Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness

Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness

Ken Webster is a talk radio personality and producer from Houston, TX. He started his career in Chicago on the Mancow show and has since worked at...Full Bio

 

We can learn a lot from the Romans and the Celts

Let’s face it—we are in the throes of a second American Civil War.  This is not North against South, states’ rights vs federal control, free men against slaveholders.  Nope.  This time it’s freedom and liberty and the American Constitution against the forces of tyranny.  Tyranny of thought and deed.  A place where our past thoughts and actions are judged against today’s shifting standards of behavior.  Standards that are capriciously applied based on your ideological beliefs.

Brett Kavanaugh is judged because a few women claim that while they were teenagers, Judge Kavanaugh may or may not have been at the same party, where he may or may not have made crude, drunken advances to them.  These accusers have wrapped themselves in the mantle of victimhood, and we cannot question them.

On the other hand, Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Congressman who is running for Attorney General in Minnesota and happens to be the #2 guy at the Democratic National Committee, actually has a record of slapping women around.  Or perhaps he says the 911 call made about him laying hands (and not the good religious kind) on a woman, or the video another one has of him dragging her off the bed, or a restraining order, were all fabrications.  Keith Ellison is allowed to continue in public life because he has the proper ideology.

The women who claim Keith Ellison attacked them are not wrapped in the mantle of Holy Victimhood; they’re called crazy instead.

This kind of scorched earth policy against your political opponents has got to stop.

Which brings me to the title of the piece—we can learn a lot from the Romans and Celts. 

During the last years of the Roman Republic, the armies of Rome had sort of subjugated the peoples of Gaul, the Celts.  These loosely aligned tribes had managed to harass Roman cities like modern-day Marseilles, and the Roman Senate couldn’t have the trade routes messed up.  So, Julius Caesar decided to do something about this.

Caesar had himself appointed as commander of Roman Legions in the south of Gaul. Gaul was an area that approximated to modern France, Luxembourg, part of the Netherlands and Belgium.  This is a pretty big area, almost as big as Texas.  The Celts who lived there weren’t your animal-pelt-wearing-long-haired-bearded barbarians.  Nope, they were fairly civilized by Roman standards and had a pretty sophisticated political system.

While Caesar was doing his thing, a group of people called the Helvetti moved into the area around Marseilles.  Caesar called this an invasion, and proceeded to wipe the Helvetti out.  He then took advantage of his military strength and went after the Celts.

He was able to split Gaul into three parts, skillfully exploiting the divisions between the tribes to his advantage. Many of the Celtic tribes became his allies, such as the Aedui.  These allies were allowed a measure of self-rule, it seemed likely that they did not fully understand the extent of Roman ambitions in Gaul. They may have believed that Caesar would eventually leave the region. However, Caesar and the Romans were in Gaul to stay.  One by one over a period of five years, Caesar conquered the tribes. 

These were not easy victories.  Caesar lost a good chunk of his legions and those groups that allied themselves with Rome. In the language of The Godfather, the Celts took Caesar to the mattress.

It is thought that over the course of these five years, over one third of the Celts were killed, one third were enslaved, and one third were left.  Over two million people were either dead or made slaves after five years of Caesar’s tender loving care.

One might even claim that Caesar wiped the Celts from the face of the earth.  And this wasn’t a new thing the Romans did.  About 100 years before Caesar eliminated the Celtic threat in Gaul, the Romans turned their sights on Carthage, a city state in north Africa.

In 149 BC, the Romans declared war on Carthage.  Carthage tried to appease the Romans, sending three hundred children of well-born Carthaginians as hostages to Rome so the Carthaginians would keep the rights to their land and self-government.

This didn’t work, at all.  The Romans sent 80,000 soldiers and utterly destroyed Carthage.  Not content with breaking the city, killing, looting, and raping, the Romans then sowed the wheat fields with salt, starving the survivors.   The remaining 50,000 Carthaginians that survived the looting, raping, fighting were sent into slavery.

Right now, I think we can view the Left as the Romans, bent on destroying anything that doesn’t conform to their will.

So, will we be like the Carthaginians who tried to appease the Romans and got wiped from the face of the Earth for their troubles?  Or will we be more like the Celts who fought the Romans to the last man and woman? 

For those of you who say the Celts lost, let me just say this: First, Latin is no longer spoken in Rome.  But, they still speak Gaelic in Scotland and Ireland, and Bretagne in Brittany. Second, during the Dark Ages when humankind was subject to plagues that destroyed 30% of humanity, and there was utter chaos without any kind of government in place, it was the Irish monks who saved civilization.  Rome had been destroyed by some of the tribes it had tried to subjugate once upon a time.

The Celts who had been taught their stories as babies, who prized literacy, art, and study, those Celts saved Western Civilization.  They even kept Latin alive as a language.

The Roman Empire eventually failed because of the constant in-fighting brought on by a series of emperors who could not see beyond the length of their own togas.  But the Celts survived.

I know it’s tempting to want to drop the hammer on the Left right now.  What they are doing is flat-out wrong.  But let’s defeat them by teaching our children civilization.  Let’s defeat them by making their supporters suffer economically.  Let’s defeat them by bringing their lies and deceit into the light.

Let’s be Celts.


Sandra Peterson
Follow me on Twitter @janevonmises

Photo by Getty Images


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