment. And he used to say to those who wondered at his attention to details that the same spirit was required both in marshalling a line of battle and in presiding at a banquet well, the object being, in the one case, to cause most terror in the enemy and the other to to give most pleasure to the company. Yes, you like, this is why I wanted to read this last part because it's enormous important from the depths of the most remote Indo-European or Aryan antiquity, the centrality of the banquet, of parting to life, most important. It was a central feasting, as central as war was, and the pleasures of the feast, the graciousness in what you just read and being a host, entertaining conversation.

See, Amilius Paulus knew his audience well in Greece. This was taken to be the biggest pleasure in life, actually, among the Greeks. Burkhart says the same in his history of the Greeks, conversation in parties and so on. And so he did that. But I continue, but more than anything else, men praised his freedom of spirit and his greatness of soul, for he would not consent even to look upon the quantities of silver and the quantities of gold that were gathered together from the royal treasuries, but handed them over to the questors for the public chest. It was only the books of the king that he allowed his sons, who were devoted to learning, he took the books. When he had put everything in good order, had bidden the Greeks farewell, and had exhorted

the Macedonians to be mindful of the freedom bestowed upon them by the Romans and preserve it by good order and concord, he marched against Epirus. Anyway, yes, Epirus, that's in northwest Greece. It had been a thorn in the side of the Romans for some time and had sided with the Macedonians, So basically Paolo was, unfortunately that was a kind of genocide. The Romans were not always Clement, they did this sometimes to set an example. So he destroyed the main cities of Epirus in northwest Greece and enslaved the populations. That was a big sign you do not mess with Rome, you know. But he didn't feel good about it though, it was an order. It's better to remember this man as an enjoyer of banquets in liberated Athens, solidifying

the love affair between Greece and Rome that was to be at the center of European identity I think from well from before this but especially from this moment on and I may be much more Roman than Greek actually but yes I will be back soon with number one sexy show I know I promised you music episode and it is coming but it's it's very special completely and special unusual musics not just classical musics and I'm compiling it carefully will come soon. And I think very soon next week I come back with special guest show. I hope you enjoy new guest. I will bring on air next time. Until soon, Bap out.