Demagogy in History

I know that many of you out there imagine that the things that Liberals do to sabotage our wars is a new phenomenon. How I wish it were, but, sadly, it is not. The Roman Republic was brought down by a Left Wing demagogue named Caesar, but this is not his story. It is the story of a one man disaster, Gaius Terentius Varro.

Varro was Hannibal's contemporary and his Liberal bungling handed the Carthaginian his greatest victory that he ever won. Hannibal was a genius, the greatest general of his day and no general anywhere early in the war could match him in a battle of wits. With inferior numbers and quality of troops Hannibal won two great victories over the armies of the Roman Republic, the first at the River Trebia in northern Italy and the second at Lake Trasimene in Central Italy. Tens of thousands of Romans lay dead, and this stunning upstart Hannibal was now in the Italian heartland.

A hero stepped forward. His name was Quintus Fabius Maximus. According to Roman law, he was appointed dictator for six months, for the emergency that the Republic faced. He came up with the famous "Fabian Tactics." The premise was this- no Roman general could beat Hannibal in an open battle. However, Fabius raised a new, fresh Army that would shadow the Carthaginian Army. As they foraged for supplies, the Legions would engage in minor skirmishes that would eventually bleed them dry. Hannibal could not replace losses, as his soldiers were African, Spanish and Gaulish. He was down deep into Italy with no replacements. The Fabian tactics slowly began to melt his army.

Then Varro and his fellow demagogues stepped up. They made up a fanciful tale that Fabius really was capable of destroying Hannibal, but wasn't doing so in order to prolong his dictatorship and supress the rights of the poor. Hannibal got wind of this and when sacking the villas of rich Senators in Southern Italy, he ordered those of Fabius to not be touched. This further added to Varro's charges. Fabius, however, was able to blunt the charges by selling the villas and donating the gold he got for them to the Republic's war chest.

Fabius fended off Varro for the moment, but his dictatorship ended after six months and Varro ran for Consul(the Roman Executive), promising to beat Hannibal and end the war. He was elected handily for the year 216 BC. Fabius had gotten those under his command (many of whom were less than enthusiastic about Fabian Tactics at the start) to believe in his ways, including Minucius, his Master of the Horse, whose life he saved from one of Hannibal's traps. But Varro, as Consul, trumped them all.

After several months of the Fabian Tactics, Hannibal's soldiers were getting frayed and frustrated. His Spanish troops were going to defect over to the Romans, a significant part of his forces would be gone. Many had had enough. And then Varro engaged at a place called Cannae.

Approximately 80,000 Romans marched towards Hannibal's 50,000. Half of the 50K were naked Gauls. One of Hannibal's cavalry officers, named Gisco, looked at the well armed and armored Romans and said, "that is amazing......" Hannibal looked over at him, shrugged and said, "what I find amazing is that not one of those men is named Gisco." Word of this exchange spread in Hannibal's Army and a shout of exultation went up. Hannibal didn't fear the Roman machine.

Varro came on like the Roman commanders at Trebia and Trasimene. Hannibal had his Gauls in the center, and his army drew back in the center, slowly, until the Heavy Arican Infantry was on the Roman flanks. Also the Numidian Cavalry in Carthaginian service overwhelmed the smaller units of Italian cavalry and were in the Roman rear. The vast Army of the Republic was encircled and the slaughter began. Some estimates put the Roman dead at 60,000 or more. The United States lost about 59,000 men during the entire Vietnam Era. Kind of puts things in perspective, eh?

And like John Kerry and Jimmy Carter, Varro was not punished for his stupidity which gave Rome a Vietnam in one afternoon. The surviving soldiers were formed into two special legions which were not allowed onto Italian soil for the rest of the war, fighting in Sicily and later in Scipio's invasion of Africa.

Hannibal only lost six thousand men. His Army's morale went from down in the dumps to stratospheric in one day. Instead of being beaten in 216 BC, it would be 201 BC before Scipio would defeat Hannibal at the battle of Zama, ending the war. Important Roman allies like Syracuse, Capua, Samnium and Tarentum defected to the Carthaginian side, forcing Rome to besiege them. These cities were gutted and never would be the same. All because of one demagogue and his conspiracy theories.

We have many Varro's today in America. Democrats who are undermining our efforts in Iraq. Iraqis went to vote on their new Constitution last Saturday, and if Liberals got their way, it would not have happened. Our Left Wing Varro's falsely accuse President Bush of "trying to steal people's rights" in fighting in Iraq. John Kerry tried to take over the war, and would, no doubt, have made Varro seem like Caesar in comparison. Too many good men are dying for their foolishness. We cannot allow them to sabotage the Iraq War for their Socialist Left Wing Agenda. We have to fight the Liberals on the Iraq War front. America will be severely, even mortally, wounded if the Liberals and terrorists win.

Happy Birthday Mom

Yesterday, October 6th was my mom's birthday. Cynthia Dedinas, nee Typinski, was born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania on the 6th of October, 1937. Her parents were immigrants from Poland. She was the last of ten children, eight of whom lived out of infancy.

World War II shaped so much of her life. The attack on Pearl Harbor came when she was four years old and V-J day occured just before she turned eight. For a child the years between four and eight are a virtual eternity. Her brothers, my uncles, Raymond and Robert, were seventeen and eighteen in 1945. They joined up and served under General MacArthur. My grandfather cried as he signed the paper allowing Uncle Raymond Henry Typinski to join at age seventeen. But both boys returned safe, by the grace of God.

As was the case with most people of Polish stock, my mother was raised a devout Catholic. She served as a nun in a convent for six years from the age of sixteen until twenty-two. And while I am of the Evangelical bent today, her and my father did raise me up well in the way of Christ and in the end I did not depart from it. I am greatful always for this.

People don't realize how things used to be. Liberals flatulate about "white males" but fail to realize that when my grandfather moved to a new neighborhood in Detroit, the local housing covenant didn't want any Pollacks there. So much for the notion of white skin privilege.

I was born on July 28, 1969. My parents weren't hippies, they had a real life. I was born about two weeks before the Sharon Tate murders. I cannot imagine how that incident must have affected my mother. Sharon Tate's baby would have been a few weeks younger than me. What I have to thank my mother for the most is her remaining uncorrupted by the insanity of the late 1960s and early 1970s. I know it made a difference in my life, in days when I tottered on the edge of the abyss. She was a real woman who loved her family. She and my dad were lovers of knowledge. Until near adulthood, I assumed every child grew up in a house with as many books as a library in it.

I owe a great deal to my mother and I am very greatful. I hope God will watch over her and protect her in her life. Happy Birthday Mom, and many more.

You Gotta Love It

My last post, "The Great Democratic Salami Maneuver" drew an interesting response. I had it posted on GOP Insight as well as the Republic of Utica. An anonymous Liberal poster replied, "it won't take six billion people long to carve away your tiny salami." For those of you who have not read the article, the salami was analogous to a people's freedom and rights to things such as free speech and freedom of religion, real rights of our Constitution.

You gotta love it when the mask slips away from the Liberal and his true self is revealed. The Liberal wears the mask of righteousness, he is the "champion of the people" the "defender of civil liberties," nevermind that he is not much into either civility or liberties. Every so often, however, his mask slips and he threatens you with what REALLY happens when the revolution occurs.

This happened when one of John Kerry's campaign managers, Chad Clanton, was speaking on Hannity and Colmes one night. A television network had just agreed to air the honest opinions of several Vietnam veterans who wanted to use their First Amendment rights to say what a traitor John Kerry is. They had made a documentary expressing their opinions. Mr Clanton looked menacingly into the camera and said, "they better hope we don't win!" For the sake of our First Amendment freedoms it's a good thing Kerry didn't! As you remember this, remember also all the times Liberals bellyache about a "chilling effect" by Conservatives on their free speech whenever we dare to disagree with them! But they have no compunction about doing exactly the thing they accuse Conservatives falsely of doing.

My anonymous Liberal friend was delivering the same message to me. "The people of the world will rise up in socialist revolution and take your bourgeois freedoms away, yankee," this supposed American might have said. That's another thing they like to do, mask their attacks on our basic freedoms as "patriotic dissent." That's not unlike the way a parent who puts cigarettes out on their kid claims that they are "disciplining" him "out of love."

They silence the religious freedoms of communities to pray in school and acknowledge God in the name of "religious freedom" (yes, they manage to perpetrate that farce with a straight face). They silence "hate speech" in the name of "tolerance" (hate speech being whatever the Liberal Party Line deems offensive "no free speech for hate speech" is the Canadian Liberals' rallying cry, they should have just made it "no free speech" period). They aren't trying to help the terrorists win Iraq because they'd hate to see America win one, they are "patriotically dissenting" (excuse me while I gag). Freedom of speech and freedom of religion are hateful to many Liberals. They don't love these ideas or embrace them in any way. They merely use them as a means of deflecting the topic of discussion from the obvious- their lack of love for this country and its ideals. They don't want America to be free, independent and strong, and when have they ever? The last Liberal who did was John F Kennedy and we all remember what happened to him. Liberals for the last forty years (and also the ones from the generation before JFK's "GI Generation" of WWII vets) have opposed anything that would make America stronger or more independent. They have consistently supported every Communist and terrorist enemy the United States has had, with the exception of 'al-Qaeda right after 9-11, that would have been political suicide. But even in that instance the Ward Churchills of the world have expressed what very many Liberals think but will not say. With "loyal dissenters" like these, who needs a bunch of rat bastard fifth columnists?

The Far Leftists in places like Boston and San Francisco, join Parisians and Berliners who look down their royal noses on us red-blooded Americans. These Liberal Euro-wannabes are constantly trying to make America a subservient satrapy of Socialist Eurasia. How is this loyal dissent? This is what people used to call sedition in the days when a traitor was called a traitor rather than be celebrated as a champion of human rights.

America needs to wake up and realize that these people will not stop. The one scene from that garbage movie "Born on the 4th of July" that sticks with me is the scene of his Conservative mother ready to cry over the state of our nation, as ten thousand smelly hippies marched on Washington DC during the Vietnam War. Like most Americans whose brains weren't turned to oatmeal by pot or LSD, she hated this. But instead of doing something about it, she turned the channel over to Rowan and Martin's "Laugh-In." She quickly shut out of her mind the stinky Bolsheviks marching on our nation's capital. And that's what they want us to do. Tune in, turn on and drop out. Smoke a doobie and forget what they are doing to the fabric of our society. They dream of the day when the blue helmeted UN troops will be molesting thirteen year olds on our streets instead of over in Africa.

Not me, brother.