"Not if you can back it up with action. "

HE CAN'T.

His arrogant bravado doesn't depend on HIM, but on modern Americans. Only a small percentage of us have even been in the military, let alone served in combat theaters.

They're combat veterans with all the support our shiny toys could give them. They're combat veterans who've always faced less capable forces.

I'm not trying to run down our forces, I'm trying to be realistic in the knowledge of *history*. This same argument was made by the Romans about their legions even as the barbarians carved their way to Rome. This argument was made by the British about Americans even as we were winning our independence.


And we don't have the stomach for carnage the enemy does, any more than the Romans had a stomach for the carnage wrought by the barbarians.

You know, in some Islamic countries, executions are a form of *entertainment*?

We can't even feel indifferent to the people we're fighting, we have to sympathize with them, and you think we're going to go muzzle to muzzle with people who delight in inflicting suffering?

Answer me this...

How many of you here could carve the head off a living human being?

How many of you could sit eating popcorn while watching the video?

I rest my case.

The proper, natural response, which the marine does demonstrate in a limited way, to his credit (aside from the arrogant bravado), is not disgust, but anger. Fury. Bigoted hatred for all things Moslem and Arab.

That's what nature instilled in us over 200,000 years of human evolution. It will serve us well if we stop fearing it and use it.

"The values composing civilization and the values required to protect it are normally at war. Civilization values sophistication, but in an armed force sophistication is a millstone.

The Athenian commanders before Salamis, it is reported, talked of art and of the Acropolis, in sight of the Persian fleet. Beside their own campfires, the Greek hoplites chewed garlic and joked about girls.

Without its tough spearmen, Hellenic culture would have had nothing to give the world. It would not have lasted long enough. When Greek culture became so sophisticated that its common men would no longer fight to the death, as at Thermopylae, but became devious and clever, a horde of Roman farm boys overran them.

The time came when the descendants of Macedonians who had slaughtered Asians till they could no longer lift their arms went pale and sick at the sight of the havoc wrought by the Roman gladius Hispanicus as it carved its way toward Hellas."
- T. R. Fehrenbach, "Proud Legions"

And the time came when the Roman legionnaires became sick at the sight of the havoc wrought by the Germanic barbarians as they carved their way down the Italic peninsula and sacked Rome.

That's it! Beat your chests based on the qualities of your FATHERS.

I thought objectivists liked reality and reason?

On the one hand, there's no hesitation here to point out and criticize the many and severe shortcomings of recent generations.

But, once I point out that the U.S. has become, not a sleeping giant but an impotent giant, oh my gawd, I've committed blasphemy.

Fine, disbelieve me, you always do. In 10 years as you prep to slap your head to the ground in Moslem prayer, be sure to pretend I *wasn't* right about history repeating.

The Roman legions who guarded the frontier in the 5th century were not the legions who conquered Europe. The society behind them was not the society that conquered Europe.

The legions and society of modern America are not the stuff of our forebears, even as recently as the WWII generation. We've already demonstrated it with the 10 year debacle in the middle east, because we would not beat the living shit out of our enemies, as any healthy society would have done.

Take away our legions' shiny toys... which *will* happen because we are dependent upon foreigners to produce them, and see how well they do their job.
And a society that would put its women on the front lines DESERVES what a 7th century death cult will do to it.

Doesn't matter how courageous they are, they don't have the character of their predecessors, and more importantly, they don't have the "naturalness", the millennia old bigotries and instinctive reactions that have been beaten out of at least the past 3 generations... just as they were bred out of the 4th century Roman generations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S72nI4Ex...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF27OtzA...

The one universal constant of human civilization... history repeats. always.

History repeats... because people refuse to learn from it. They'd rather masturbate over the cobwebbed monuments of their ancestors' greatness.

This is not 1941. The Sleeping Giant is sleeping because he's in a coma.

And that's just the half of it!

I'm hoping ISIS is meditating on the fact that they may have awakened a sleeping giant! Wish Dear Leader felt the same.

Who'da thought marines could be stand up comedians?

"The terrorist army is fast making mortal enemies around the world, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out this isn’t going to end well for them."

Said the Roman centurion to the German barbarian about 1700 years ago.