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A Son of Liberty
04-29-2011, 06:40 AM
Will Grigg, in a post @ LRC (http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w208.html), deconstructs the man who sends chills up the legs of Glenn Beck:


"He has a strong military background," Beck gushed. "The guy was led through war, and he's not afraid to pull the trigger."

With Washington's legions engaged in three open wars and at least five covert conflicts, it's clear that the incumbent warlord is not hindered by a disinclination to "pull the trigger." In fact, under the reign of the Nobel Peace Laureate, Washington's military entanglements have expanded considerably and deepened dramatically, particularly through the use of death-dispensing drone aircraft.

In terms of bellicosity overseas, a President Allen West would most likely take up seamlessly from his predecessor. The substantive difference between the two would become apparent in domestic affairs: West's model of an ideal society is the proto-fascist totalitarian state that ruled ancient Sparta.

In a recent address to a meeting of the Evangelical group "Women Impacting the Nation," West extolled the supposed virtues of the Spartan system, in which children (at least those who made the initial cut as newborns and weren't selected as genetic culls to be hurled from a cliff) were stolen from their parents and raised as the property of the State.

"Spartan women at the age of nine gave up their male sons," West recounted to the gathering. "And their male sons went into a training that was called the Agoge and they stayed in that training for the next eleven to twelve years. And when they were finally qualified, when they were finally ready to join the ranks for the Spartan army, it was not their father who gave them their cloak and shield. It was their mother who gave them their shield" – while uttering the famous admonition to return either carrying the shield in triumph, or as a lifeless corpse being carried upon it.


The ironies are thick enough here to blot out the sun, but it's sufficient to focus on three of them. First, the Evangelical women in the audience can be heard swooning with approval as West hymns the purported merits of a thoroughly pagan society that embodied the antithesis of every Christian virtue. Second, West – who insists that we must either subjugate or annihilate Muslims because they "have no respect for human life" – apparently believes that America should re-model itself after a garrison state built on a foundation of institutionalized child sacrifice on behalf of the State.

Even more remarkably, the same Allen West who recently sent a thrill down the leg of many Right-collectivist warbots by denouncing the integration of homosexuals into the imperial military heaped extravagant praise on a military indoctrination system built on what Dr. Paul Cartledge of Cambridge University calls "ritualized pederasty." Enforced homosexuality was part of the process whereby Spartan boys became "qualified" (as West so daintily put it) for service in the city-state's army.

In his book The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse, Dr. Cartledge observes that after a Spartan boy's seventh birthday "he was removed from the home environment, for good, to embark on the compulsory and communal educational system know as the Agoge or Raising/Upbrining. Between the ages of seven and eighteen the boys and youths were organized in 'packs' and 'herds' and placed under the supervision of young adult Spartans. They were encouraged to break the exclusive ties with their own natal families and to consider all Spartans of their father's age to be in loco parentis."

At the age of twelve, the Spartan male "was expected to receive a young adult warrior as his lover – the technical Spartan term for the active senior partner was 'inspirer,' while the junior partner was known as the 'hearer,'" relates Dr. Cartledge. When the Spartan boy reached age eighteen he was evaluated for membership in the Crypteia, a police force assigned "to control the Helots" – a population of civilian slaves who lived under a form of martial law and could be killed, with impunity, by the Spartan police.

If Barack Obama – or even some tertiary bureaucratic appointee in his administration – were to invoke totalitarian Sparta as a model for an American social renaissance, Glenn Beck most likely would suffer a seizure at his chalkboard, and the entire warbot Right would go into convulsions. Allen West's candid endorsement of that vile totalitarian system, however, is seen as "courageous" and "principled" by that same social cohort.

Sola_Fide
04-29-2011, 07:34 AM
In a recent address to a meeting of the Evangelical group "Women Impacting the Nation," West extolled the supposed virtues of the Spartan system, in which children (at least those who made the initial cut as newborns and weren't selected as genetic culls to be hurled from a cliff) were stolen from their parents and raised as the property of the State.

"Spartan women at the age of nine gave up their male sons," West recounted to the gathering. "And their male sons went into a training that was called the Agoge and they stayed in that training for the next eleven to twelve years. And when they were finally qualified, when they were finally ready to join the ranks for the Spartan army, it was not their father who gave them their cloak and shield. It was their mother who gave them their shield" – while uttering the famous admonition to return either carrying the shield in triumph, or as a lifeless corpse being carried upon it. to return either carrying the shield in triumph, or as a lifeless corpse being carried upon it.

One of the things that really digs at me is this mythology on the left and the right about the virtues of Greece and Rome.

You see it on the left with secularists claiming that Greece was the first experiment of "democracy, freedom, and civilization" before Christianity came on the scene.

You see it on the right when morons like West extol the virtues of the Grecian empire and war-worship.

The Greeks and Romans were statists. There was no freedom or liberty in these empires. In Greece, the polis (or the state) was life itself, and there was no identity apart from the state. The state owned your LIFE. The Greeks worshipped the State and its rulers as infallible gods among men. Rome was a welfare-state/empire basketcase. It was overrun and conquered by unorganized Germanic tribes because it bankrupted itself with empire-laced statism.

People aren't students of history anymore. And to be a student of history, you have to have a solid worldview framework in which to interpret that history. The modern masses don't care to systematize their thinking anymore, and it shows itself in things like this.

A Son of Liberty
04-29-2011, 08:46 AM
:thumbs: Public schools will do that. ;)

Couldn't agree more with your comment that one needs a solid worldview framework - an underlying philosophy - to interpret history. Before I recognized the sovereignty of the individual, I was "lost in the sauce", with no rhyme nor reason to any of the positions I took on issues.

That Beck finds this guy to be so desireable seems to reveal much about him (Beck).

juvanya
04-29-2011, 08:58 AM
How is Beck even considered a libertarian?

A Son of Liberty
04-29-2011, 09:02 AM
How is Beck even considered a libertarian?

Every time he calls himself a libertarian, a kitten dies.

AuH20
04-29-2011, 09:08 AM
Spartans were a product of their times. War was commonplace with the volatility of the Greek city states and their surrounding enemies. I can't fault them for joining together to foster a culture based on disicipline and the ability to defend oneself. I think we take for granted the security we are afforded in this day and age, so it's easy to label the Spartans as savage and hollow. It's not like any of us have to worry about a Persian landing party burning one's home down to the ground, killiing one's livestock, etc. Perspective is key.

aclove
04-29-2011, 09:20 AM
Exactly. Perspective is key. That's why West is a complete fascist jackass for wanting modern-day America to emulate this model, precisely because we don't have to worry about a Persian landing party burning our homes to the ground and killing our families and livestock.

Of course, West's support comes largely from suburban evangelicals who DO think we have to seriously worry about that, so I guess there's some logical consistency there.

Pericles
04-29-2011, 09:23 AM
The Greeks and Romans were statists. There was no freedom or liberty in these empires. In Greece, the polis (or the state) was life itself, and there was no identity apart from the state. The state owned your LIFE. The Greeks worshipped the State and its rulers as infallible gods among men. Rome was a welfare-state/empire basketcase. It was overrun and conquered by unorganized Germanic tribes because it bankrupted itself with empire-laced statism.

People aren't students of history anymore. And to be a student of history, you have to have a solid worldview framework in which to interpret that history. The modern masses don't care to systematize their thinking anymore, and it shows itself in things like this.

The second paragraph of yours I quoted is proof of the first.

Freedom was for citizens, and to be a citizen, one had to be worthy of the honor. The citizen tended to exist for the state because the state existed for the citizen - it is the nature of that bond that seems unusual to us and impossible to fathom for the hardcore libertarian.

doodle
04-29-2011, 09:26 AM
While some see West as a low level neocon butt licker and a war criminal, Beck sees him as 2012 Presidential candidate material?


The ironies are thick enough here to blot out the sun, but it's sufficient to focus on three of them. First, the Evangelical women in the audience can be heard swooning with approval as West hymns the purported merits of a thoroughly pagan society that embodied the antithesis of every Christian virtue.

Which women are those?

Most of the women "swooning" seem like pro war neocon liberal types including notorious neocon Pamela Geller and this woman for relationship with whom West took heat because she was "swooning" while covering his political campaign "objectively".


http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/files/original/AngelaSachitano_AllenWest.jpg

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRXCRPDIR6kvSNmLPSCcbyG65Q3lD765 C0kcsLnyUiFFtftI2g4

buck000
04-29-2011, 09:26 AM
It's not like any of us have to worry about a Persian landing party burning one's home down to the ground, killiing one's livestock, etc. Perspective is key.

I agree, but note the irony of your example: our Federal Statists (of both red and blue persuasion) are constantly putting forth the narrative that the modern-day Persian will destroy your modern-day equivalent of livestock via a thermonuclear landing party. ;)

AuH20
04-29-2011, 09:27 AM
The second paragraph of yours I quoted is proof of the first.

Freedom was for citizens, and to be a citizen, one had to be worthy of the honor. The citizen tended to exist for the state because the state existed for the citizen - it is the nature of that bond that seems unusual to us and impossible to fathom for the hardcore libertarian.

The state in it's current incarnation cannot possibly represent us. That's why this concept you're referring to is so difficult to understand for libertatians. Our state is so far removed from the principles advocated by Aristotle.

TNforPaul45
04-29-2011, 09:52 AM
C'mon ya'll. The reason they like Mr West is so obvious, and its a reason that is so shallow and pretty unfair to any actual intellectual credentials that West has.

Thats as much as ill say.