August 14, 2025 • 56 mins
This special episode marks the revival of the classic format edition with one-on-one conversations between Steve and a special guest, with the first in the series being author Michael Walsh, discussing his terrific new book, A Rage to Conquer: Twelve Battles That Changed the Course of Western History.
One way to get a feel for the candor and bracing character of Michael's book is this passage from the Afterword, reflecting on the ambivalent reaction to the 9/11 attack:
"The imperial Romans would have gone full delenda est on Saudi Arabia, razed its cities, destroyed the Kaaba, leveled the mosques, occupied the oil fields, seized its wealth, executed its leaders, and sold the populace into slavery; they knew an existential struggle when they were in one."
Our conversation ranges far beyond the four corners of his book, into music, Ireland (Michael's ancentral home and part-time residence today), the suicidal multiculturalism of Europe, and why the Chinese military threat is overrated.
Steve has other guests lined up for future classic format episodes, and from time to time John and/or Lucretia will join in. But you're going to have to stock up on more whisky.
One way to get a feel for the candor and bracing character of Michael's book is this passage from the Afterword, reflecting on the ambivalent reaction to the 9/11 attack:
"The imperial Romans would have gone full delenda est on Saudi Arabia, razed its cities, destroyed the Kaaba, leveled the mosques, occupied the oil fields, seized its wealth, executed its leaders, and sold the populace into slavery; they knew an existential struggle when they were in one."
Our conversation ranges far beyond the four corners of his book, into music, Ireland (Michael's ancentral home and part-time residence today), the suicidal multiculturalism of Europe, and why the Chinese military threat is overrated.
Steve has other guests lined up for future classic format episodes, and from time to time John and/or Lucretia will join in. But you're going to have to stock up on more whisky.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well with the come and take my pains, my ry,
oh whiskey.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Why think alone when you can drink it all in
with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour, join your bartenders Steve Hayward,
John Yu and the International Woman of Mystery Lucretia where
they lapped it up and David, ain't you besy on
the should He's happy, got a giving and that with me. Well,
(00:32):
Hi everybody, and welcome to this first of the revived
classic format editions of the podcasts, in which I have
long form conversations and interviews with authors and other interesting people.
And fitting for the Three Whiskey Happy Hour podcast that
our first guest in the revived series is someone who
not only traces his ancestry back to Ireland, but who
(00:54):
spends a lot of his time in Ireland a living
today and that person is Michael Walsh, whose most recent
book is called A Rage to Conquer Twelve Battles that
changed the course of Western History. Before I get into
it with Michael, you should know that he is a
true renaissance man. He's written over twenty books, worked as
a senior foreign correspondent for Time magazine for almost twenty years.
(01:18):
He has written classical music and made many classical performances,
and his books ranged from novels to books about classical
music and modern opera, and books about things like the
insidious effect of the Frankfurt School. And now this book
that we're talking about today is the second of a
projected three volumes to talk about the glories of warfare,
(01:42):
and by that he means that modern sensibilities are all
against war and fighting, and of course he recognizes it
as a trade of human nature, a necessity that should
be grasped with relish rather than with the fashionable dread
of modern times. His first book in a series was
called Last Stands, Why Men Fight when all is lost?
(02:04):
And the current one, as I say, is a rage
to conquer. And so let's get into it with Michael,
and I think you will find this conversation fascinating. Well, Michael,
this is your nineteenth book, by my count, A Rage
to Conquer, Twelve battles that changed the course of American history.
(02:25):
And I haven't read all your books. I've read, I
don't know a quarter of the maybe, but this is
my favorite so far. I just had a delight reading
through it. And I'm actually not through the whole thing.
But every chapter I'm having great fun. So it's a
sequel to Last Stands. I want to come back to
the Last Stands book later actually and get straight into
this book. So twelve battles, but it's wrapped inside of thesis,
(02:49):
which is you're rehabilitating war. I remember graffiti on a
bomb from the First Gulf War in nineteen ninety one
that said give war a chance, which play on that
stupid old John Lennon lyric. I think it was again
big Wark raad again. Well, and I think hopefully this
isn't too much of a simplification to say your thesis
(03:12):
is that war is normal, natural, praiseworthy, something to be
admired and not abjured the way it is in modern times.
Is that too the summary of of what you're trying
to get at here.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
No, thinks I think that's fair Stuve. I think what
I'm trying to do, as I did in the last
Stance with a quote from the Manual Kant, was to
point out war as the natural state of mankind and
pieces the aberration, and so we lived in this funny
interwar period. It'll be seen as that later on. Of course,
(03:46):
we don't notice it because we think, well, this is normal,
and we grew up in that. But you know, old
cultures like you and I grew up, were born and
raised right after the Second World War, and we've really
lived through a time of extraordinarily a peaceful world comparative
to World War Two, and I just think we have
(04:06):
to face the fact that war is inevitable. And the
most important takeaway I have is that war is not
a failure. I think that we've come to this notion
I think post World War two, especially with the UN
that war can somehow be preempted or avoided. And it
represents a misinterpretation of Classovitz's famous dictum that war is
(04:32):
policy by other means. And as I go to some
length to point out, but he actually said it, war
is policy with other means. The German word is very clear.
I don't know why it's been so consistently mistranslated, but
if you say by to me, it sounds like, well,
everything else has failed, so now we're using other means.
Whereas properly understood, warfare is a tool in the diplomatic
(04:58):
kit to be used when necessary. It's the acts behind
the glass basically, but when you need it you use it.
So that's really the thesis behind all the discussions in
Rage to Conquer.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, it reminds me of a professor I had in
graduate school now more than forty years ago, who, before
going on academia, had been a tank driver for Pattent's
Third Army in World War Two, and he had an
ingenious way of starting his class on diplomacy and military
power that you'll appreciate. He would, on the first day
of class pass around to World War two M one
(05:33):
rifle and explained how it worked, and then he'd fix
the bandet, describe how to use the bayonet when you're
out of ammunition, and he was very lyrical about it.
And then he would end by saying holding up the
gun and say, this is the basic tool of diplomacy.
Next class we'll start talking about the basic tools of
military power. So that was very much your understanding of
class what you're just explaining. And they don't make professors
(05:55):
like that any more, needless to say, and so I
am hearing echoes of certain Then other person you remind
me of a bit was well, maybe I'm jumping ahead
too far, but your last chapter about the post nine
to eleven World and how unserious we've been about things.
Remind me of my late friend, who you may have
known was Angelo codevillav Oh well, right, yeah, you know.
(06:16):
Angelo used to say, I'm not sure you ever wrote
it anywhere, but he used to say, as you point
out in your chapter, the Saudis were up to their
necks in what was going on behind nine to eleven.
I think we know that's the concealed part of the
nine to eleven Commission report. And he said, you know
a lot of those royal family people live in those
high rise luxury hotels. We just ought a round up
(06:37):
three thousand of them and execute them, as you know, right,
as retribution for what they connived in. And I okay, anyway,
the point is is this is a real breath of
fresh air when so much treatment of a warfare and conflict,
as as you say, is sort of I put it
sentimental continism. Oh right. Anyway, that's my commentary on your
very sound commentary. We're in heated agreement about all this.
(06:59):
I think let's take a look at some of the battles.
You pick a lot from antiquity, you know, Achilles, Alexander, Caesar, Constantine,
And I guess maybe I went to unpractice to say
a lot of those are a long time ago and
remote from you know, modern history, and although they're important
(07:23):
to ancient history, seems to me the presumption there is
that the Western history is one long continuity and that
without those we wouldn't be where we are today, which
I think would be a novel proposition to a lot
of people who think that's just antiquity and has no
relevance to our world today.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, well they're They're almost as old as the constitutions,
Steve right, I love that.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yes, I forget which idiots said that, but.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
As reclined it was, ezraclined, a constitution is like one
hundred years old, one.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Hundred years old, and what relevance could it possibly have
to ut Well, I was thinking about this last November.
I was actually in the Forum in Rome, which is
like old, right old, and I was walking the footsteps
of Caesar, and it doesn't seem that old when you're
actually in it. I think that's the point is, especially
(08:14):
as Americans where disassociated from our own originations and our
own pasts and our own people's past to some extent,
we have a new covenant, as it were, a new
beginning a new hope. But we go back to Greco Romanism.
And I've made the distinction in this book, and I
(08:35):
will make an even more in the third book in
this series, which I'm writing right now. That I believe
we are a Greco Roman civilization not a Judeo Christian
civilization for many, many, many, many, many, many many reasons.
But as far as our Western civilization starts, it starts
(08:57):
with the Iliad, and it starts with Homer. Now that
is roughly contemporaneous with the origins of Judaism, as you know,
so that the Trojan work takes place about twelve hundred BC,
So do the early stages of Judaism and Moses and
the Egyptian captivity, etc. Homer rights in eight hundred BC,
(09:23):
which is right around the time that Judaism is coming
together as a mosaic faith. Augustus becomes emperor, right around
the time that Jesus is born and Christianity is born,
and Rabbinic Judaism is begun. So these religions and histories
bump into each other constantly. But from my own point
(09:45):
of view, and this is not to argue religion, I'll
do that in the next book, but I've got to
leave the folks wanting more. From a historical point of
view and from a literary cultural military point of view,
we really start with the Greco Roman period. So that's
why I began with the Iliad and with Alexander the Great.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, okay, and then you one chapter that goes into
a period that I have to confess I'm weak on.
Was the Crusades. It's your chapter seven? Yes, was that
Beaumont at Dori Lea. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that right.
I'm sure I'm not. I was not surprised, but still
nonetheless delighted to see you rehabilitate the Crusades from all
(10:28):
the calibi thrown that episode in Western history. But then
from there you jump up to Napoleon, and I'm thinking,
is there a reason you skip some of the battles
in between, or maybe this in your last book and
I just don't remember it. I'm thinking, you know, if
the Polish cavalry doesn't show up at the Battle of
the Ponto, more of Europe would be Islamic hundreds of
(10:50):
years ago, as opposed to only half a quarter Islamic today.
We'll come back to that anyway, so what was you
What were your criteria for picking the back battles and
excluding certain other ones that might be.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Well, some of them I had done. So people said, oh,
well you forgot X, Y and Z. I said, well,
was in Last Dance and something going to do in
the new book, which is called The Wrath of God,
and it's explicitly about religious warfare. So the whole Muslim
Christian series of conflicts, where I'm going to begin with
the with the Hebrews and the Canaanites in the first
(11:26):
book of the Torah and continue forward again to nine
to eleven. In the current well very long war, we're
fighting against Islam, even though only once it seems to
think that it's right, which is a problem. So that's
why also I wanted to get the notion of heroic
(11:47):
individual commanders front and center in each one of these battles.
That's why it's Xander and Caesar, it's Constantine, it's a
guy nobody's ever heard of called Asius, who stood off
until of the hun at the Battle of the Catalonian Plains.
And by the time I was getting past that those
(12:08):
origin stories, I thought Napoleon was the next person to do.
He just is more so than Wellington in a way.
And remember that Napoleon and Wellington never fought each other
until the very last battle, which was water Booths. Napoleon
dominated the nineteenth century in a way that very few
men have dominated a century, and that's a century filled
(12:31):
with dominant medicinalities. So I just was irresistibly drun to Napoleon,
partly for his tactics on battlefield, but mostly because he
represents the artist as hero. Forget that he's a military commander.
He is a self made man of lowly relatively low origins.
(12:55):
He's an Italian for one thing, who is French by
pure acts of a treaty. He never even learns to
speak French very well, as men made fun of them
all the time. His accent was apparently terrible. And yet
by sheer personality he wins the Battle of Austerlitz because
(13:16):
he knows Alexander and Caesar. He studied them very carefully,
and each one of the battles enrage to conquer not
each one, but many. You will see the commander goes, oh, yeah,
Caesar was in this exact same position, and what did
he do to get out of it? Well, that's what
I'm going to do. And so you see this constant
(13:37):
repetition of battlefield tactics and maneuvering and strategic maneuvering. Even
more important that echoes down through the ages. So that's
why I left. That made that big leap to Napoleon.
And then we move into the World War II Commanders
on Battle in nine to eleven.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Well, right, yes, I mean, you know, Patent's invocation of
Caesar and leaders of military leaders of antiquity is legendary
from the movie if nothing else. And you know, yeah,
we also mentioned Nimits at Midway perishing at san he Hell, yeah,
I can't say French myself worth a darn mers of Napoleon,
but yeah, that's right in a war that yeah, I
(14:20):
mean World War One is a a war known for
its lack of maneuver for reasons. I'll come back to that.
I think maybe you're of lingering importance. But yeah, but
I mean the other one did anyone bring up to you?
And again, forgive me if I missed it in the
previous book, Uh, it skipt the Civil War battles or
the Civil War itself, which seems to me was quite pivotal,
(14:42):
not just to America.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
But I think for the world. Actually, well I did.
I did Shiloh in last stance, okay. And the reason
I did Shiloh and not Gettysburg or Antietam or Vicksburg,
was that if Grant had lost at the end of
Day one of Shiloh, the war was over over. He's gone,
(15:08):
Sherman's gone. The Union army has been defeated and sent packing.
The Confederates command the Tennessee River and the Mississippi River.
Because you don't have Grant to come take Vicksburg. Later on,
the whole war effort collapses right there, up against the
banks of the Tennessee River. And when I did that chapter,
(15:28):
I got on the car and I drove myself from
New England to Shiloh, actually to walk that battlefield. And
when you get to the part where they're right at
the river, this is the end of day one. They've
been surprised, attacked. Sherman has blown off the reports that
there's this giant Confederate army right out there behind the trees.
Grant's up the river recuperating from a riding accident, and
(15:53):
he was the best horseman in the army, and his
horse had slipped in the mud and landed on his leg,
so he was rec operating from that. If they were
to have been pushed into the river on day one,
that was the end of it. So that's why I
let that stand in for the Civil War for this
current project.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Right, So let me ask you a combination question that explains,
or it gives reason why the rage to conquer, as
you put it, is not respected, not acknowledged, not understood,
and not encouraged today. And that would be the argument
that I think Churchill makes the best of anybody starting
around nineteen oh one, that modern warfare was going to
(16:33):
be different. Right, that famous early speech he gives, I
think in nineteen oh one where he says, the wars
of people's will be worse than the wars of kings. Why,
because of technology, we're now going to have you know,
total wars we later called it, in which civilian casualties
and civilian damage would be much greater than it ever
been before. And then you combine that with technology, and
you know, one of his later essays, I think it
(16:54):
was mass effects in modern life. He says, I'll paraphrase,
the problem with modern warfare is there's no or as
much less scope for battlefield heroism. The generals who used
to be on their horse, like Napoleon, like Marlborough, like
Grant and Lee, they're now remote from the battlefield, and
so they're not as decisive as they once would have been,
you know, in those older battles. And so, in other words,
(17:17):
the nature modern warfare has changed. It has lost its
I guess I may say it's manliness in some ways.
And so I mean, how do you regard that argument
and you credit that with being a factor in why
or mass opinion has turned so against war or regards
it the way it does.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Well, let me start by uttering a complete heresy.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
I'm afraid you're gonna do that.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Go ahead, I'm not a Churchill fan. I'm afraid you're
going to say that am I'm not a Churchill fan.
I am not a Churchill fan. And the reason I
am not a Churchill fan has to do with that
exact attitude. Remember that Churchill thought with Kitchener in the
assault on the MACHTI was already dead. He killed Gordon
(18:02):
and then he died, And then there was the Battle
of Omdumont, and Churchill was a young, young officer, and
he wrote famously there's nothing more exhilarating than being shot
at an Okay, so you got shot at and missed.
After that, his military judgment is horrendously terrible. He's the
(18:23):
architect of Gallipoli for one thing, which was Blatant's stupidity.
He was the architect of the soft underbelly theory that
got Americans killed at Anzio and didn't work anyway. At
no point is he a great strategic military thinker. He
has lots of great qualities, and I'm not going to
(18:44):
get into an argument with Larry Arn't about Churchill or right,
But I don't think he's a great military mind. And
I think he presided over the dissolution of the empire.
I mean, he has a lot of negatives in his
column that the Churchill fan club seems to ignore. But
(19:04):
I think see his experience was riding that horse and
getting shot at by some Arabs that couldn't shoot straight,
and therefore he wonders about that. But Patten gives the
light to that. Patten gets shot in World War One
his orderly carry. He's right in the front. He and
MacArthur wandering around in costumes saying Ill us right, and
(19:25):
Patten gets shot in the butt and has to be
dragged into a shell hole and then brought back. He
was always at the front, and so I quoted John
Keegan at the beginning of this book about great commanders,
which is in front always sometimes never. Okay, still have
a great commander who's never at the front. Nimitz is
(19:46):
a good example of that. Nimmits fought the Battle of
Midway from Honolulu where I grew up, Pearl Harbor. As
a matter of fact, when I grew up and I
was going to high school, i'd walk out my front
door and see Pearl Harbor. It was right there from
so I lived with that as a young teenager. But
Nimmus won that war because he understood the enemy and
(20:08):
he had a sense of technical innovation. His great genius was, hey,
we're a little short on aircraft carriers, but hey, that
Midway island that's an aircraft carrier just doesn't go anywhere.
So what we'll do is hide our other aircraft carriers
behind it, and the Japanese will sail right into the trap.
(20:31):
And that's what happened, and we put four of their
carriers at the bottom, and that really broke the offensive
power with Imperial Navy. The war's over at that point,
but the mopping up campaign. Don't get me started on
Deglas MacArthur. The mopping up campaign also obviously follows that,
(20:51):
So I think that's only partly true. I think Alexander
wore a plume, Talbot kill me, Caesar wore a red coat.
Here I am you want a piece of me? I'm
right here, and rat commit and Napoleon did too, and
that and their men loved them. What we have is
a bunch of political generals, plush bottomed fruit salads who
(21:15):
have never done a goddamn thing and have risen in
the peacetime professional army. I'm also against the the all
the all volunteer army. I think it's very bad. I
think it's bad for them. I think it's bad for
young men. I think it's bad for women. I think
it's bad for everybody. And the results, well, tell me
(21:39):
the last war we won.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah right, No, I think I agree with you about that.
I sometimes have friendly expressions about the idea of national service,
which would be mostly military service. It's it's a big problem.
I'll just I don't want to argue about Churchill either,
except I do want to say, Michael that I wonder
if some of that isn't your inner irishman coming out a.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Bit seriously, it's not, because after all, Churchill was half Americans,
so you know, right, or as.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
A critic said, half American and wholly reprehensible.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Well yeah, or I wrote in my novel and all
the stints about fear l L Da Guardia half Italian,
half Jewish and neither half the good half basic.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
What I do think there's something to his argument though
about you know, push button warfare, which we have now.
I mean, if you, I mean, I know you have
strong views about which I have a lot of sympathy with.
I think about the Russian Ukraine war going on, but
it's hard to see coming out of that that there's
going to be a commander or you know, a military
figure in you know, tales of heroism and turning points.
(22:47):
It looks like a grinded out technological war of who
can bring the most killing capacity from our modern machinery
and who wants to sign up for that.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Well, that's true. There's a wonderful book by a woman
named and her name will lose me at the moment.
It's called nuclear war, and it is a scenario is
relatively recent. It's riveting. I recommend to everybody what would
happen in the event of a nuclear war. The answer
is We're all going to die. That's it. So there
(23:16):
is no battlefield tactics to nuclear war. Much of it
is going to be controlled by AI. Actually, so the
robots will end up killing us after they steal our livelihood.
They'll kill us. But what's lacking isn't so much battlefield exposure.
It's just plain leadership. You don't You haven't had a
(23:37):
leader among military for my lifetime, basically. I mean, I
remember very vaguely, I think, or maybe it's in my
childhood MacArthur's farewell speech after Truman fired him. And what
figure has there been, even though I think what MacArthur's
vastly overrated, What figure has there been of that national
(23:59):
stature who was a military person?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Well, I mean, would you count de gaul and Eisenhower,
who were still figures of my youth? I mean I
was born late Eisenower years, but you know de Gaul
came back in the sixties, and I mean I always
point to him as someone who was in many ways
a repulsive human being and also very able and I
think and indispensable in some ways, and I figure more
(24:23):
Americans ought to study. That's what I say.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Well, I think Eisenhower was it was a great general.
He was a great beercraft general. He didn't fight. In fact,
of all the guys in World War Two who had
been World War One veterans, Eisenhower wasn't one of them.
He stayed in the United States the whole time. But
what he was was a guy who could move his
chess pieces. So there's no doubt that Patten is one
(24:50):
of the greatest battlefield commanders we ever had. But you
couldn't let Patent run the whole thing because it would
been off the rails and you needed to unleash that
dog of war only when necessary. Marshall was very similar.
Marshall wanted a command but very early on the Army
(25:11):
had realized this guy is an organizing genius. So why
do we want to get him killed off as a
as a first lieutenant or a captain when we can,
you know, stash him at Fort Belvoir in Washington and
learned the bureaucracy. It's important to remember, I think for
our audiences we didn't have them professional.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Let me stop you, Michael. You froze up on me
for about twenty seconds there and where you left off,
or maybe it was my end, but let me have
you restart. You were the sentence you were in the
middle of was Marshall was an organizing genius. And you
know before they were talking about you know, Eyesenhower and
so forth. So pick up again with a General Marshall,
(25:53):
and you know, just start from the beginning of that
and I'll splice it together.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Sure, Marshall was an organizing genius, so it didn't make
any sense for them to send him to war and
get him killed off as a first lieutenant or captain
when they could stash him at Fort Belvoir in Washington
and teach him the organizational principles of the army. So
(26:19):
it's important to remember that we didn't have a professional army.
We didn't have one at the time of the Civil War.
We didn't have one in World War One, we didn't
have one in World War Two. We started from scratch
in every one of those wars. Remember that Grant had
been a graduate of West Point and had served and
had resigned his commission and gone off. He was lonely.
(26:43):
He was stationed out in Nowheresville, California and the Oregon territories,
and he was lonely and homesick, and he missed his
wife so and he drank too much when he was
off duty. He was never on duty drunk. So he quit.
And at the time of the Civil War he was
working and failing in a little tanner shop in Galina,
(27:03):
that is I think his father owned, one of his relatives.
And he said, hey, you know, I've got a captaincy
in the army. I'm actually a professional soldier. So they
gave him a command immediately, and then he made his
bones rather quickly after that. But we had to start
World War One from a standing start. To General Pershing,
(27:24):
who is the hero of the World War One section
in my final big chapter, he had been a career
army officer, but he had well, he was like at
the what's the name of that place in San Francisco,
the presidio, Yeah, the presidio he had there. He had
(27:45):
also commanded a troop of black soldiers in Southwest, which
gave him his nickname of black Jack. That's where that
came from. He was the white officer in charge of
an all black unit. And as a result, so when
World War One comes, Pershing is the most senior figure
and it's up to him to suddenly organize an army
(28:07):
out of nothing, out of Aisle of Armbolice basically. And
then we got caught with our pants down again in
World War Two and had to mobilize. Now, luckily, America
in those days was capable of doing such a thing,
and we could turn civilian production like Henry Ford's automobile
assembly line into making tanks and trucks, so we were
(28:28):
able to do that. But the standing professional army was
something the founders warned against, and no one really thought
that was a good idea because that was a tool
of tyranny. That's why you have the Third Amendment, for example,
that the army can't come to your house in California
and say here, we're putting a tune of soldiers in
(28:49):
your den. Have a nice day, right, yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
So let's go to your last chapter on the post
nine to eleven world were in the middle of. When
I say it's a splendid, contemptuous rant, I meant that
as praise, not as criticism. Let me share with I'm
quite sure how I can characterize it. So let me
share one sentence with our listeners from page three seventy one, quote,
(29:16):
the Imperial Romans would have gone full to Lenda st On,
Saudi Arabia raised its cities, destroyed the ka'aba, leveled the mosque,
occupied the oil fields, seized its wealth, executed its leaders,
and sold the populace into slavery. They knew an existential
struggle when they were in one. So I mean, that's
when that blows your hair back, and you know.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
But that's the money sentence in the book everyone picked
up really.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Okay, good, right? No, I mean, rather you explained sort
of the incompetence and the sort of willful blindness to
what really is going on, and by the way that
feeds into I agree with you completely about we have
political generals who were promoted not for military excellence but
for bureaucratic role playing, and it's very, very bad. I
don't know if you want to add all that. I mean,
that is your money sentence, but well, I do have
(30:05):
this to say. We do have political generals, and people
don't realize that. For example, with general, the rank of general,
there's gradations of it, and you get the first two
from your service. So you get promoted to brigadier general,
and you get promoted to major general lieutenant general, which
is three stars you get from politicians, and then four stars,
(30:30):
and then there's on eve been a handful of five
stars in the history of the country. So and oftentimes
offices are created that require three stars. So the head
of the National Security Agency, for example, must be a
three star. So if you're up for that job, you're
going to get promoted to a three star, and then
(30:51):
you're going to be the head of the National Security Agency.
There are a number of positions in which that is
a requirement. So you know, in the rockdvertizing monster that
is the US government, we create roles and then fill them.
That doesn't mean we have more generals or more top generals,
and it doesn't mean any of them that have any
(31:11):
military in the field experience, except accidentally. It just means more,
you know, more generals, that's what it means. Yeah, right,
last question on military subjects, and then I want to
change to Ireland for a few minutes. I have seen
you tweet out here and there and make other brief
comments that all seem to point in the direction of
(31:33):
thinking we are overestimating China as a military threat to us,
and so say a little bit more. And you did
mention that, I think here in your last chapter of
the book. And I gather it's not that they're not
building lots of ships and planes and rockets that are
bad things, but that they're actually not very capable as
a war fighting civilization. Is that fair enough?
Speaker 1 (31:54):
For how do you shows that so name of war
they've won against a Western power? The answer is zero.
They took on the Arabs in the eighth century at
a battle called Kalas Talas, and it was mixed army
of Chinese and other Asians against the expanding caliphate, and
(32:19):
the Chinese were trying to push westward. They ran into
the Arabs and they got whopped. And one of the
reasons they got whopped is in Chinese culture, a military
career wasn't honorable. It wasn't something to be remember that
is a giant bureaucratic hat, and military people didn't rise
(32:39):
to the top. So their generals were Koreans. And now
I can speak with some familial interest in this, since
my father is a veteran of the Chosen Reservoir, a
battle that the Marines fought against the Chinese. He's one
of the last survivors. He's ninety nine years old.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
And he was in the whole Korean campaign, from Pusson
to Incheon to Soeul, to the Chosen Reservoir to the extraction.
And people sometimes bring that up and say, well, the
Chinese really put a hurt on the Marines. Well, it
helps if you have ten to one numerical superiority and
(33:21):
you attack in a surprise attack and it's thirty below
zero and you have overwhelming manpower. And what the Marines
did is it's considered a glorious battle in marine history.
Is they withstood that assault, maintained unit cohesion, and took
everybody home basically that could get there. I think he
(33:44):
must have weighed one hundred and twenty pounds by the
time he landed after they came back. So China doesn't
have a great track record. They can fight civil wars,
then their civil wars are astoundingly bloody. I like to
point out General Gordon beat them with a swagger stick.
That's why he was called Chinese Gorgon's garden. Right before
(34:07):
he got killed at Khartoon, the Japanese beat them twice
in the nineteen thirties with a platoon of Katana swordsmen
and some sushi. I don't know what they did, but
they beat China twice. So I don't think they're a
good military power. I think they're building a lot of stuff,
but we know the quality of what they build is bad.
(34:28):
The Africans are finding out now that it's a faustian
bargain when you let them in to build dams that collapse,
some roads that don't work, and nothing works. And I
also have been told by some people that much of
the technology that they have stolen in order to produce
their stuff is booby trapped.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Oh I hope. So. I mean, you know, we did
a little of that with the Soviet Union way back
once upon a time.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
If they launched those ships, they're going right down to
the bottom of the oce Interesting. Yeah, I know a
lot of our colleagues are obsessed with China, and Frank
Afrin I have this argument all the time. I just
have other things to worry about then the Chinese.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, yeah, me too. Let's switch to Ireland a little bit,
because you not only are of Irish descent, but you
live what half the year over there or some good
portion of your time out in the remind me where
it is out in western Ireland. You have a residence.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Yes, I rebuilt my great grandmother's birthplace. It's now a
beautiful home where my wife lives much of the year,
where my daughter met her husband and married him. He's
a Dubliner, and where my three grandchildren come and play.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
It's in a wild, wild part of the west called
the Burn, which doesn't look like any other place in Ireland.
It looks like the moon. It's all rocks. But right
out my window are the cliffs of More the Three
Aarn Islands, the Atlantic Ocean at Galway Bay in the
hills of Conamaras. So someone wants overlooked out our dining
room window and said, you know, there are five six
(36:03):
sights everybody comes to Ireland to see, and five of
them are right out your window. Right, So I like
grandma there, But it's I've been. I went back and
reunited the family is fifty two years ago and since
then acquired the property, built the houses, really established a
whole life there.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
Now.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
In fact, my whole my white daughter is is Her
ashes are buried there too, So it means a lot
to me. So it's not just that I'm some returned
to Yank who has what thinks his family came from Cork,
which is what they all say when you ask them,
where did your family come from Cork? The reason they
say that is that Cork is where the boat's left from.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Right, Yeah, that's the way the Irish think, By the way,
it's the kind of Celtic way of thinking. Specific that
question means where did I literally come from to get
to the United States. Cork is always the answer, right.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
So you know, I was in Ireland for almost ten days,
about a month and a half ago, and I happened
to be in Dublin on a day when there was
a large protest against immigration. I'm not quite sure who
the umbrella group was, but and then there was the
lefties organized the counter protests that was small and pathetic,
and communists, I mean, they're very open about it. But
(37:20):
I have to say I was impressed by the size
of the protest. I mean, the march stretched for I
don't know ten or fifteen blocks, I forget what that
main street is, and that ended up in a rally
in front of the customs house where the speakers, and
I wasn't familiar with any of them, but I listened
to their speeches and I thought they were all very good.
These were crazy people. The crowd was very diverse, as
(37:40):
you know, as we were supposed to. We're taught that
we have to a factor into things these days, and
so I got the sense that, you know, there is
not a lot of press coverage of Ireland and the
American media, and you've got to work to find it
in you know, the British press or the Economist, which
is you know, no good of course. And then someone
told me just this morning about a tweet that apparently
(38:02):
is exploding on x as we call it now today
as we're talking, and it goes something like this. I
couldn't find it, but apparently it says something like, if
you're an American visiting Ireland and you say I'm Irish,
they say, no, you're not. But if you're Somali fresh
off the boat twenty minutes ago, oh of course you're
an irishman. So this question seems to me is you're
(38:22):
splitting Ireland down the middle, as it ought to and
as it is other places. What's your sense of the matter. Okay,
go ahead.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Sorry, it's complicated, but cause it's Ireland, you know, among
the most disputatious people in the world. It's very simple.
Ireland is a slave state for eight hundred years. It
has lived in a bubble. It has no experience of
the outside world except that it sent its sons and
(38:50):
daughters abroad, where they became tremendously successful, wealthy, famous movie stars.
Captains have been to street titans of Hollywood, politicians presidents
of the United States, Ireland nothing and a certain resentment
has grown up on both parts that the returned Yanks
(39:13):
come back and say I'm Irish, and the Irish say,
you are the son of a bitch who abandoned us
to the family. We hate you. You left us in
our hour of need. Whether they articulate that or not,
is that is the undercurrent. So they really hate the
(39:34):
diaspora of people like me and a lot of my friends,
and they have rushed because they're a slave state still
they now slave state of the what I like to
call the eussr under ilsa she wolf of Brussels there who,
by the way, has never been elected to anything. Yeah,
(39:56):
the Irish politicians have all sold out to Brussels. And
so when people say, well don't they why aren't they
helping the Irish people, I tell them that's not their job.
Their job is to answer to Brussels. They don't care
what happens to you. The population has increased by a
million and a half of a very short span of time.
Most of them are not ethnic Irish. But to say
(40:19):
ethnic Irish is to be a racist. The word they
most fear is racism. So if you don't think that's
Somali who, by the way, destroyed his passport on the plane,
walked through customs waving and was immediately given food, shelter, money,
you name it, you're a racist. My village happens to
(40:42):
be the one that took the first first wave of
Ukrainian refugees. They put them in where a tourists town
and in the summer, hotels were all filled with tourists.
Now they're filled with Ukrainians and they don't have to
obey the laws, they don't have to register of their cars.
They get free money every week and you see them
(41:03):
lining up of the post office. And these are able
bodied draft dodgers, that's what they are. And there's no
sugarcoating it. And They laugh at everybody because they're sitting
there free. Yes it's raining, the weather is terrible, famously so,
but they're collecting free money and they're going to do
(41:24):
it for as long as they can get away with it.
And as soon as they leave, you'll see even greater
influx from Africa, North Africa, Central Africa, Afghanistan. Romanian Gypsies
are now quite prominent in the criminal subculture of Dublin.
We just have one now that turns out the father
(41:47):
is the head of the Roma Community Civil Rights League
or something, and the Sun is running eight brothels in
Dublin and the Irish shirts done by this because they
have no experience with the world. They really believe all
of the problem that they have been fed about the
(42:07):
goodness of man and the brotherhood of man. And we're
all exactly the same.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
You know.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
It's like being trapped in the nineteen sixties in America.
Their brief and you feel sorry for them because they're
going to have to learn the hard way. But that
government is never going to stop. It's never going to
stop importing foreigners because the EU, US Ireland is basically
empty space and it's a dumping ground for the EU's
(42:34):
migration problems, so you can't walk to Ireland, so you've
got to come by boter by plane and they'll just
keep They literally fly them in the government advertised in
Africa for people to get on planes and come to
Ireland at government expense to stay and live.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
For Yeah, I mean I should add that the protest
I saw the species. It wasn't just immigration, it was
the European Union in Brussels. In fact, some of them,
you know, paraphrase slightly. London's not our enemy anymore. Brussels
is our enemy.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
That's the point. That's the point. They're still obsessed with
this stupid trouble stuff. Yeah. And as an Irish American,
let me say this to all of our Jewish friends,
and you and I have lots of Jewish friends. The
anti Semitism is a disgrace to irishmen everywhere. That what
that government is doing passing the occupied territories build which
(43:28):
amounts to a gnat on a water buffalo's rear end
nothing but it's pure virtue signaling. They are constantly slagging
off the Israelis. The Israel closed its embassy in Dublin
because it couldn't take it anymore. And the Irish just
see see that's more proof of these perfidious Jews. Look
what they're doing. You can't trust them. They're everywhere, they
(43:50):
run the way. It's a mass outbreak events of insanity,
and it is incredibly disgraceful. And I'm pleased to say
there are a number of US diasporans with audiences and
money and influence who are going to organize against this
(44:12):
because we don't want to see Ireland go down the drain.
It didn't suffer under the English terribly for eight hundred years,
only to throw itself in the arms of Brussels. You know,
it's like that line from Man for all Season, I
could see selling your soul. But for Wales, you know,
basically eight hundred years of fighting the British, who were
(44:34):
a real worthy opponent. But for Brussels, King Leopold, who
are we talking about here? It's really stunning. I'm glad
you had a good time and some of Ireland. Dublin's
never been a very nice city and it's worse now.
The rest of the country is great. It's beautiful. If
you can take the weather, it's paradise and I love
(44:56):
every second that I'm there, but the governments anti Semitism
and its hatred of its own people is just unacceptable.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah. So I have two exit questions for you, one
about your next book and then one about music and
how they may connect together in a certain way. So
you said that you're writing yet another what a sequel
to this book in your last book? I guess there'll
be book number twenty. Tell us a little bit about
what that book's going to be about, and maybe one
or two things to look for.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Yeah, it's called The Wrath of God and it's about
the history of religious warfare. So when religions and people's
clash so specifically because of faith. So I mentioned the Exodus,
for example, the foundation story of the Israelites and taking
(45:48):
the land of Canaan at God's command very violently. By
the way, I'm going to treat the Thirty Years War,
which you know, contrary to the notion that civilians never
suffer and wars, the Thirty Years of War reduced the
population of Europe by about fifty percent. I mean, nobody
was free from that, and that was purely brand new
(46:09):
faith Lutheranism taking on Catholicism. I treated the Sack of
Rome in the sixteenth century by the Lutherans and the
Swiss guards, saving the pope and rushing him to the
Castel San Angelo in last stance. But these, and of
course the ongoing battle between Islam and the United States.
(46:32):
Our problem has always been in bush well, starting with it,
both bushes, but the notion that there's no state actors,
so we have no one to punish. As I said,
Caesar would laughed in that. Yeah, I see one right there,
and that's what he would have done. And we don't
fight the enemy that has declared war on us because
Islam doesn't have a pope, so any mufty can issue
(46:56):
a fat law that is like a federal gey parent
binding on the entire planet, right, even though the judges
in Honolulu.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Right. So it's an.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Asymmetric war that we haven't figured out how to fight yet,
but we need to focus on it.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Yeah, well, let me do a follow up question on that,
because since your book came out, well, I think somewhere
in here and I can't find it as I flipped
through the pages, I thought you said something about how
we've never seriously struck at the sort of central node
of this which is Iran. Now, since your book was printed.
We've had Israel have its twelve day war against Iran
(47:32):
that culminated with Trump deciding we will use these weapons
we've been developing for twenty years to try and take
out their main nuclear weapons development facility. What do you
make of all that? As it was, we did not
go far enough. But isn't that a sign at least somebody,
at least Israel standing up for the West.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Well, Israel is standing up for the West. And I
support the Israel least because they didn't start this fight.
And that's the point. It's so hard to make this point.
But Islam fetishizes buildings. So if the Kaba is gone
and the well that jam Karan is gone, Islam is gone.
(48:14):
You can destroy Saint Peter's church and the pope will
go live in Avenue. Catholicism cannot be destroyed by bombing,
even setting Notre Dame on fire, which they did right.
But Islam is focused on places, so the pilgrimage, the
Hajj is very important. The Shia version is that down
(48:35):
this well in Kum is hidden the twelfth Ebom who
Will is waiting for the It's an apocalyptic version. It's
he will emerge at the time of complete chaos and
convert the world to Islam, and that will be the
end times. So the radical Christians have the same basic
(48:56):
theology about end times and then Jesus appearing and that's
the end of the movie. But we won't go after
their buildings because that's not who we are. And that's
giving up the fight before you even have the fight.
That's the problem. Now, if Islam promises to stay like
a good enemy behind its own borders, we don't have
(49:20):
a particular problem with them, and the Europeans have learned
how to deal with that since stopping them at Vienna
in the seventeenth century. But you can't have constant encouragions
and provocations. And that was why I made the point
about what Romans would do. Because Rome didn't last for
two thousand years for nothing. It had a will to
survive in a way that no other major civilization has
(49:45):
ever had, and it took action when it felt it needed.
Is that kind of an apologist for Rome? Yeah, absolutely
it is. I think Roman civilization was great and well
our existence to it well.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
I do like seeing the sort of comeback of the
Roman Empire among especially young men. These days that hear about.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
Oh, I think that's the best marine ever. Uh, he's
probably thinking about other women. No, he's thinking about the
Roman Empire. Well, I think young men need that, and
I think this book I've written part for young men again.
I grew up in the Marine Corps. I was born
on a major Marine Corps base and I was the
(50:26):
son of a guy who had just come back from
from from Korea, highly decorated marine officer. So that was
the tradition in which I grew up and it wasn't militarized.
And my father I don't even know what his politics are,
I literally don't, but what he incultated in me and
my brother and my three sisters is discipline.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
I asked him once, Uh, what was your Were you
afraid when the Chinese came down the hill on the
day after Thanksgiving and attack? Uh? And he said, first
of all, I thought it was going to hit me.
And even though he's ninety nine, I still stay well
back from him because that left hook as a killer.
He said. We went to work, and I finally understood
(51:14):
what that meant years later, which is we're trained to
do this. And the way marines are trained is here's
your training. If you're in trouble, observe your training. If
you abandon your training, you're dead. If you observe your training,
you have a chance to get out alive. So what
they did was they immediately formed into their jobs. He
(51:35):
commanded mortar platoons and began saturating the fields between the
Chinese and the Marines to keep them backed off, and
nobody panicked, and they all picked up and tried to
get out of the pickle they were in. So it's
all about a military background. It's not about killing people.
It's about discipline and getting your work done. I wouldn't
(51:57):
have written twenty well, this is going to be twenty
and then there's twenty one, and then there's twenty two.
So they're all in the planning. It's just discipline that
gets it done. You know, you can't shop down the
tree with one blow, and you can't hit a five
run homer. You have to do it every single day.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
Right. Yeah, So last question comes in two parts, and
I call it the other side of Michael Walsh. You
have serious formal training in music. Yes, I've noticed. I
think I've noticed the influence of that in your writing.
I think in particular of your couple of books on
the Frankfurt School, which gets much more at the cultural
aspects of that whole thing and whole influence than the
(52:35):
political philosophy parts that narrow people like me think of.
And so the first part of the question is, is
am I right in saying that there's an essential connection
with the way you perceive certain things with your musical training.
And part two is you're serious composer, and maybe say
this a little bit about I think you're working on
a piece or maybe you've done a piece you're performing
in Europe recently, So anyway to take both parts of
(52:58):
those if you would.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
And to the Eastman School of Music, among whose graduates
is the late Chuck Man Jones, who just died yesterday.
I guess I knew Chuck a little bit. He was
about ten years ahead of me, I think. At Eastman
Renee Fleming, the great opera Sopranos, friend of mine. She's
also a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. I'm
(53:22):
not a composer anymore. I was in college, but that
was not my calling. But I you know, I did it,
and I learned a lot from it as a writer.
So I'll be playing the program of mostly Franz List
at the Brand Library in Glendale. It will also consist
of a very rarely performed sonata by Wagner, who was
(53:42):
Liszt's son in law, so it was a lecture recital
but mostly a recital. And then I'll be playing it
in London at the List Cultural Institute of the Hungarian
Government in London, and then I'll be playing it in
Budapest's lists third hometown as well in November. But I'm
(54:02):
writing a very large novel which has been in plan
now for two or three years, which will incorporate music
of all kinds into the fabric of the narrative. I
see them as essentially the same activity, writing and putting
the piano, and it's just kind of sums up everything
(54:24):
I've devoted my life to. And hopefully that will be
the last book I write, Steve, and then I'll retire
to my jack in Ireland, I guess right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
Well, well thanks for this, Michael. This has been a
fun tour of the of a part of your horizon,
and I'll look forward to that next book and in
the meantime, a best of luck to rage to conquer,
and I don't know. I may or may not be
around the LA area one of those appearances, or I'll
find an excuse to go to Budapest and hang out
with our mutual friend John O'Sullivan. Oh absolutely, you know
(54:56):
opens and closes the town there, right, I mean it's
always fun seeing John and Melissa there.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
Well, you will certainly know where to eat when you
go to boot that's right.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
I blame John for the fact that I've gotten larger
than a few years ago. Anyway, Thank you, Michael, good luck,
see you soon. Welcome.
Speaker 4 (55:15):
I thought it would be real me. I thought it
would be real cool, Bob, because my dad's get tired.
Speaker 2 (55:26):
Learn me some Irish tunes.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
Blame for a couple of friends. That's some little Polish far,
a little whiskey and the jar.
Speaker 2 (55:39):
I never thought it go so far. So why are
you onna bring me down? Because I'm not from my Ireland.
Speaker 4 (55:51):
I'm from Allen Town. I something drumming. I risk girl,
she give you her second show, and I am scaring
of somebody to say she's gonna.
Speaker 2 (56:07):
Let you know.
Speaker 4 (56:09):
She said she was very fond your volume up to ten.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
I didn't buy. Ricochet joined the conversation
Well with the come and take my pains, my ry,
oh whiskey.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Why think alone when you can drink it all in
with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour, join your bartenders Steve Hayward,
John Yu and the International Woman of Mystery Lucretia where
they lapped it up and David, ain't you besy on
the should He's happy, got a giving and that with me. Well,
(00:32):
Hi everybody, and welcome to this first of the revived
classic format editions of the podcasts, in which I have
long form conversations and interviews with authors and other interesting people.
And fitting for the Three Whiskey Happy Hour podcast that
our first guest in the revived series is someone who
not only traces his ancestry back to Ireland, but who
(00:54):
spends a lot of his time in Ireland a living
today and that person is Michael Walsh, whose most recent
book is called A Rage to Conquer Twelve Battles that
changed the course of Western History. Before I get into
it with Michael, you should know that he is a
true renaissance man. He's written over twenty books, worked as
a senior foreign correspondent for Time magazine for almost twenty years.
(01:18):
He has written classical music and made many classical performances,
and his books ranged from novels to books about classical
music and modern opera, and books about things like the
insidious effect of the Frankfurt School. And now this book
that we're talking about today is the second of a
projected three volumes to talk about the glories of warfare,
(01:42):
and by that he means that modern sensibilities are all
against war and fighting, and of course he recognizes it
as a trade of human nature, a necessity that should
be grasped with relish rather than with the fashionable dread
of modern times. His first book in a series was
called Last Stands, Why Men Fight when all is lost?
(02:04):
And the current one, as I say, is a rage
to conquer. And so let's get into it with Michael,
and I think you will find this conversation fascinating. Well, Michael,
this is your nineteenth book, by my count, A Rage
to Conquer, Twelve battles that changed the course of American history.
(02:25):
And I haven't read all your books. I've read, I
don't know a quarter of the maybe, but this is
my favorite so far. I just had a delight reading
through it. And I'm actually not through the whole thing.
But every chapter I'm having great fun. So it's a
sequel to Last Stands. I want to come back to
the Last Stands book later actually and get straight into
this book. So twelve battles, but it's wrapped inside of thesis,
(02:49):
which is you're rehabilitating war. I remember graffiti on a
bomb from the First Gulf War in nineteen ninety one
that said give war a chance, which play on that
stupid old John Lennon lyric. I think it was again
big Wark raad again. Well, and I think hopefully this
isn't too much of a simplification to say your thesis
(03:12):
is that war is normal, natural, praiseworthy, something to be
admired and not abjured the way it is in modern times.
Is that too the summary of of what you're trying
to get at here.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
No, thinks I think that's fair Stuve. I think what
I'm trying to do, as I did in the last
Stance with a quote from the Manual Kant, was to
point out war as the natural state of mankind and
pieces the aberration, and so we lived in this funny
interwar period. It'll be seen as that later on. Of course,
(03:46):
we don't notice it because we think, well, this is normal,
and we grew up in that. But you know, old
cultures like you and I grew up, were born and
raised right after the Second World War, and we've really
lived through a time of extraordinarily a peaceful world comparative
to World War Two, and I just think we have
(04:06):
to face the fact that war is inevitable. And the
most important takeaway I have is that war is not
a failure. I think that we've come to this notion
I think post World War two, especially with the UN
that war can somehow be preempted or avoided. And it
represents a misinterpretation of Classovitz's famous dictum that war is
(04:32):
policy by other means. And as I go to some
length to point out, but he actually said it, war
is policy with other means. The German word is very clear.
I don't know why it's been so consistently mistranslated, but
if you say by to me, it sounds like, well,
everything else has failed, so now we're using other means.
Whereas properly understood, warfare is a tool in the diplomatic
(04:58):
kit to be used when necessary. It's the acts behind
the glass basically, but when you need it you use it.
So that's really the thesis behind all the discussions in
Rage to Conquer.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, it reminds me of a professor I had in
graduate school now more than forty years ago, who, before
going on academia, had been a tank driver for Pattent's
Third Army in World War Two, and he had an
ingenious way of starting his class on diplomacy and military
power that you'll appreciate. He would, on the first day
of class pass around to World War two M one
(05:33):
rifle and explained how it worked, and then he'd fix
the bandet, describe how to use the bayonet when you're
out of ammunition, and he was very lyrical about it.
And then he would end by saying holding up the
gun and say, this is the basic tool of diplomacy.
Next class we'll start talking about the basic tools of
military power. So that was very much your understanding of
class what you're just explaining. And they don't make professors
(05:55):
like that any more, needless to say, and so I
am hearing echoes of certain Then other person you remind
me of a bit was well, maybe I'm jumping ahead
too far, but your last chapter about the post nine
to eleven World and how unserious we've been about things.
Remind me of my late friend, who you may have
known was Angelo codevillav Oh well, right, yeah, you know.
(06:16):
Angelo used to say, I'm not sure you ever wrote
it anywhere, but he used to say, as you point
out in your chapter, the Saudis were up to their
necks in what was going on behind nine to eleven.
I think we know that's the concealed part of the
nine to eleven Commission report. And he said, you know
a lot of those royal family people live in those
high rise luxury hotels. We just ought a round up
(06:37):
three thousand of them and execute them, as you know, right,
as retribution for what they connived in. And I okay, anyway,
the point is is this is a real breath of
fresh air when so much treatment of a warfare and conflict,
as as you say, is sort of I put it
sentimental continism. Oh right. Anyway, that's my commentary on your
very sound commentary. We're in heated agreement about all this.
(06:59):
I think let's take a look at some of the battles.
You pick a lot from antiquity, you know, Achilles, Alexander, Caesar, Constantine,
And I guess maybe I went to unpractice to say
a lot of those are a long time ago and
remote from you know, modern history, and although they're important
(07:23):
to ancient history, seems to me the presumption there is
that the Western history is one long continuity and that
without those we wouldn't be where we are today, which
I think would be a novel proposition to a lot
of people who think that's just antiquity and has no
relevance to our world today.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, well they're They're almost as old as the constitutions,
Steve right, I love that.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yes, I forget which idiots said that, but.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
As reclined it was, ezraclined, a constitution is like one
hundred years old, one.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Hundred years old, and what relevance could it possibly have
to ut Well, I was thinking about this last November.
I was actually in the Forum in Rome, which is
like old, right old, and I was walking the footsteps
of Caesar, and it doesn't seem that old when you're
actually in it. I think that's the point is, especially
(08:14):
as Americans where disassociated from our own originations and our
own pasts and our own people's past to some extent,
we have a new covenant, as it were, a new
beginning a new hope. But we go back to Greco Romanism.
And I've made the distinction in this book, and I
(08:35):
will make an even more in the third book in
this series, which I'm writing right now. That I believe
we are a Greco Roman civilization not a Judeo Christian
civilization for many, many, many, many, many, many many reasons.
But as far as our Western civilization starts, it starts
(08:57):
with the Iliad, and it starts with Homer. Now that
is roughly contemporaneous with the origins of Judaism, as you know,
so that the Trojan work takes place about twelve hundred BC,
So do the early stages of Judaism and Moses and
the Egyptian captivity, etc. Homer rights in eight hundred BC,
(09:23):
which is right around the time that Judaism is coming
together as a mosaic faith. Augustus becomes emperor, right around
the time that Jesus is born and Christianity is born,
and Rabbinic Judaism is begun. So these religions and histories
bump into each other constantly. But from my own point
(09:45):
of view, and this is not to argue religion, I'll
do that in the next book, but I've got to
leave the folks wanting more. From a historical point of
view and from a literary cultural military point of view,
we really start with the Greco Roman period. So that's
why I began with the Iliad and with Alexander the Great.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, okay, and then you one chapter that goes into
a period that I have to confess I'm weak on.
Was the Crusades. It's your chapter seven? Yes, was that
Beaumont at Dori Lea. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that right.
I'm sure I'm not. I was not surprised, but still
nonetheless delighted to see you rehabilitate the Crusades from all
(10:28):
the calibi thrown that episode in Western history. But then
from there you jump up to Napoleon, and I'm thinking,
is there a reason you skip some of the battles
in between, or maybe this in your last book and
I just don't remember it. I'm thinking, you know, if
the Polish cavalry doesn't show up at the Battle of
the Ponto, more of Europe would be Islamic hundreds of
(10:50):
years ago, as opposed to only half a quarter Islamic today.
We'll come back to that anyway, so what was you
What were your criteria for picking the back battles and
excluding certain other ones that might be.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Well, some of them I had done. So people said, oh,
well you forgot X, Y and Z. I said, well,
was in Last Dance and something going to do in
the new book, which is called The Wrath of God,
and it's explicitly about religious warfare. So the whole Muslim
Christian series of conflicts, where I'm going to begin with
the with the Hebrews and the Canaanites in the first
(11:26):
book of the Torah and continue forward again to nine
to eleven. In the current well very long war, we're
fighting against Islam, even though only once it seems to
think that it's right, which is a problem. So that's
why also I wanted to get the notion of heroic
(11:47):
individual commanders front and center in each one of these battles.
That's why it's Xander and Caesar, it's Constantine, it's a
guy nobody's ever heard of called Asius, who stood off
until of the hun at the Battle of the Catalonian Plains.
And by the time I was getting past that those
(12:08):
origin stories, I thought Napoleon was the next person to do.
He just is more so than Wellington in a way.
And remember that Napoleon and Wellington never fought each other
until the very last battle, which was water Booths. Napoleon
dominated the nineteenth century in a way that very few
men have dominated a century, and that's a century filled
(12:31):
with dominant medicinalities. So I just was irresistibly drun to Napoleon,
partly for his tactics on battlefield, but mostly because he
represents the artist as hero. Forget that he's a military commander.
He is a self made man of lowly relatively low origins.
(12:55):
He's an Italian for one thing, who is French by
pure acts of a treaty. He never even learns to
speak French very well, as men made fun of them
all the time. His accent was apparently terrible. And yet
by sheer personality he wins the Battle of Austerlitz because
(13:16):
he knows Alexander and Caesar. He studied them very carefully,
and each one of the battles enrage to conquer not
each one, but many. You will see the commander goes, oh, yeah,
Caesar was in this exact same position, and what did
he do to get out of it? Well, that's what
I'm going to do. And so you see this constant
(13:37):
repetition of battlefield tactics and maneuvering and strategic maneuvering. Even
more important that echoes down through the ages. So that's
why I left. That made that big leap to Napoleon.
And then we move into the World War II Commanders
on Battle in nine to eleven.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Well, right, yes, I mean, you know, Patent's invocation of
Caesar and leaders of military leaders of antiquity is legendary
from the movie if nothing else. And you know, yeah,
we also mentioned Nimits at Midway perishing at san he Hell, yeah,
I can't say French myself worth a darn mers of Napoleon,
but yeah, that's right in a war that yeah, I
(14:20):
mean World War One is a a war known for
its lack of maneuver for reasons. I'll come back to that.
I think maybe you're of lingering importance. But yeah, but
I mean the other one did anyone bring up to you?
And again, forgive me if I missed it in the
previous book, Uh, it skipt the Civil War battles or
the Civil War itself, which seems to me was quite pivotal,
(14:42):
not just to America.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
But I think for the world. Actually, well I did.
I did Shiloh in last stance, okay. And the reason
I did Shiloh and not Gettysburg or Antietam or Vicksburg,
was that if Grant had lost at the end of
Day one of Shiloh, the war was over over. He's gone,
(15:08):
Sherman's gone. The Union army has been defeated and sent packing.
The Confederates command the Tennessee River and the Mississippi River.
Because you don't have Grant to come take Vicksburg. Later on,
the whole war effort collapses right there, up against the
banks of the Tennessee River. And when I did that chapter,
(15:28):
I got on the car and I drove myself from
New England to Shiloh, actually to walk that battlefield. And
when you get to the part where they're right at
the river, this is the end of day one. They've
been surprised, attacked. Sherman has blown off the reports that
there's this giant Confederate army right out there behind the trees.
Grant's up the river recuperating from a riding accident, and
(15:53):
he was the best horseman in the army, and his
horse had slipped in the mud and landed on his leg,
so he was rec operating from that. If they were
to have been pushed into the river on day one,
that was the end of it. So that's why I
let that stand in for the Civil War for this
current project.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Right, So let me ask you a combination question that explains,
or it gives reason why the rage to conquer, as
you put it, is not respected, not acknowledged, not understood,
and not encouraged today. And that would be the argument
that I think Churchill makes the best of anybody starting
around nineteen oh one, that modern warfare was going to
(16:33):
be different. Right, that famous early speech he gives, I
think in nineteen oh one where he says, the wars
of people's will be worse than the wars of kings. Why,
because of technology, we're now going to have you know,
total wars we later called it, in which civilian casualties
and civilian damage would be much greater than it ever
been before. And then you combine that with technology, and
you know, one of his later essays, I think it
(16:54):
was mass effects in modern life. He says, I'll paraphrase,
the problem with modern warfare is there's no or as
much less scope for battlefield heroism. The generals who used
to be on their horse, like Napoleon, like Marlborough, like
Grant and Lee, they're now remote from the battlefield, and
so they're not as decisive as they once would have been,
you know, in those older battles. And so, in other words,
(17:17):
the nature modern warfare has changed. It has lost its
I guess I may say it's manliness in some ways.
And so I mean, how do you regard that argument
and you credit that with being a factor in why
or mass opinion has turned so against war or regards
it the way it does.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Well, let me start by uttering a complete heresy.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
I'm afraid you're gonna do that.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Go ahead, I'm not a Churchill fan. I'm afraid you're
going to say that am I'm not a Churchill fan.
I am not a Churchill fan. And the reason I
am not a Churchill fan has to do with that
exact attitude. Remember that Churchill thought with Kitchener in the
assault on the MACHTI was already dead. He killed Gordon
(18:02):
and then he died, And then there was the Battle
of Omdumont, and Churchill was a young, young officer, and
he wrote famously there's nothing more exhilarating than being shot
at an Okay, so you got shot at and missed.
After that, his military judgment is horrendously terrible. He's the
(18:23):
architect of Gallipoli for one thing, which was Blatant's stupidity.
He was the architect of the soft underbelly theory that
got Americans killed at Anzio and didn't work anyway. At
no point is he a great strategic military thinker. He
has lots of great qualities, and I'm not going to
(18:44):
get into an argument with Larry Arn't about Churchill or right,
But I don't think he's a great military mind. And
I think he presided over the dissolution of the empire.
I mean, he has a lot of negatives in his
column that the Churchill fan club seems to ignore. But
(19:04):
I think see his experience was riding that horse and
getting shot at by some Arabs that couldn't shoot straight,
and therefore he wonders about that. But Patten gives the
light to that. Patten gets shot in World War One
his orderly carry. He's right in the front. He and
MacArthur wandering around in costumes saying Ill us right, and
(19:25):
Patten gets shot in the butt and has to be
dragged into a shell hole and then brought back. He
was always at the front, and so I quoted John
Keegan at the beginning of this book about great commanders,
which is in front always sometimes never. Okay, still have
a great commander who's never at the front. Nimitz is
(19:46):
a good example of that. Nimmits fought the Battle of
Midway from Honolulu where I grew up, Pearl Harbor. As
a matter of fact, when I grew up and I
was going to high school, i'd walk out my front
door and see Pearl Harbor. It was right there from
so I lived with that as a young teenager. But
Nimmus won that war because he understood the enemy and
(20:08):
he had a sense of technical innovation. His great genius was, hey,
we're a little short on aircraft carriers, but hey, that
Midway island that's an aircraft carrier just doesn't go anywhere.
So what we'll do is hide our other aircraft carriers
behind it, and the Japanese will sail right into the trap.
(20:31):
And that's what happened, and we put four of their
carriers at the bottom, and that really broke the offensive
power with Imperial Navy. The war's over at that point,
but the mopping up campaign. Don't get me started on
Deglas MacArthur. The mopping up campaign also obviously follows that,
(20:51):
So I think that's only partly true. I think Alexander
wore a plume, Talbot kill me, Caesar wore a red coat.
Here I am you want a piece of me? I'm
right here, and rat commit and Napoleon did too, and
that and their men loved them. What we have is
a bunch of political generals, plush bottomed fruit salads who
(21:15):
have never done a goddamn thing and have risen in
the peacetime professional army. I'm also against the the all
the all volunteer army. I think it's very bad. I
think it's bad for them. I think it's bad for
young men. I think it's bad for women. I think
it's bad for everybody. And the results, well, tell me
(21:39):
the last war we won.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah right, No, I think I agree with you about that.
I sometimes have friendly expressions about the idea of national service,
which would be mostly military service. It's it's a big problem.
I'll just I don't want to argue about Churchill either,
except I do want to say, Michael that I wonder
if some of that isn't your inner irishman coming out a.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Bit seriously, it's not, because after all, Churchill was half Americans,
so you know, right, or as.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
A critic said, half American and wholly reprehensible.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Well yeah, or I wrote in my novel and all
the stints about fear l L Da Guardia half Italian,
half Jewish and neither half the good half basic.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
What I do think there's something to his argument though
about you know, push button warfare, which we have now.
I mean, if you, I mean, I know you have
strong views about which I have a lot of sympathy with.
I think about the Russian Ukraine war going on, but
it's hard to see coming out of that that there's
going to be a commander or you know, a military
figure in you know, tales of heroism and turning points.
(22:47):
It looks like a grinded out technological war of who
can bring the most killing capacity from our modern machinery
and who wants to sign up for that.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Well, that's true. There's a wonderful book by a woman
named and her name will lose me at the moment.
It's called nuclear war, and it is a scenario is
relatively recent. It's riveting. I recommend to everybody what would
happen in the event of a nuclear war. The answer
is We're all going to die. That's it. So there
(23:16):
is no battlefield tactics to nuclear war. Much of it
is going to be controlled by AI. Actually, so the
robots will end up killing us after they steal our livelihood.
They'll kill us. But what's lacking isn't so much battlefield exposure.
It's just plain leadership. You don't You haven't had a
(23:37):
leader among military for my lifetime, basically. I mean, I
remember very vaguely, I think, or maybe it's in my
childhood MacArthur's farewell speech after Truman fired him. And what
figure has there been, even though I think what MacArthur's
vastly overrated, What figure has there been of that national
(23:59):
stature who was a military person?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Well, I mean, would you count de gaul and Eisenhower,
who were still figures of my youth? I mean I
was born late Eisenower years, but you know de Gaul
came back in the sixties, and I mean I always
point to him as someone who was in many ways
a repulsive human being and also very able and I
think and indispensable in some ways, and I figure more
(24:23):
Americans ought to study. That's what I say.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Well, I think Eisenhower was it was a great general.
He was a great beercraft general. He didn't fight. In fact,
of all the guys in World War Two who had
been World War One veterans, Eisenhower wasn't one of them.
He stayed in the United States the whole time. But
what he was was a guy who could move his
chess pieces. So there's no doubt that Patten is one
(24:50):
of the greatest battlefield commanders we ever had. But you
couldn't let Patent run the whole thing because it would
been off the rails and you needed to unleash that
dog of war only when necessary. Marshall was very similar.
Marshall wanted a command but very early on the Army
(25:11):
had realized this guy is an organizing genius. So why
do we want to get him killed off as a
as a first lieutenant or a captain when we can,
you know, stash him at Fort Belvoir in Washington and
learned the bureaucracy. It's important to remember, I think for
our audiences we didn't have them professional.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Let me stop you, Michael. You froze up on me
for about twenty seconds there and where you left off,
or maybe it was my end, but let me have
you restart. You were the sentence you were in the
middle of was Marshall was an organizing genius. And you
know before they were talking about you know, Eyesenhower and
so forth. So pick up again with a General Marshall,
(25:53):
and you know, just start from the beginning of that
and I'll splice it together.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Sure, Marshall was an organizing genius, so it didn't make
any sense for them to send him to war and
get him killed off as a first lieutenant or captain
when they could stash him at Fort Belvoir in Washington
and teach him the organizational principles of the army. So
(26:19):
it's important to remember that we didn't have a professional army.
We didn't have one at the time of the Civil War.
We didn't have one in World War One, we didn't
have one in World War Two. We started from scratch
in every one of those wars. Remember that Grant had
been a graduate of West Point and had served and
had resigned his commission and gone off. He was lonely.
(26:43):
He was stationed out in Nowheresville, California and the Oregon territories,
and he was lonely and homesick, and he missed his
wife so and he drank too much when he was
off duty. He was never on duty drunk. So he quit.
And at the time of the Civil War he was
working and failing in a little tanner shop in Galina,
(27:03):
that is I think his father owned, one of his relatives.
And he said, hey, you know, I've got a captaincy
in the army. I'm actually a professional soldier. So they
gave him a command immediately, and then he made his
bones rather quickly after that. But we had to start
World War One from a standing start. To General Pershing,
(27:24):
who is the hero of the World War One section
in my final big chapter, he had been a career
army officer, but he had well, he was like at
the what's the name of that place in San Francisco,
the presidio, Yeah, the presidio he had there. He had
(27:45):
also commanded a troop of black soldiers in Southwest, which
gave him his nickname of black Jack. That's where that
came from. He was the white officer in charge of
an all black unit. And as a result, so when
World War One comes, Pershing is the most senior figure
and it's up to him to suddenly organize an army
(28:07):
out of nothing, out of Aisle of Armbolice basically. And
then we got caught with our pants down again in
World War Two and had to mobilize. Now, luckily, America
in those days was capable of doing such a thing,
and we could turn civilian production like Henry Ford's automobile
assembly line into making tanks and trucks, so we were
(28:28):
able to do that. But the standing professional army was
something the founders warned against, and no one really thought
that was a good idea because that was a tool
of tyranny. That's why you have the Third Amendment, for example,
that the army can't come to your house in California
and say here, we're putting a tune of soldiers in
(28:49):
your den. Have a nice day, right, yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
So let's go to your last chapter on the post
nine to eleven world were in the middle of. When
I say it's a splendid, contemptuous rant, I meant that
as praise, not as criticism. Let me share with I'm
quite sure how I can characterize it. So let me
share one sentence with our listeners from page three seventy one, quote,
(29:16):
the Imperial Romans would have gone full to Lenda st On,
Saudi Arabia raised its cities, destroyed the ka'aba, leveled the mosque,
occupied the oil fields, seized its wealth, executed its leaders,
and sold the populace into slavery. They knew an existential
struggle when they were in one. So I mean, that's
when that blows your hair back, and you know.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
But that's the money sentence in the book everyone picked
up really.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Okay, good, right? No, I mean, rather you explained sort
of the incompetence and the sort of willful blindness to
what really is going on, and by the way that
feeds into I agree with you completely about we have
political generals who were promoted not for military excellence but
for bureaucratic role playing, and it's very, very bad. I
don't know if you want to add all that. I mean,
that is your money sentence, but well, I do have
(30:05):
this to say. We do have political generals, and people
don't realize that. For example, with general, the rank of general,
there's gradations of it, and you get the first two
from your service. So you get promoted to brigadier general,
and you get promoted to major general lieutenant general, which
is three stars you get from politicians, and then four stars,
(30:30):
and then there's on eve been a handful of five
stars in the history of the country. So and oftentimes
offices are created that require three stars. So the head
of the National Security Agency, for example, must be a
three star. So if you're up for that job, you're
going to get promoted to a three star, and then
(30:51):
you're going to be the head of the National Security Agency.
There are a number of positions in which that is
a requirement. So you know, in the rockdvertizing monster that
is the US government, we create roles and then fill them.
That doesn't mean we have more generals or more top generals,
and it doesn't mean any of them that have any
(31:11):
military in the field experience, except accidentally. It just means more,
you know, more generals, that's what it means. Yeah, right,
last question on military subjects, and then I want to
change to Ireland for a few minutes. I have seen
you tweet out here and there and make other brief
comments that all seem to point in the direction of
(31:33):
thinking we are overestimating China as a military threat to us,
and so say a little bit more. And you did
mention that, I think here in your last chapter of
the book. And I gather it's not that they're not
building lots of ships and planes and rockets that are
bad things, but that they're actually not very capable as
a war fighting civilization. Is that fair enough?
Speaker 1 (31:54):
For how do you shows that so name of war
they've won against a Western power? The answer is zero.
They took on the Arabs in the eighth century at
a battle called Kalas Talas, and it was mixed army
of Chinese and other Asians against the expanding caliphate, and
(32:19):
the Chinese were trying to push westward. They ran into
the Arabs and they got whopped. And one of the
reasons they got whopped is in Chinese culture, a military
career wasn't honorable. It wasn't something to be remember that
is a giant bureaucratic hat, and military people didn't rise
(32:39):
to the top. So their generals were Koreans. And now
I can speak with some familial interest in this, since
my father is a veteran of the Chosen Reservoir, a
battle that the Marines fought against the Chinese. He's one
of the last survivors. He's ninety nine years old.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
And he was in the whole Korean campaign, from Pusson
to Incheon to Soeul, to the Chosen Reservoir to the extraction.
And people sometimes bring that up and say, well, the
Chinese really put a hurt on the Marines. Well, it
helps if you have ten to one numerical superiority and
(33:21):
you attack in a surprise attack and it's thirty below
zero and you have overwhelming manpower. And what the Marines
did is it's considered a glorious battle in marine history.
Is they withstood that assault, maintained unit cohesion, and took
everybody home basically that could get there. I think he
(33:44):
must have weighed one hundred and twenty pounds by the
time he landed after they came back. So China doesn't
have a great track record. They can fight civil wars,
then their civil wars are astoundingly bloody. I like to
point out General Gordon beat them with a swagger stick.
That's why he was called Chinese Gorgon's garden. Right before
(34:07):
he got killed at Khartoon, the Japanese beat them twice
in the nineteen thirties with a platoon of Katana swordsmen
and some sushi. I don't know what they did, but
they beat China twice. So I don't think they're a
good military power. I think they're building a lot of stuff,
but we know the quality of what they build is bad.
(34:28):
The Africans are finding out now that it's a faustian
bargain when you let them in to build dams that collapse,
some roads that don't work, and nothing works. And I
also have been told by some people that much of
the technology that they have stolen in order to produce
their stuff is booby trapped.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Oh I hope. So. I mean, you know, we did
a little of that with the Soviet Union way back
once upon a time.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
If they launched those ships, they're going right down to
the bottom of the oce Interesting. Yeah, I know a
lot of our colleagues are obsessed with China, and Frank
Afrin I have this argument all the time. I just
have other things to worry about then the Chinese.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, yeah, me too. Let's switch to Ireland a little bit,
because you not only are of Irish descent, but you
live what half the year over there or some good
portion of your time out in the remind me where
it is out in western Ireland. You have a residence.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Yes, I rebuilt my great grandmother's birthplace. It's now a
beautiful home where my wife lives much of the year,
where my daughter met her husband and married him. He's
a Dubliner, and where my three grandchildren come and play.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
It's in a wild, wild part of the west called
the Burn, which doesn't look like any other place in Ireland.
It looks like the moon. It's all rocks. But right
out my window are the cliffs of More the Three
Aarn Islands, the Atlantic Ocean at Galway Bay in the
hills of Conamaras. So someone wants overlooked out our dining
room window and said, you know, there are five six
(36:03):
sights everybody comes to Ireland to see, and five of
them are right out your window. Right, So I like
grandma there, But it's I've been. I went back and
reunited the family is fifty two years ago and since
then acquired the property, built the houses, really established a
whole life there.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
Now.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
In fact, my whole my white daughter is is Her
ashes are buried there too, So it means a lot
to me. So it's not just that I'm some returned
to Yank who has what thinks his family came from Cork,
which is what they all say when you ask them,
where did your family come from Cork? The reason they
say that is that Cork is where the boat's left from.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Right, Yeah, that's the way the Irish think, By the way,
it's the kind of Celtic way of thinking. Specific that
question means where did I literally come from to get
to the United States. Cork is always the answer, right.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
So you know, I was in Ireland for almost ten days,
about a month and a half ago, and I happened
to be in Dublin on a day when there was
a large protest against immigration. I'm not quite sure who
the umbrella group was, but and then there was the
lefties organized the counter protests that was small and pathetic,
and communists, I mean, they're very open about it. But
(37:20):
I have to say I was impressed by the size
of the protest. I mean, the march stretched for I
don't know ten or fifteen blocks, I forget what that
main street is, and that ended up in a rally
in front of the customs house where the speakers, and
I wasn't familiar with any of them, but I listened
to their speeches and I thought they were all very good.
These were crazy people. The crowd was very diverse, as
(37:40):
you know, as we were supposed to. We're taught that
we have to a factor into things these days, and
so I got the sense that, you know, there is
not a lot of press coverage of Ireland and the
American media, and you've got to work to find it
in you know, the British press or the Economist, which
is you know, no good of course. And then someone
told me just this morning about a tweet that apparently
(38:02):
is exploding on x as we call it now today
as we're talking, and it goes something like this. I
couldn't find it, but apparently it says something like, if
you're an American visiting Ireland and you say I'm Irish,
they say, no, you're not. But if you're Somali fresh
off the boat twenty minutes ago, oh of course you're
an irishman. So this question seems to me is you're
(38:22):
splitting Ireland down the middle, as it ought to and
as it is other places. What's your sense of the matter. Okay,
go ahead.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Sorry, it's complicated, but cause it's Ireland, you know, among
the most disputatious people in the world. It's very simple.
Ireland is a slave state for eight hundred years. It
has lived in a bubble. It has no experience of
the outside world except that it sent its sons and
(38:50):
daughters abroad, where they became tremendously successful, wealthy, famous movie stars.
Captains have been to street titans of Hollywood, politicians presidents
of the United States, Ireland nothing and a certain resentment
has grown up on both parts that the returned Yanks
(39:13):
come back and say I'm Irish, and the Irish say,
you are the son of a bitch who abandoned us
to the family. We hate you. You left us in
our hour of need. Whether they articulate that or not,
is that is the undercurrent. So they really hate the
(39:34):
diaspora of people like me and a lot of my friends,
and they have rushed because they're a slave state still
they now slave state of the what I like to
call the eussr under ilsa she wolf of Brussels there who,
by the way, has never been elected to anything. Yeah,
(39:56):
the Irish politicians have all sold out to Brussels. And
so when people say, well don't they why aren't they
helping the Irish people, I tell them that's not their job.
Their job is to answer to Brussels. They don't care
what happens to you. The population has increased by a
million and a half of a very short span of time.
Most of them are not ethnic Irish. But to say
(40:19):
ethnic Irish is to be a racist. The word they
most fear is racism. So if you don't think that's
Somali who, by the way, destroyed his passport on the plane,
walked through customs waving and was immediately given food, shelter, money,
you name it, you're a racist. My village happens to
(40:42):
be the one that took the first first wave of
Ukrainian refugees. They put them in where a tourists town
and in the summer, hotels were all filled with tourists.
Now they're filled with Ukrainians and they don't have to
obey the laws, they don't have to register of their cars.
They get free money every week and you see them
(41:03):
lining up of the post office. And these are able
bodied draft dodgers, that's what they are. And there's no
sugarcoating it. And They laugh at everybody because they're sitting
there free. Yes it's raining, the weather is terrible, famously so,
but they're collecting free money and they're going to do
(41:24):
it for as long as they can get away with it.
And as soon as they leave, you'll see even greater
influx from Africa, North Africa, Central Africa, Afghanistan. Romanian Gypsies
are now quite prominent in the criminal subculture of Dublin.
We just have one now that turns out the father
(41:47):
is the head of the Roma Community Civil Rights League
or something, and the Sun is running eight brothels in
Dublin and the Irish shirts done by this because they
have no experience with the world. They really believe all
of the problem that they have been fed about the
(42:07):
goodness of man and the brotherhood of man. And we're
all exactly the same.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
You know.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
It's like being trapped in the nineteen sixties in America.
Their brief and you feel sorry for them because they're
going to have to learn the hard way. But that
government is never going to stop. It's never going to
stop importing foreigners because the EU, US Ireland is basically
empty space and it's a dumping ground for the EU's
(42:34):
migration problems, so you can't walk to Ireland, so you've
got to come by boter by plane and they'll just
keep They literally fly them in the government advertised in
Africa for people to get on planes and come to
Ireland at government expense to stay and live.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
For Yeah, I mean I should add that the protest
I saw the species. It wasn't just immigration, it was
the European Union in Brussels. In fact, some of them,
you know, paraphrase slightly. London's not our enemy anymore. Brussels
is our enemy.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
That's the point. That's the point. They're still obsessed with
this stupid trouble stuff. Yeah. And as an Irish American,
let me say this to all of our Jewish friends,
and you and I have lots of Jewish friends. The
anti Semitism is a disgrace to irishmen everywhere. That what
that government is doing passing the occupied territories build which
(43:28):
amounts to a gnat on a water buffalo's rear end
nothing but it's pure virtue signaling. They are constantly slagging
off the Israelis. The Israel closed its embassy in Dublin
because it couldn't take it anymore. And the Irish just
see see that's more proof of these perfidious Jews. Look
what they're doing. You can't trust them. They're everywhere, they
(43:50):
run the way. It's a mass outbreak events of insanity,
and it is incredibly disgraceful. And I'm pleased to say
there are a number of US diasporans with audiences and
money and influence who are going to organize against this
(44:12):
because we don't want to see Ireland go down the drain.
It didn't suffer under the English terribly for eight hundred years,
only to throw itself in the arms of Brussels. You know,
it's like that line from Man for all Season, I
could see selling your soul. But for Wales, you know,
basically eight hundred years of fighting the British, who were
(44:34):
a real worthy opponent. But for Brussels, King Leopold, who
are we talking about here? It's really stunning. I'm glad
you had a good time and some of Ireland. Dublin's
never been a very nice city and it's worse now.
The rest of the country is great. It's beautiful. If
you can take the weather, it's paradise and I love
(44:56):
every second that I'm there, but the governments anti Semitism
and its hatred of its own people is just unacceptable.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah. So I have two exit questions for you, one
about your next book and then one about music and
how they may connect together in a certain way. So
you said that you're writing yet another what a sequel
to this book in your last book? I guess there'll
be book number twenty. Tell us a little bit about
what that book's going to be about, and maybe one
or two things to look for.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Yeah, it's called The Wrath of God and it's about
the history of religious warfare. So when religions and people's
clash so specifically because of faith. So I mentioned the Exodus,
for example, the foundation story of the Israelites and taking
(45:48):
the land of Canaan at God's command very violently. By
the way, I'm going to treat the Thirty Years War,
which you know, contrary to the notion that civilians never
suffer and wars, the Thirty Years of War reduced the
population of Europe by about fifty percent. I mean, nobody
was free from that, and that was purely brand new
(46:09):
faith Lutheranism taking on Catholicism. I treated the Sack of
Rome in the sixteenth century by the Lutherans and the
Swiss guards, saving the pope and rushing him to the
Castel San Angelo in last stance. But these, and of
course the ongoing battle between Islam and the United States.
(46:32):
Our problem has always been in bush well, starting with it,
both bushes, but the notion that there's no state actors,
so we have no one to punish. As I said,
Caesar would laughed in that. Yeah, I see one right there,
and that's what he would have done. And we don't
fight the enemy that has declared war on us because
Islam doesn't have a pope, so any mufty can issue
(46:56):
a fat law that is like a federal gey parent
binding on the entire planet, right, even though the judges
in Honolulu.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Right. So it's an.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Asymmetric war that we haven't figured out how to fight yet,
but we need to focus on it.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Yeah, well, let me do a follow up question on that,
because since your book came out, well, I think somewhere
in here and I can't find it as I flipped
through the pages, I thought you said something about how
we've never seriously struck at the sort of central node
of this which is Iran. Now, since your book was printed.
We've had Israel have its twelve day war against Iran
(47:32):
that culminated with Trump deciding we will use these weapons
we've been developing for twenty years to try and take
out their main nuclear weapons development facility. What do you
make of all that? As it was, we did not
go far enough. But isn't that a sign at least somebody,
at least Israel standing up for the West.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Well, Israel is standing up for the West. And I
support the Israel least because they didn't start this fight.
And that's the point. It's so hard to make this point.
But Islam fetishizes buildings. So if the Kaba is gone
and the well that jam Karan is gone, Islam is gone.
(48:14):
You can destroy Saint Peter's church and the pope will
go live in Avenue. Catholicism cannot be destroyed by bombing,
even setting Notre Dame on fire, which they did right.
But Islam is focused on places, so the pilgrimage, the
Hajj is very important. The Shia version is that down
(48:35):
this well in Kum is hidden the twelfth Ebom who
Will is waiting for the It's an apocalyptic version. It's
he will emerge at the time of complete chaos and
convert the world to Islam, and that will be the
end times. So the radical Christians have the same basic
(48:56):
theology about end times and then Jesus appearing and that's
the end of the movie. But we won't go after
their buildings because that's not who we are. And that's
giving up the fight before you even have the fight.
That's the problem. Now, if Islam promises to stay like
a good enemy behind its own borders, we don't have
(49:20):
a particular problem with them, and the Europeans have learned
how to deal with that since stopping them at Vienna
in the seventeenth century. But you can't have constant encouragions
and provocations. And that was why I made the point
about what Romans would do. Because Rome didn't last for
two thousand years for nothing. It had a will to
survive in a way that no other major civilization has
(49:45):
ever had, and it took action when it felt it needed.
Is that kind of an apologist for Rome? Yeah, absolutely
it is. I think Roman civilization was great and well
our existence to it well.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
I do like seeing the sort of comeback of the
Roman Empire among especially young men. These days that hear about.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
Oh, I think that's the best marine ever. Uh, he's
probably thinking about other women. No, he's thinking about the
Roman Empire. Well, I think young men need that, and
I think this book I've written part for young men again.
I grew up in the Marine Corps. I was born
on a major Marine Corps base and I was the
(50:26):
son of a guy who had just come back from
from from Korea, highly decorated marine officer. So that was
the tradition in which I grew up and it wasn't militarized.
And my father I don't even know what his politics are,
I literally don't, but what he incultated in me and
my brother and my three sisters is discipline.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
I asked him once, Uh, what was your Were you
afraid when the Chinese came down the hill on the
day after Thanksgiving and attack? Uh? And he said, first
of all, I thought it was going to hit me.
And even though he's ninety nine, I still stay well
back from him because that left hook as a killer.
He said. We went to work, and I finally understood
(51:14):
what that meant years later, which is we're trained to
do this. And the way marines are trained is here's
your training. If you're in trouble, observe your training. If
you abandon your training, you're dead. If you observe your training,
you have a chance to get out alive. So what
they did was they immediately formed into their jobs. He
(51:35):
commanded mortar platoons and began saturating the fields between the
Chinese and the Marines to keep them backed off, and
nobody panicked, and they all picked up and tried to
get out of the pickle they were in. So it's
all about a military background. It's not about killing people.
It's about discipline and getting your work done. I wouldn't
(51:57):
have written twenty well, this is going to be twenty
and then there's twenty one, and then there's twenty two.
So they're all in the planning. It's just discipline that
gets it done. You know, you can't shop down the
tree with one blow, and you can't hit a five
run homer. You have to do it every single day.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
Right. Yeah, So last question comes in two parts, and
I call it the other side of Michael Walsh. You
have serious formal training in music. Yes, I've noticed. I
think I've noticed the influence of that in your writing.
I think in particular of your couple of books on
the Frankfurt School, which gets much more at the cultural
aspects of that whole thing and whole influence than the
(52:35):
political philosophy parts that narrow people like me think of.
And so the first part of the question is, is
am I right in saying that there's an essential connection
with the way you perceive certain things with your musical training.
And part two is you're serious composer, and maybe say
this a little bit about I think you're working on
a piece or maybe you've done a piece you're performing
in Europe recently, So anyway to take both parts of
(52:58):
those if you would.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
And to the Eastman School of Music, among whose graduates
is the late Chuck Man Jones, who just died yesterday.
I guess I knew Chuck a little bit. He was
about ten years ahead of me, I think. At Eastman
Renee Fleming, the great opera Sopranos, friend of mine. She's
also a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. I'm
(53:22):
not a composer anymore. I was in college, but that
was not my calling. But I you know, I did it,
and I learned a lot from it as a writer.
So I'll be playing the program of mostly Franz List
at the Brand Library in Glendale. It will also consist
of a very rarely performed sonata by Wagner, who was
(53:42):
Liszt's son in law, so it was a lecture recital
but mostly a recital. And then I'll be playing it
in London at the List Cultural Institute of the Hungarian
Government in London, and then I'll be playing it in
Budapest's lists third hometown as well in November. But I'm
(54:02):
writing a very large novel which has been in plan
now for two or three years, which will incorporate music
of all kinds into the fabric of the narrative. I
see them as essentially the same activity, writing and putting
the piano, and it's just kind of sums up everything
(54:24):
I've devoted my life to. And hopefully that will be
the last book I write, Steve, and then I'll retire
to my jack in Ireland, I guess right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
Well, well thanks for this, Michael. This has been a
fun tour of the of a part of your horizon,
and I'll look forward to that next book and in
the meantime, a best of luck to rage to conquer,
and I don't know. I may or may not be
around the LA area one of those appearances, or I'll
find an excuse to go to Budapest and hang out
with our mutual friend John O'Sullivan. Oh absolutely, you know
(54:56):
opens and closes the town there, right, I mean it's
always fun seeing John and Melissa there.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
Well, you will certainly know where to eat when you
go to boot that's right.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
I blame John for the fact that I've gotten larger
than a few years ago. Anyway, Thank you, Michael, good luck,
see you soon. Welcome.
Speaker 4 (55:15):
I thought it would be real me. I thought it
would be real cool, Bob, because my dad's get tired.
Speaker 2 (55:26):
Learn me some Irish tunes.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
Blame for a couple of friends. That's some little Polish far,
a little whiskey and the jar.
Speaker 2 (55:39):
I never thought it go so far. So why are
you onna bring me down? Because I'm not from my Ireland.
Speaker 4 (55:51):
I'm from Allen Town. I something drumming. I risk girl,
she give you her second show, and I am scaring
of somebody to say she's gonna.
Speaker 2 (56:07):
Let you know.
Speaker 4 (56:09):
She said she was very fond your volume up to ten.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
I didn't buy. Ricochet joined the conversation
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