I have been in a season of reflection recently. 

If you read my recent article, “The Last War is Still Going On: Why I Continue to Talk About Saddam Hussein”, then you know why. 

Quite frankly, my heart has been haunted. 

Nine years ago in 2015, I wrote and published my second book, All Men Follow the Strongman: The Forgotten History of the Iraq War. 

Its research and writing answered my questions that had been plaguing me since childhood about a region beloved to me…

That bloody sandbox we call the Middle East. 

But in answering many questions, the book led me to ask many more…

STRENGTH IS SURVIVAL

What I discovered in writing the book is encapsulated in the title…All Men Follow the Strongman. 

It’s an old Arab Proverb that summarizes the region’s way of life…in a harsh and unforgiving world, strength allows for survival, and so strength is venerated above all else. 

If the Strongman is good and loving, then good and loving values will follow.  The people will likewise venerate that goodness, for it is coupled with strength. 

But if the Strongman is bad and oppressive, then bad and oppressive values will follow. And the people will likewise venerate that badness, for it is coupled with strength. 

For strength is survival, and without it there is only death. 

THE BIG QUESTION 

In the writing of the book and after, I have been asking myself: 

What is this Strength? 

How does a man get it…so he can beat the Bad Strongman and be the Good Strongman that All Men Follow? 

The question is many faceted and many layered. 

And after nine years of research, experience, and reflection, I finally found the answer.

WHAT THE FIRST GENERATION KNEW 

You see, there are two types of Strength in the Middle East.

One is practiced by the people, and the other is practiced by the leaders…the Strongmen. 

The people practice a kind of Strength that Thomas Aquinas calls Endurance, and today we often refer to as Resilience. 

It’s about being able to take a beating, get up again, and keep on going.

There’s a quiet dignity in this, a long-suffering forbearance, and an inspiration to all. 

It’s a uniquely Worker Caste kind of Strength, and you will see it in the Men and Women who have recently come over from the Middle East hellholes that were their homes. 

It is particularly noticeable in that the first generation of immigrants who grew up overseas always have it, but their second-generation children raised in the West oftentimes do not. 

This is often a great consternation to their parents. 

THE STRENGTH OF THE SLAVES 

But this kind of Strength possessed by the people is a passive kind of strength. It is the Strength of the Defeated…the Strength of the Slaves. 

It knows no color, and it knows no creed. 

And it is a Strength that has some masochist tendencies to it. 

Lucian Truscot IV was a West Point Graduate and Army Officer who resigned his commission in 1970 in protest of the Vietnam War. 

He then became a Journalist, and a far-sighted observer of the human condition, having one foot in the world of the warriors and the other foot in the world of the civilians. 

In a 1981 roundtable discussion with a number of prominent Vietnam Veterans and Antiwar Activists, Truscot explained how he had seen the Strength of the Slaves become embraced in America after our defeat in that dark jungle:

“Nobody really knows how to act anymore. ‘Macho’ became a dirty word during those years. Macho used to be an OK thing to be. 

“Here’s a perfect example. 

“When we were growing up, macho was when you were playing football, when they hiked the ball if you knocked over the other guy and he went down and you were still on your feet, the coach kicked you in the a** and said ‘Hey, baby, that was macho!’

“Now these guys go out and run 20 miles, which is absolute masochistic self-punishment, and they brag about it. And that’s macho! They’re not knocking down the other guy, they’re knocking themselves down. 

“There’s a perfect example of a 180-degree flop of self image. It used to be cool to hit the other guy, and now you’re supposed to hurt yourself.”[1] 

THE STRENGTH OF THE MASTERS

But there is a second kind of strength, the kind possessed by the leaders…the Strongmen.

The Strongmen practice the kind of Strength that Thomas Aquinas calls Daring, and today we more often call Aggression. 

Aggression is about being able to give the beating instead of taking it. 

Whereas the Endurance is passive, Aggression is active. It’s not about surviving being knocked down, or even knocking yourself down, as Truscot said. 

It’s about knocking the other guy down. 

Thomas Schelling was a Nuclear War Strategist and National Security Specialist for the Pentagon. 

In his 1966 book, Arms and Influence, he explains how Aggression is, quite frankly, “The power to hurt.”[2]  

And it is this ability that allows the Strongman to rule. 

“The power to hurt is bargaining power,” Thomas Scheller noted. “To exploit it is diplomacy-vicious diplomacy, but diplomacy.”[3] 

While Endurance is the Strength of the Slaves, Aggression is the Strength of the Masters. 

Whoever has the Power to Hurt is the Master. 

And this is true for the Good Strongmen and the Bad Strongmen alike. 

“THAT REALM BEYOND THE CONQUEST OF PAIN”  

As Thomas Aquinas well understood, you have to have both kinds of Strength…Endurance and Aggression alike.[4] 

My good friend James Lafond, veteran of over 600 Boxing Matches and 400 Stick Fighting Matches, best describes Endurance as “the conquest of pain”.[5] 

“Pain, in particular, is not a concern of the boxer,” James Lafond writes. “[Because his] first lesson is the conquest of pain.”[6] 

Only once this “conquest of pain” is achieved can Mastery of Aggression follow. 

“The masculine will exists in that realm beyond the conquest of pain.”[7] 

This is the Realm of the Strongman.[8]  

THE KING OF THE WOODS 

We see this related as the very foundation of the Indo-European Warrior Caste in Julius Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World. 

There he tells the tale of Rex Nemorensis, “King of the Woods”.

In it, the Man must escape his slave nature and fight the “King of the Woods” in mano-a-mano, Confrontational Combat and slay him with the branch of his Sacred Oak Tree. 

When the Man has done this, he is new “King of the Woods”, and wins the hand of the Sexual-Spiritual Woman, Diana, and all the wisdom inherent within her.[9]

This escaping of the Slave Nature is the mastery of Endurance, the “Conquest of Pain”. But one does not stay there in order to kill the “King of the Woods”.

No, he must have what James Lafond calls “the impetus that enables him to use his superior strength for something beyond hauling other men’s property and tilling other men’s land.”[10]

That impetus is the Mastery of Aggression, that “Power to Hurt”…and is what allows on the graduate from the Slave Caste to the Warrior Caste. 

“That Realm Beyond the Conquest of Pain.” 

Master that impetus, and you are the King of the Woods.

And the King of the Woods is the Strongman that All Men Follow. 

Good and Bad alike.

THE ANSWER OF THE LEVIATHAN 

“That’s all well and good,” I can hear you saying. 

“But how does this work in real life?” 

I’m glad you asked…because I’ve been asking myself since writing the book and finishing the book. 

And I wouldn’t have written this article in the first place if I didn’t have an answer.

To find out, you’re just going to have to read the next installment of this Leviathan of a piece!

Sincerely,

Richard Barrett

12-29-2024

Written at 8:47 PM, somewhere in the USA…

Sources Cited

Image 1.

[1]  Quoted in The Wounded Generation: America After Vietnam. Editor: A.D. Horne. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1981. Pg. 108 From “A Symposium with Philip Caputo, James Fallows, Robert Muller, Dean K. Phillips, Lucian Truscott IV, James Webb and John P. Wheeler III, with Richard Hardwood, moderator. Pgs. 95-154. 

[2] Thomas Schelling, quoted in Jacobsen, Annie. Nuclear War: A Scenario. New York, NY: Dutton, Random Publishing House, LLC. Pg. 173. 

[3] Pg. 173. 

[4] Lafond, James. The Punishing Art: Boxing for Ring, Cage, and Survival. A Punch Buggy Books Publication, 2016. Pg. 19. 

[5] For commentary on this, in addition to the Summa Theologiae sections linked HERE and HERE, see Miner, Robert. Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologiae 1a2ae 22-48. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.  

[6] Ibid. Pg. 19. 

[7] Ibid. Pg. 19.

[8] It is interesting to note for those Astrologically inclined that both Lucian Truscot IV and Thomas Schelling are Aries Sun Signs on the Western Zodiac…ruled by Mars, the Planet of War. Truscot was born on April 11, 1947 in Fukuowka, Japan. Schelling was born on April 14, 1921 in Oakland, California. Interestingly enough, they were also both opposed to the Vietnam War. It is telling of society, and the place of our Warrior Caste within it that some of our most far-sighted observers of the Human Condition in War have been opposed to the activities of the Warrior Caste within their generation. Sadly, the Spiritual and Warrior Castes are divorced. The Spiritual Caste will do just fine with this arrangement, for they understand the nature of things as they are. But the Warrior Caste will pay a high price and have already for this. They take the Action, but without Understanding it, and this lack of Understanding leads to madness. Look at our suicide rates of our Heroes from the War on Terror. We must have Understanding to win the War…even if that Understanding comes from those who oppose it. “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” -1st Corinthians 1:27, NIV. 

[9] Evola, Julius. Translated by Stucco, Guido. Revolt Against the Modern World. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 1995. Pgs. 13-15. Pgs. 68-71 in the link above. 

[10] Lafond, James. “Seven Faces of the Hero: The Fundamental Attributes that Define the Hero”. James Lafond. 2016. https://www.jameslafond.com/article/4704?t=119.