2017, St. Martin’s Press, NY, 199 pages
Reading Navy SEAL memoirs is a pastime of mine—having read five. However, Discipline Equals Freedom was leant to me to read by my friend Dante, who spoke of it as an inspirational book which helped his son overcome some hard times. So, I dove in with both feet and found that Discipline Equals Freedom is the most uniquely formatted book I have read and, it appears, fits very well with the military mind set of the author. Whoever the ghost writer was was brilliant. This book is a tome of bullet points, mantras, positive declarations and can-do/don’t do interpretations of dilemmas we all face.
Coming from a certified Deep State ass-kicking machine who trains with top MMA pros like Tito Ortiz [pictured in training photos] Willink is very convincing and to-the-point without being mechanical but rather inspirational. His advice on what martial arts one should train in according to what priority and in what order is excellent, but does reflect the budget of a high-earner and is something I never could have pursued as a low life in Baltimore, Maryland when I was the age of the guys he is writing for. But then again, Willink is all about positive energy and outcomes and would possibly remark that he doesn’t write for losers, but for winners.
If you are an anti-statist, a free-thinker, a questioner and investigator of the human condition, and you have not served as a slave of the most effective military machine to ever stalk the earth, that is the U.S. military which holds nearly 1,000 war bases in foreign nations and is the virtual Lord of Hosts and God in Heaven summoned and called down by people of all classes, factions and nations to smite the Unbeliever, to displace those governments and murder people who do not worship the Divine American Body Economic, than you should partake of this strong man’s pitiless perspective. For, the servants of evil are very often good. They must be to be effective, to be good men in a vile cause. Wallink and his ilk have battled the world over to install rapacious engine of economic extraction, to install tyrants, implement and facilitate crimes against humanity, facilitate drug shipments to their home nation, promote pornography-based cultural values, and in large measure, such men prevail, succeed and survive because they are better quality people than the poor bastards who are the unwilling recipients of our good intentions.
In the end, I care not a lick about the murder Americans commit across the world in my name, at the hands of men like Willink. What I do care about is that one day, if some infotech company’s censorship functionaries decide I need to die, that all they will have to do to accomplish it, is to quote this article and snippets of various other pieces I have written critical of America, present me to Willink as an Enemy of Freedom, and he will dispose of me in some manner for a handsome fee, and I will have been declared as having shot myself in the back of the head with a hunting rifle.
It took 2 hours over 2 days at Bear Lake, Utah to read Willink’s book, while resting between my labors building Dante a retaining wall, and, as I hefted each block, flipped each railroad tie, dug each shovel full of earth, I’d imagine how Willink would kill me “right now” and if I’d even know it happened, and in the end decided I was so easy to kill while working that he’d probably send a Mexican to do it.
Do yourself a favor and read Discipline Equals Freedom, a mantra I live by, and keep in mind that the man that wrote it and his brand of high-resolution postmodern warriors, have been hunting U.S. citizens in the U.S. since at least 2016 and probably earlier. This is the kind of man that will be called in on you when you swerve out of your lane in the long night to come.
Willink’s premise and title, Discipline Equals Freedom is profoundly true, as is his mantra Hesitation is the Enemy. These are both internal concepts. However, as noted above, discipline such as that demonstrated by apex warrior types is the ultimate external enemy, for such men have the capacity to discipline their mind to such a degree as to serve naked evil in the shadows of the human sheepfold. My friend Tony Cox has a profound distrust of such discipline, for he has seen it manifested by mega-PIGs in criminal settings.
As always, there is a third view.
What have Tony [a barbarian], myself, a disciplined barbarian advocate, and Willink [a highly disciplined agent of Civilization] in common?
We have actionism in common and Willink’s existence demands that Tony and I be better.
None of us hold commonality with the bleating flocks and folds of sheeple or even the puppet masters—wolfish minds in sheepish bodies—which deploy men like Willink to further their many evil desires. In the end, in my simian mind, I only have meaning because someone like Willink is training to kill me [as an anonymous “bad guy”] for stepping out of my assigned lane, when and if the order comes. And even then, if I had been granted a moment of clarity before the end, I’d admire my killer and some part of him would know jealousy for me as he left me dead in the dirt and walked away wondering if he could have been free like I had been and if his bid would have ended as finally.
What use is an enemy to the combatant if you cannot salute him?
Under the God of Things
"If you are an anti-statist, a free-thinker, a questioner and investigator of the human condition, and you have not served as a slave of the most effective military machine to ever stalk the earth, that is the U.S. military which holds nearly 1,000 war bases in foreign nations and is the virtual Lord of Hosts and God in Heaven summoned and called down by people of all classes, factions and nations to smite the Unbeliever, to displace those governments and murder people who do not worship the Divine American Body Economic, than you should partake of this strong man’s pitiless perspective. For, the servants of evil are very often good. They must be to be effective, to be good men in a vile cause. Wallink and his ilk have battled the world over to install rapacious engine of economic extraction, to install tyrants, implement and facilitate crimes against humanity, facilitate drug shipments to their home nation, promote pornography-based cultural values, and in large measure, such men prevail, succeed and survive because they are better quality people than the poor bastards who are the unwilling recipients of our good intentions."
Absolutely brootal and true. Dick Couch, in his "THe Warrior Elite" commented at the end that it was unclear why most BUD/S candidates wanted to become SEALs. Many just wanted to be a part of an elite unit. "A great number are patriotic, but what did patriotism mean in this day and age", Dick mused if I remember correctly. It has been 10 years since I read the book.
Wilink et al fall into the category of post-modern neo-stoics. They are like Marcus Aurelius yelling, "Hooyah!" and "BOOTSTRAPS!" at weaklings as a means of inspiring themselves and others but mostly building their brand. The cosmic reality is that we are all weaklings compared to the Almighty. We're also getting older and weaker daily. "The glory of a young man is his strength" (Proverbs 20:29), thus man's glory fades a little bit more every day. My personal experiences with SEALs convinced me that many are arrogant men. How could they not be? But the meek shall inherit the earth.
One recent inductee who trained at a club I coached for, said he wanted to be a SEAL because it was a way for him to be a traditional man and to fight back against all "the pussy shit I've been spoon-fed my whole life."
It's gospel hour, James!
Picture the scene. A Roman soldier, a Centurion in charge of 100 men, comes to see Jesus. The centurion is a badass. The Centurion’s servant, someone important to him, has been paralyzed. The Centurion comes to Jesus, certain that Jesus can help.
The Centurion comes as a man of authority, but he doesn’t attempt to exercise any authority over Jesus. He doesn’t demand assistance or intervention. He sees Jesus as a man of authority, too. He tells Jesus that he also has men under his command. "I tell them, do this, and they do it."
Jesus responds, “I will come to your house and cure him.” But incredibly, the Centurion says, “I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.”
In both Matthew and Luke, we read how the Centurion’s faith amazed Jesus:
“When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly I tell you, in no one in Isrаel have I found such faith.’” (Matthew 8:10)
“When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, ‘I tell you, not even in Isrаel have I found such faith.’” (Luke 7:9)
Nothing else in the gospel narratives amazes Jesus. But the fact that this hardened Roman soldier, hated representative of Isrаel's overlords, has such straightforward faith astonishes him.
Take home lesson? The simple faith of the badass saves his servant's bacon.
Jocko's discipline saves him from sloth, from having a gut, from the poz that is the very lifeblood of the Empire he serves. Perhaps, when his knees go, it will save him from ennui, from introspection, from Doubt. Perhaps not.
But metaphysics and maundering aside: could Jocko defeat the Centurion, battle-hardened veteran sent to police the hoodrats in 30 AD Palestine, armed not with a Sig but only a gladius? I know I'd pay to see that fight.
I've often wondered how SEALs and Rangers would fare having to live a month in a legionnaires' sandals. Long marches with little food, no med evac, sleeping in the cold without synthetics, the return home only a remote possibility and entailing a 1,000 mile walk. Even "spartan" Jocko, faced with such unending hardship, might crack. He serves the ladyboys, the Lindsay Grahams and Kushners and Schiffs; the legionnaire served Caesar, who himself led when necessary from the front.
What we really need is historical MMA. Let the Jockos and Titos fight Leonidas and Conan. Throw some SEALs into the Colosseum to fight journeyman gladiators. This is the entertainment a diabetic nation demands.
This was great.
It's such a great irony that the special brand of men who serve the thing that eats us in the warrior way inoculate themselves to a large extent via their service.
You know, in the Imperial Legions, there was a first cohort of Jockos, guys that were at least 5 feet 10 inches.
I would love to have a time-machine arena to see these goons go at it.
Great read and interesting take as usual. Like Jonathon Bowden said, it is ironic that the most fascist organization existing today, the US military, does its bidding for liberalism. Jocko is pretty cool, I listen to his podcast at times. He either pretends or doesnt k ow actual history though. One show talking about Hitler, he claimed Hitler sat in an ivory tower and was afraid to fight himself which is blatantly absurd given his WW1 record. Anyway ttyl James
Thanks for the news—Jocko sounded super cool to me. he'd probably even look cool killing my runty ass.
Makes sense. Why put all that effort in and endure all that suffering to be surrounded by 2nd class wannabes and commanded by garbage scow fools? Would assume the same for boxers: if good enough, you eventually want to move from amateur ranks to the pros, test yourself against the best, not to mention the higher quality hooch.
The DI screaming in your face (or, nowadays, 'insistently emphasizing') to motivate you to dig the ditch or whatever is obviously a surrogate daddy. It would be interesting to know what % spec ops are from broken homes, vs the rear echelon types. Are they driven to please the father they never knew, or win an imaginary fight with the dead guy who used to beat them or their mamas? One must have abundant reserves of anger to draw on to endure daily surf torture.
Tom Wolfe's 'Man in Full' had as its hero a neo-stoic, Conrad, who escapes from prison via deus-ex-machina earthquake (also Roger "Too White" White II, a prominent Atlanta lawyer, who was of course black), and certainly every Louis Lamour pulp and John Wayne flic featured its stoic emissary (although True Grit, reflecting the changing times (1969) showed him in alcoholic decrepitude). Who wants to read about a Western town whose sharif isn't a quiet man imbued with honor and justice? Even Chighur in 'No Country for Old Men' had a twisted stoic code he lived by, reflected, perhaps, in his unusual choice of hairstyle.
Bronze Age Pervert, the Liftwaffe, and other red-blooded habitues of the dissident right make clear that the pendulum is swinging away from soyface and back to manliness and stoic ethics. Take a look at "Carnivore Aurelius" a keto acolyte on twitter. His manifesto reads:
'The worst addiction in the world is comfort
Nobody wants to be cold. Nobody wants to try a hard diet. Nobody wants to exercise hard.
All growth happens with discomfort.
Our society has made everybody soft.'
These obvious assertions are, nowadays, exotic concepts, forbidden fruit, tantalizing the young guise who now crave Mannerbunds and the manbear grappling (no homo) they never got from dad, and harboring white-hot disdain for the fatso "adults" that have bossed them around in school from day 1. The pajama boy elites are about to dine on a heaping helping of Unexpected Consequence served them by Gen Zyklon, who understand implicitly that there is no Sunday EVER where sissified Obama could kick Vlad's judo-trained ass. (Michelle, on the other hand...).
All gay things come to an end with fire and the crash of steel.
the great weakness of Modernity is its implicit belief in lineal social progression and its claim to have overcome the of cyclicity of the Kosmos and the possibility of cataclysm.