You and I shall fight as partners, then, against anyone who tells us that Simonides, Bias, Pittacus, or any of our other wise and blessedly happy men said this.

I, at any rate, am willing to be your partner in the battle.

An assertion: “But when faced by the enemy we need anger.” Nowhere do we need it less: that’s when our aggressive actions must be controlled and obedient to commands, not given free play. For example: what does in the barbarians, who are physically so much sturdier and inured to toil, except anger, which is its own worst enemy? Gladiators too—their skill protects them, anger leaves them exposed. Furthermore, what need is there of anger, when reason gains the same end? Do you suppose that a hunter feels anger toward wild beasts? Yet he both faces them as they approach and pursues them as they flee, and reason accomplishes all of this, without anger. When so many thousands of Cimbri and Teutoni poured over the Alps, what destroyed them—so utterly that their people back home learned the news only by rumor, since not even a messenger escaped—what destroyed them if not the fact they had anger instead of virtue? And just as anger sometimes has been known to provide momentum and lay low the things in its path, so it has more often been self-destructive. Is there anything more spirited than the Germans? Anything keener on the attack? Anything more eager for the arms of war that they know from birth, that nurture and sustain them, that they have as their sole passion, turning their backs on all else? Anything tougher when it comes to enduring harsh conditions, thanks to the fact that they mostly leave their bodies uncovered and take no shelter from their unendingly freezing climate? Yet Spaniards and Gauls and men of Asia and Syria (virtually women when it comes to war) cut them down, before one of our legions is even in sight, when their inclination to anger—and nothing else—makes them easy prey. Imagine adding reason and discipline to those bodies and minds that have not known pampering, luxury, wealth: to say the least, we will certainly have to revive our old Roman ways! How else did Fabius restore our dominion’s shaken forces than by knowing how to take his time and drag things out and delay, all things that angry people don’t know how to do? Our dominion would have been lost had Fabius dared to do all that anger urged: he took thought for our common fortunes and—having judged our strength to be such that any loss meant total loss—he set aside his sense of grievance and desire for revenge and focused solely on expedient opportunities. He vanquished his anger before he vanquished Hannibal. What about Scipio? Didn’t he leave behind Hannibal, the Carthaginian army, all the things that should have roused his anger, and carry the war into Africa, taking his time in a way that made his enemies think it evidence of self-indulgent sloth? What about the second Scipio? Didn’t he keep Numantia under siege a very long time, regarding with equanimity this spur to resentment—his own and the commonwealth’s at once—that Numantia was taking longer to vanquish than Carthage had? While shutting the enemy in with his siege works he drove them to fall on their own swords. So you can see that anger is not expedient even in battles and wars: it’s given to rashness, and its desire to bring others into peril makes it careless of its own. The virtue that’s most reliable has looked guardedly about a good long time, has exercised self-control, and has advanced slowly toward a determinate goal.

Parasocial/parapolitical gooning is infinitely easier and more immediately satisfying than fighting the war where it actually makes a difference—within one's own soul. The Enemy marks his victories by the conquest of each individual person. When he sees you cheering on the coming "golden age" just because a charismatic minstrel whom you have no affiliation with was allowed to win a "victory," all he does is draw satisfaction from your callowness. He even goes out of his way to make the entire process excessively and glaringly theatrical to make it that much more funny for him when you rabidly believe and indulge in it.

Aside from the fact that it’s 2024 and “endorsing” a candidate is inherently ridiculous, I have a reason for not endorsing Trump. It took me a long time to understand my deepest reason, but someone helped me out by giving a silly title to a talk of mine.

See, most people who are against Trump think he doesn’t deserve to be President—that America is too good for him. I’m totally in the opposite camp. It feels wrong for Trump to be President, not because America is too good for him, but because he is too good for us. We should not have elected Trump, because we are not ready to serve him.

How many Trump voters would vote to give their President unconditional control of the government? It can’t be 100%. Is it even 50%? Maybe it’s 50%. That’s 50% of 51%, which is not, in case math is hard for you, a majority.

It’s certainly not a mandate. It’s certainly not a mandate to end the “rule of law” (i.e., the unconstitutional capture of the executive branch by the legislative branch). So how can a Trump administration be anything but the usual bipartisan centaur?

Americans do not deserve Trump because they do not care enough about reality to see the structural differences between what they are actually doing, and what they think they were doing. Americans do not deserve Trump because they expect too little of him. They are fine with the exciting story. They don’t even know what a Plum Book is. Then, like children, they will be disappointed with the results, and never know why.

TLDR: Trump and Vance are not strong enough to replace Washington or even control it. They can do what any Republican adminstration does: bring in a different faction of staffers. This will change a few things that the government does in some ways. It will not involve any serious changes to the way government works or we live our lives.

Their lack of strength is not their fault. As democratic leaders, they have only the strength that the voters give them. The voters are not ready to trust them with full power over the government, which is the only way they could get anything done. They are not strong enough because we did not give them enough strength.

Worse, by refusing to see the difference between the dramatic narrative and the sordid reality, by investing emotional energy in the drama without any equivalent energy in wanting to make it real, or any anger that it is not real… you give your leaders no choice.

They would love to lead you for real. First, you would have to follow them for real—and you’re not ready to do that. So…

POPULAR revolt was for many centuries an essential feature of the English tradition, and the middle decades of the seventeenth century saw the greatest upheaval that has yet occurred in Britain.

The revolt within the Revolution which is my subject took many forms, some better known than others. Groups like Levellers, Diggers and Fifth Monarchists offered new political solutions (and in the case of the Diggers, new economic solutions too). The various sects - Baptists, Quakers, Muggletonians - offered new religious solutions. Other groups asked sceptical questions about all the institutions and beliefs of their society Seekers, Ranters, the Diggers too. Indeed it is perhaps misleading to differentiate too sharply between politics, religion and general scepticism. We know, as a result of hindsight, that some groups - Baptists, Quakers - will survive as religious sects and that most of the others will disappear. In consequence we unconsciously tend to impose too clear outlines on the early history of English sects, to read back later beliefs into the 1640s and 50s. One of the aims of this book will be to suggest that in this period things were much more blurred. From, say, 1645 to 1653, there was a great overturning, questioning, revaluing, of everything in England. Old institutions, old beliefs, old values came in question. Men moved easily from one critical group to another, and a Quaker of the early 1650s had far more in common with a Leveller, a Digger or a Ranter than with a modern member of the Society of Friends.