The Art of Manliness - #452： The Warrior's Manifesto

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00:00:48.480 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Warrior is a word

00:00:53.800 that gets thrown around a lot. There are road warriors, social justice warriors,

00:00:58.100 ninja warriors. What does it really mean to be a warrior? I guess today sets out a working

00:01:01.980 definition in his book, The Warrior's Manifesto. His name is Daniel Modell, and he earned his master's

00:01:06.320 degree in philosophy before going on to serve for 20 years in the New York City Police Department.

00:01:10.440 Daniel and I begin our conversation discussing what makes a warrior a warrior and the lessons

00:01:14.120 Spartacus can teach us on that score. Daniel and I then discuss why warriors do what they do,

00:01:18.820 why violence is sometimes necessary for peace, and what it means to be savage without becoming.

00:01:23.360 Savage. We then discuss how bureaucracy kills leadership and why you don't need a title to

00:01:27.300 be a leader. At the end of our conversation, Daniel talks about why it isn't just members

00:01:30.660 of the military and law enforcement who need to understand the way of the warrior,

00:01:33.760 but ordinary civilians as well. After the show's over, check out the show notes at

00:01:37.800 aom.is slash warriormanifesto.

00:01:52.520 All right, Daniel Modell, welcome to the show.

00:01:55.820 Thanks very much for inviting me, Brad.

00:01:57.540 So you have a book, The Warrior's Manifesto. But before we get into the book, let's talk about

00:02:02.360 your background because I think it's really interesting. You're a 20-year veteran of the

00:02:06.560 New York City Police, but you have a, you got your bachelor's in philosophy and your master's

00:02:11.900 in philosophy. So how did that happen? How did you go from philosopher to New York City

00:02:17.640 police officer?

00:02:18.420 It's like a totally natural transition. I mean, both endeavors begin with a P, right?

00:02:23.560 So I developed an interest in philosophy as an undergraduate at New York University.

00:02:28.900 At the time, there was a, for me anyway, a pretty vibrant intellectual atmosphere on campus.

00:02:36.280 We were encouraged to take a range of core courses and philosophy really appealed to me,

00:02:43.940 particularly the history of ideas and how they developed and express themselves in different

00:02:49.800 systems. At the same time, I'd been interested in the idea of policing for a long time. And so

00:02:57.720 right around the time when I finished up my undergraduate studies, I took the exam to become

00:03:03.520 a police officer in New York City. Now, as I recall it, there were some legal challenges

00:03:10.280 to establishing a list from my exam. So I continued to pursue my interest in philosophy and I ended

00:03:19.000 up in a graduate program in the University of Texas at Austin. During that time, a list of candidates

00:03:27.540 was finally established from my police exam. And I deferred my investigation to become a cop so

00:03:36.680 that I could finish my studies at Austin. And once I did that, I moved back to New York City,

00:03:43.700 started my investigation and was hired by the NYPD in 1995.

00:03:51.040 And when you were doing your graduate studies in philosophy, what type of philosophy were you

00:03:55.220 focused on? I started out at the University of Texas with a specialty in ancient philosophy.

00:04:03.620 During my time there, I ended up hooking up with a professor by the name of Edwin Allaire,

00:04:09.120 whose work was more in early modern philosophy. So over time, I developed an interest in that,

00:04:18.040 Descartes, Descartes, Hume, Berkeley, figures like that. I still maintain an interest in ancient

00:04:25.020 philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Some of the pre-Socratics really interested me. But I ended 1.00

00:04:33.000 up writing my master's thesis on something more like early modern with Allaire.

00:04:40.380 Well, I'm curious, when you finished your master's and you went back to become a cop,

00:04:44.520 how did your background in philosophy influence your approach to policing?

00:04:50.440 It's an interesting question. It's not that easy to answer. I'd say there was,

00:04:55.280 in some ways, an influence, I guess in the broadest sense, inquiry, investigation,

00:05:01.760 a willingness to think deeply about issues or problems are core factors in philosophy.

00:05:11.820 And in some ways, although the practical details are very different, policing requires some of that

00:05:19.700 capacity and willingness to inquire, investigate, figure out what at root is happening in a particular

00:05:28.100 situation, often a volatile one. So in a very broad sense, there are these mirrored set of skills

00:05:37.000 between the two. But with that said, I mean, I don't want to exaggerate the similarities in the

00:05:44.240 course of my career as a cop. I don't recall any encounters in which I was tempted to cite a passage

00:05:51.560 from Plato's Symposium or to counter a crazy rant from an emotionally disturbed person by pointing out

00:05:59.760 to them the law of non-contradiction or something like that. But maybe the best way I could say it is

00:06:06.440 this, speaking for myself, developing a thoughtful temperament was helpful in navigating some of the

00:06:14.060 craziness of policing and studying philosophy did help.

00:06:18.720 I'm mad. Yeah, it would have been great for a cop show if you had a quip with the symposium.

00:06:23.340 Yeah. That's my next project. With quotes from Plato.

00:06:30.980 Right. And so are you still with NYPD or are you doing something else now?

00:06:35.240 I'm not. I retired in 2015. So about three years ago, I retired as a lieutenant. I, in the meantime,

00:06:44.680 started a business with a couple of partners of mine. They were sergeants in the NYPD. Both of them

00:06:50.580 are also retired at this point. It's called ARIES Tactical and Emergency Management Solutions. We do

00:06:57.700 self-defense and tactical training for civilians, law enforcement, security personnel, and we have a

00:07:04.380 blast doing it.

00:07:05.180 Well, let's talk about you've also become a writer. So you got this book, The Warrior's Manifesto. What

00:07:09.740 was the impetus behind this book? Was it basically trying to distill all your thoughts about,

00:07:15.260 I don't know, what it means to be a warrior? Because then again, I mean, you're an interesting

00:07:20.020 position there because you've studied this abstractly, right? You know, reading Plato

00:07:24.640 and Aristotle, but also you've lived it day to day. So was there like a moment after you retired,

00:07:30.080 be like, I need to write this book or has this been brewing in your mind for a long time and you

00:07:33.880 finally just decided to put, I guess, finger to keyboard and get it out there?

00:07:38.360 Yeah, the latter, Brett. I'd been thinking about a project like that for some time, certainly before

00:07:45.900 I retired. It's hard to kind of bear down and write a book while you're, you know, working third

00:07:53.040 platoon at a Bronx precinct. But yeah, I'd been thinking about it for some time. I would say

00:07:59.500 there were two major factors that kind of pushed the book out of me. The first was, oh, this kind of

00:08:09.560 felt need to kind of understand in fundamental terms, what the warrior professions are really

00:08:15.680 about, why society needs military and law enforcement and the ideals that they should strive

00:08:23.240 towards. But the second one, and this was felt more towards the end of my career, it's related to the

00:08:30.420 first in some ways, though, was a desire to answer the relentless din of criticism that was coming from

00:08:40.520 some of the more shrill activists around at the time and directed at law enforcement currently. But

00:08:49.380 look, let's not forget, there was some pretty shrill criticism of the military not more than a couple

00:08:55.280 generations ago. So I wanted to provide some sort of comprehensive answer to that kind of criticism,

00:09:05.380 not directly, but more in the way of establishing a framework that kind of detailed the extent to

00:09:15.660 which the warrior professions are critical and really bulwarks of civilization.

00:09:21.740 Yeah, it's platonic. It's sort of platonic in a way. So let's get platonic. All right,

00:09:26.760 let's start off with definitions. So what, in your idea of a warrior, what makes a warrior a warrior?

00:09:35.040 Yeah, good question. And one that I try to tackle in the book. I'd say when we raise large questions like

00:09:44.940 what is an X, what is an X? It's, as a point of method, it's always good to start with common or

00:09:52.740 traditional answers to the question. That is, by the way, a Socratic. Thanks for...

00:09:57.500 Right, that's what Socrates did, right.

00:09:59.140 So, for example, if you want to say that fighting for country is a defining characteristic of the warrior,

00:10:09.520 you want to figure out whether that excludes too much and includes too much. I think that it does.

00:10:17.640 So if you want to take that as a defining characteristic, let's not forget you have to

00:10:25.420 include Japanese soldiers of the Axis who, at certain times, you know, caught Chinese infants on

00:10:33.540 their bayonets in a kind of warped competition. And on the other hand, you would have to exclude an 0.86

00:10:41.440 extraordinary figure like Spartacus, who didn't fight under the banner of any nation, quite the

00:10:47.460 contrary. Having said that, by the way, fighting for country may be critically important personally

00:10:54.420 for individual warriors, and maybe should be in many cases. But I would say it can't be a defining

00:11:02.440 characteristic of the warrior as such, because it includes too much and excludes too much.

00:11:09.280 The same is true, if I could push forward with it a little bit, even if you want to say fighting in

00:11:16.560 a war, right, really defines the warrior. Because think about it this way, there are many, many hundreds,

00:11:24.980 thousands who have joined Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force. And with everything that that implies,

00:11:32.440 willingness to fight and die so that others can sleep soundly. But given the times that they

00:11:39.120 joined the military, which were relatively peaceful, they never did fight in a war. But I know plenty of

00:11:45.060 these guys, as I'm sure you do, Brett, and it seems wrong not to call them warriors. The same, I would say,

00:11:52.320 is true of cops. Cops, at least in their capacity as cops, don't fight in wars, as that term's commonly

00:12:03.820 understood anyway. But nevertheless, you know, I've served with many of them over the course of a couple

00:12:09.300 of decades, and they are every bit the warrior. So, and then on the other side of it, not everybody who

00:12:19.820 dons a uniform or who's even in a trench is necessarily a warrior. And some of the better

00:12:28.780 soldiers will be the first to tell you that. Hey, we could go on. I mean, historically,

00:12:37.380 look, some who fought in wars after they defeated or achieved their military end would rape and pillage. 0.95

00:12:47.720 And we don't generally want to apply the kind of the term warrior to those guys because they behave

00:12:55.780 like thugs, right? Thug and warrior, at least in my mind, don't go together. So I think when you

00:13:05.620 try to consider what it is that's essential to being a warrior, we're looking for something larger.

00:13:14.040 And I would say that it is fighting for an ideal understood as such, as a matter of professional

00:13:25.200 obligation, and as a matter of principle, when that ideal is potentially threatened by violence or

00:13:33.600 attack. Gotcha. And I mean, you mentioned Spartacus in the book, you went to Great to Tell. I'm using

00:13:40.120 him as sort of an example of what it means to be a warrior, right? Because he said he didn't fight for

00:13:46.800 a country. That's right. But despite that, you still considered him a warrior. So what is it about

00:13:53.600 Spartacus that lines up with that definition that you've come up with? Well, I think that what's so

00:13:59.820 compelling about Spartacus as a historical figure, and in no small part as a figure of myth,

00:14:05.540 is that he defied all of these traditional categorizations associated with the warrior.

00:14:13.320 Like I said, and as I point out in the book, he didn't fight under the banner of any nation.

00:14:21.800 He certainly didn't have a traditional organization to his army. And yet he fought with a purity of purpose

00:14:33.100 and a kind of stubborn defiance in the face of adversity that any warrior would surely recognize

00:14:42.040 in himself. So I think he really captured very neatly that you fight for a larger ideal, in his case,

00:14:56.000 freedom. He started out as already was captured and kind of forced into slavery in the gladiatorial

00:15:03.080 games. So he fought for freedom, both for himself and rallied others to his cause. And when that was

00:15:12.620 threatened, as it was immediately, by counterattacks and his possible destruction, you know, he fought

00:15:22.720 for it. He fought for himself with all that he had, tactical savvy, raw guts, and again, all in the

00:15:30.540 service of that larger ideal of freedom. And that's a warrior. I mean, I think that really sums up what a

00:15:37.560 warrior is.

00:15:39.040 So we've talked about the what of the warrior. They fight for some ideal. Let's talk about those ideals.

00:15:45.200 That's like the why of the warrior. How do you decide which ideals are worth fighting for? Right?

00:15:52.640 Because that gets tricky, right? Because, you know, everyone thinks everyone, like it's that phrase,

00:15:56.520 everyone's a hero in their own brain or their own mind. Yeah. So they might think they're fighting for

00:16:01.060 a great cause, but it might not be. It can get pretty tricky at times. I would say we,

00:16:09.820 there are some views that are obviously kind of off. If you're fighting for the right to

00:16:20.980 exterminate a defenseless minority, it seems a wild set of rationalizations that would 0.96

00:16:29.800 justify that in your own mind, where you're still calling yourself a warrior, somebody who's fighting

00:16:37.880 for some worthy cause. Does that make sense so far? Yeah, that makes sense so far.

00:16:42.700 Yeah. So while I, I think you're right, there's, there are issues that are debatable around the

00:16:51.100 periphery. At the core, a warrior is, is a protector. He, a warrior doesn't want to fight or kill the

00:17:01.540 defenseless or the innocent to the extent that a warrior wants to fight. He wants to fight bad guys,

00:17:07.520 or he wants to fight another warrior. So at core, I think we start there in trying to figure out

00:17:16.760 what it is that the ideals toward which warrior should strive. Does that sort of answer the

00:17:23.660 question at least in a preliminary way? Yeah. In a preliminary way. Sure. Well,

00:17:27.220 let's get, I think examples are useful, like Plutarch, right? That's why I love Plutarch. He gives

00:17:31.560 actual examples and you do this in your book. You talk about the Persian war as sort of a case study

00:17:36.980 in exploring the why of the warriors. What can the Persian war teach us about that?

00:17:41.540 So the Persian war, I think is instructive in this sense. It was, it was a conflict between

00:17:50.060 two alternative visions, right? Of society. One represented by Xerxes was essentially planned,

00:17:59.820 and despotic, surrounded by vassal colonies, and Greece, which was really a series of separate

00:18:10.300 nations, separate city-states, each inclined often to spar with the other, each very jealous about

00:18:18.480 guarding its independence, and with at least a rudimentary respect for freedom.

00:18:23.820 freedom. So when Xerxes invaded Greece to make it yet another vassal state, the Greeks, or at least some 0.58

00:18:35.660 of them, formed a confederation to stand up against that attack and maintain their freedom and their

00:18:44.400 independence. The, one of the most dramatic battles of that conflict was the 300 at Thermopylae,

00:18:53.300 they, there was a small group of Spartans for religious reasons. Spartan didn't enter fully

00:19:01.860 into the war, at least not at that time. And so a small group of 300 led by their, a king, Leonidas,

00:19:11.260 took up a position at a terrain that was tactically advantageous to them, Thermopylae, the hot gates,

00:19:17.420 right? It was narrow. And so allowed them to manage and control of the conflict, even though

00:19:25.980 the Persian army was enormous, far larger, of course, than the 300-some estimates, like from Herodotus,

00:19:35.640 say that there was a million of them. That might be an exaggeration, but in any case,

00:19:39.800 there were many, many more than the 300 Spartans. For several days, the Spartans were able to defy and

00:19:50.700 defeat the Persian army and gave time for the Greek Confederation to set themselves up both at sea

00:20:00.560 and on land. And it was their sacrifice that allowed the battles at Salamis and Plataea to go

00:20:12.740 the way of the Greeks. The Spartans were defeated ultimately, I think almost exclusively because they 0.99

00:20:19.540 were betrayed by one of their own and they ended up getting flanked by the Persians. But they all died 0.98

00:20:25.720 to a man. And again, they died in the service of freedom. They didn't want to function as yet

00:20:32.200 another vassal state in the enormous empire of Persia. That's a worthy ideal to fight for. 1.00

00:20:40.840 Right. Yeah.

00:20:41.240 And yeah, so I think the Spartan 300 are great examples of that.

00:20:45.780 Yeah. And even then, it gets tricky, right? Because if I remember from my classical history,

00:20:51.600 the Persian emperors, yeah, they'd come in, they'd make these states, let's call them,

00:20:57.980 they weren't states, but like these city states, part of their kingdom, and they'd be vassal and

00:21:02.380 had to pay taxes. But other than that, they were pretty lenient. They let them continue to worship 0.50

00:21:06.240 their own gods, kind of function in their own culture. They didn't impose Persian culture on them.

00:21:12.720 And so it'd be like, yeah, that sounds not so bad, right? Like, you know, they just kind of leave us

00:21:17.000 alone and give us some protection maybe, but there's always a price. And that price is always

00:21:24.180 that freedom. And the Greeks weren't willing to pay that price.

00:21:27.340 That's right. The Greeks were, at that time, fifth century Greeks were an unruly lot. I think that was 1.00

00:21:36.960 their great virtue. And part of what makes them intellectually so interesting, the advancement

00:21:46.840 in philosophy, mathematics, geometry, inquiry generally was really potent in at least some

00:21:56.920 of the cultures. Interestingly enough, I mean, you're right, history is kind of sloppy, not so

00:22:02.560 much in Sparta. Despite their bravery at Thermopylae, the Spartans were not generally a really inquisitive

00:22:10.300 lot, like the Athenians. And in fact, I'll go further and say that the Spartans in general were much more

00:22:19.660 noble in defeat than they were in victory. The Spartans, after all, had a whole system of

00:22:27.260 helitry, if you remember any of that. It was in many ways a slave society itself. So history looked as

00:22:35.660 always more sloppy maybe than we'd like. But on the whole, on the whole, when you compare the Persian

00:22:43.340 Empire at the time under Xerxes, there was a definite overlord at its center. He did see himself

00:22:50.720 as a god. He wasn't alone in that, but he did see himself as a god and thought that the remainder of

00:22:57.420 the world should come to heel because after all, he was a god. And on the other side, you have the Greeks 1.00

00:23:04.520 who didn't accept that, who believed in, at least some of them, in the power of individual inquiry,

00:23:13.160 the importance of freedom, democracy. And between those two, I think that the Greek approach is the

00:23:23.580 right one. And in this case, at least, it showed in battle.

00:23:28.560 Yeah. And I imagine the why of the warrior, I mean, it's something that I think someone who's not in that

00:23:33.400 position has to grapple with. They probably grapple with it all the time, whether they're a police

00:23:37.360 officer or a soldier. They sign up for a position where their job is to execute an order or execute

00:23:44.540 a law, right? But they might have to think, they might think, well, is the law just? They might go

00:23:49.420 through them, but they still have to, you know, they're in a position where they have to, that's

00:23:52.160 their job, but there's still, there's that internal struggle. Well, is this the right thing? I mean,

00:23:56.920 how do you, in your experience, or just talking to other people in that position, how, what's the

00:24:01.820 thought process that goes on there when they're trying to figure out the why of the warrior? They

00:24:06.080 might have this ideal, but on the day-to-day, they might feel like they're coming up short on it.

00:24:11.220 I think as a practical matter, most guys in law enforcement and the military have a healthy respect

00:24:20.780 for the notions of freedom and individual rights. So in the broad sense, I don't think that they

00:24:30.100 struggle at that level. But as you're getting to and pointing out, it's more on, you know,

00:24:36.580 with particular decisions and our particular policies, are they just? Now, how do you navigate

00:24:43.680 that? It's a good question. I think you, you never want to forget your humanity, right? And you always

00:24:55.100 want to remember that in the end, you're there to protect, right? In the broader sense, the defenseless,

00:25:03.920 the innocent, those who aren't really in a position to defend themselves. And so if you start to

00:25:11.620 veer towards, look, I'm just sort of doing this by the numbers and for the numbers, if I can put it

00:25:20.200 that way, my, or to be specific about it, my boss or executive management wants X number of criminal

00:25:29.360 court summonses issued per month or X number of arrests. And so, you know, I'm just going to do it,

00:25:35.900 even though discretion under other circumstances would press me to probably give a break in a lot

00:25:44.600 of these cases. Otherwise, that's when you start veering into really losing a sense of yourself.

00:25:52.140 And that is a problem in bureaucracies where performance is so commonly measured quantitatively.

00:26:03.760 It's that, to borrow a phrase from Jerry Muller, the tyranny of metrics. But when you start thinking

00:26:11.940 sort of almost exclusively in terms of numbers, you're going wrong. You want to think more

00:26:19.400 qualitatively about what it is that you do, because if you don't, you kind of sap the nobility from the

00:26:27.800 enterprise.

00:26:28.420 No, that makes sense. It's very Aristotelian, right? Where, you know, it's the meat that you're

00:26:35.360 trying, it's like using your, what do you call it, phronesis, your practical wisdom to figure out

00:26:40.320 what the right thing to do in the right, at the right time for the right reasons.

00:26:44.380 To be sure. Yeah, to be sure. And like I said, one, one tell is this tendency nowadays to kind of

00:26:57.580 quantify everything and think that you've summed up the person or the world by, by doing that.

00:27:05.760 policing, and I would say the military too, has always been more art than science. Don't get me

00:27:16.540 wrong, science plays a role in both professions. But it's always been more art than science,

00:27:24.480 because after all, in the end, it's about human relationships and how you navigate those

00:27:30.620 under extreme circumstances, to be sure. But nevertheless, they're human relationships. And

00:27:35.840 they, in the end, human relationships can't be finally quantified, if that makes sense.

00:27:42.920 That makes sense. Facebook thinks you can quantify relationships, but that's not how it works in

00:27:47.920 real life. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors. And now back to the show.

00:27:53.280 Yeah. Well, so let's kind of carry on this idea about the tension between a warrior and bureaucracy.

00:27:59.740 Yeah. We had a guest on a couple of weeks ago, talking about the worth of war, and he talks about

00:28:04.840 all the innovations that have come from warfare. And one of them is bureaucracy. We got bureaucracy

00:28:10.160 from to wage war more efficiently. So there's a role for bureaucracy is that makes things more

00:28:14.660 efficient, make sure things get done. But as you said, it's a double-edged sword, and it can sort of

00:28:21.700 muck things up and make things harder on those sort of day-to-day questions. So in the book,

00:28:28.040 you talk about there's a dichotomy between leaders and bureaucrats. How do you, what's the difference

00:28:33.120 between the two? A leader is really all about vision. He looks to articulate a vision for those

00:28:41.980 who follow him, subordinates, even peers, and sometimes, frankly, even supervisors. And a leader

00:28:49.980 looks to define a common sense of purpose and to inspire his guys to act in accordance with the best

00:29:01.420 within them. He's looking to bring out the best in his guys and the best in himself. Again, that's a

00:29:06.880 qualitative endeavor, right? Going back to that whole quality quantity dichotomy that we briefly

00:29:14.480 talked about before. But I'd say at root, and perhaps most importantly, in practice, the leader

00:29:24.080 treats his men as men. Now contrast that with the bureaucrat who concerns himself primarily with

00:29:32.060 securing his status within an organization, particularly the executive managers. The idol

00:29:39.760 that a functionary kind of worships is moving up promotion. And so the art that he learns is not so

00:29:50.700 much how to bring out the best within the guys that you work with, but rather manipulation, politicking,

00:29:59.740 careerism. And he can't inspire people because, among other things, the bureaucrat doesn't generally

00:30:11.760 share glory, doesn't accept blame. One thing that you'll almost never hear from a bureaucrat is,

00:30:20.660 that's my fault. That one's on me. It's my responsibility. But you will hear that regularly

00:30:26.640 from a leader. So the bureaucrat, especially a certain kind of bureaucrat, is really concerned

00:30:34.280 with propelling himself forward within a bureaucracy. So among other things, what the bureaucrat has to

00:30:43.460 master is process, protocol, paperwork, procedure. And in many ways, these define the limits of his world.

00:30:54.480 Whether the process, the paperwork, the procedural minutiae serve any meaningful purpose,

00:31:02.780 it's a question that a functionary never really raises. And in fact, functionaries don't question,

00:31:12.460 period, because they understand implicitly, if nothing else, that pushing upward in a bureaucracy means

00:31:20.260 not upsetting the status quo and not rocking the boat. The leader is the opposite, right? He questions

00:31:27.580 when it makes sense. He challenges when he needs to. He speaks out because he's motivated by a larger sense

00:31:36.060 of right and wrong for himself, for his guys, and for the organization too, for that matter.

00:31:41.800 So I think those are kind of the critically different portraits of the leader and the bureaucrat.

00:31:49.980 I wonder, I'm actually curious about the guy that you spoke to about the development of bureaucracy.

00:32:00.140 And I wonder whether it's really as efficient as we think. When I think of bureaucracy sometimes,

00:32:06.140 and I just kind of run through a Rolodex of concretes, I think of experiences that I had at,

00:32:13.880 I don't know, the DMV or the post office, and they don't seem all that efficient.

00:32:21.980 And frankly, I'll say even having been in the NYPD for 20 years, so I'm kind of sort of intimately

00:32:28.180 familiar with that bureaucracy. Efficiency isn't a word that I would attach to the organization,

00:32:37.300 but I wonder if maybe he wasn't talking about the initial stages of development of bureaucracies

00:32:43.640 in military contexts. Yeah, I think he's talking more about that. There's actually some semblance

00:32:49.780 of organization that went on that didn't exist before. As you were talking, describing the difference

00:32:54.880 between a bureaucrat and a leader, and you're describing a bureaucrat, the thought that came

00:32:58.420 to mind was that it's really easy to become a bureaucrat, right? Because as you said, you have

00:33:07.780 a system, you know exactly what you're supposed to do. That's comforting, right? So you do that.

00:33:14.160 So I can see why, I mean, a lot of people, a lot of times we feel like, oh, I would never become a

00:33:19.840 bureaucrat. But like, I think our tendency would be like, yeah, that's nice, because I got someone,

00:33:24.940 I got something to tell me exactly what to do each and every day. And I don't have to think

00:33:28.380 at all. That's right. You're exactly right. The comfort of bureaucracy is that you never really

00:33:36.220 have to raise larger questions for yourself. Your role is entirely defined by procedure and

00:33:44.520 protocol. Hannah Arendt made a really interesting point in regards to this in her book on Eichmann,

00:33:53.120 where she said, look, in some ways, we want to see a figure like Eichmann as this deeply and

00:34:02.500 obviously evil Darth Vader, Satan-like character. But the truth is, he was the perfect bureaucrat. I mean,

00:34:11.600 all he was really doing was pushing paper from one side of the desk to the other, because that's what

00:34:18.620 the bureaucracy defined his role as. The fact that the papers involved transporting defenseless people

00:34:29.060 to gas chambers never really fundamentally entered his thinking. He was all about his role within the

00:34:37.540 bureaucracy. But of course, that's one of the problems with bureaucracy. It is comforting in

00:34:45.640 some sense. It is easy. But what it takes from you is that very human impulse to question, but am I doing

00:34:55.520 the right thing? And so that's the deep problem with bureaucracy. And it certainly asserts itself in,

00:35:03.520 I think, many, many different organizations, but certainly law enforcement and military organizations.

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00:37:30.060 who are striving to be leaders because on the one hand, they want a question and they want to make

00:37:35.060 sure they're doing the right thing. But the other hand, you have to sort of play the game. If you just

00:37:39.420 run roughshod and you just become belligerent and say, you guys are idiots, you're doing everything 1.00

00:37:45.240 wrong. Like no one's going to listen to you, right? They'll get kicked out or they'll just 1.00

00:37:49.540 ignored. So how, and maybe in your own experience or seeing the experience of other people in law

00:37:55.040 enforcement or the military, how do they balance that tension of being a leader, but also having

00:38:01.080 to sort of play the game so people actually pay attention to them? Does that make sense?

00:38:05.220 Well, let me start by saying, frankly, a lot of them didn't. Leadership within law enforcement

00:38:12.260 organizations among executive management, I don't think that it's common where you would expect to

00:38:18.360 see it, by the way, other things being equal, but it's not that common. And it's not common for

00:38:25.340 precisely the reason that you cite. If you don't, as it were, play the game, if you cast yourself as

00:38:35.120 somebody who's going to question and rock the boat, you're not going to be pushed forward in

00:38:42.300 the bureaucracy. Bureaucracy loves its own status quo. So if you're all about change and trying to make

00:38:48.860 things better and trying to improve morale, for example, you're going to have a hard go getting

00:38:57.380 pushed up in the bureaucracy. It's what's required, certainly more than questioning and what is

00:39:05.960 admired by the bureaucracy more than challenging is how could I push forward and protect the agency?

00:39:16.340 I had an interesting conversation once with a very high ranking chief in the NYPD. He's still there.

00:39:24.260 His name's not important. But it was during the whole controversy with Stop Question and Frisk,

00:39:33.600 the court case was underway. And so I was chatting with him about it. And so I said,

00:39:43.140 the case doesn't seem to be going well for the agency. And look, maybe that's right. You know,

00:39:50.300 it's not very clear that the Stop Question and Frisk policy was ever a great approach to getting guns

00:39:57.240 off the street. That is to say, once again, quantity over quality. But in any case, we could talk more

00:40:03.700 about that if you want. But I really want to actually just highlight the nature of the discussion I had

00:40:09.760 with this chief. And so he said, yeah, well, look, hopefully the court case does go well for the

00:40:19.620 agency. And I said to him at one point, but look, maybe that's what we need. You know, what if we were

00:40:28.320 wrong about the whole approach to Stop Question and Frisk? And he stopped for a minute and just kind of

00:40:36.160 stared, I'm tempted to say somewhat vacantly at me. But then with a certain amount of edginess,

00:40:42.720 he said, well, look, in the end, you got to defend the department, don't you? And I said,

00:40:51.620 but what if the department's wrong? And I tell you, that was really the last discussion I ever had with

00:40:59.400 him. He didn't want to talk to me anymore after that. And that captures the bureaucratic mentality

00:41:08.920 at its most dysfunctional core. You just don't question whether the policy that you're implementing

00:41:19.820 really makes sense, whether it really serves a larger mission, whether it's the right thing to do

00:41:28.280 or not. It's really just about defending the agency or the bureaucracy or the organization,

00:41:35.820 just because that becomes your whole world. So I might've gone a little far afield in tackling the

00:41:43.580 question that you answered, Brett, but it's difficult to be a leader and to be an executive manager

00:41:56.100 in a large bureaucracy, at least as they're currently constituted. It's just not a common thing. So much

00:42:07.880 of executive management is about getting the bars and the stars. And there doesn't seem to be much

00:42:15.360 active thought beyond that. I hate to paint such a pessimistic picture of things, but I'm afraid that

00:42:23.720 it's well-grounded. So I imagine in your idea of a warrior, a warrior would be a leader, have those

00:42:32.540 traits and not a bureaucrat, correct? Sure. Because the warrior is driven by, or should be driven by,

00:42:41.800 a sense of right and wrong. A warrior would never be disinclined to question. That doesn't mean

00:42:50.200 he's questioning his every single action. I mean, when you've got to fight, you've got to fight. And

00:42:55.880 most of the time it's pretty clear when you have to do that. But there's a whole series of peripheral

00:43:02.780 issues that as an independent actor who's striving towards the best within himself and towards larger

00:43:13.660 ideals, he, yeah, he would tend to question and to challenge when that's necessary. So I think the rudiments

00:43:23.700 of leadership kind of fall within every warrior, not necessarily every warrior is a leader, but all the

00:43:29.960 rudiments of solid leadership, I think are within the warrior. And that's things like self-possession, the

00:43:42.320 willingness to grow, the willingness to ask whether at any point I'm doing the right thing, you know,

00:43:50.860 whether our sense of purpose has gotten lost along the way somewhere. So yes, I would say

00:43:58.660 leadership certainly comes from those who dedicate themselves to developing the art of the warrior.

00:44:06.540 And I don't think that you can develop into a leader if you're mired in process and protocol and

00:44:16.560 paperwork and procedures, you know, you know, the, uh, the, the, the real center of most larger

00:44:25.140 organizations. So we've been talking about the ideals of a warrior, uh, what makes a warrior, but we

00:44:30.720 haven't hit on the actions of a warrior because they have these ideals that they fight for that. So

00:44:35.820 that means they have to use violence sometimes. And you call this the, the central, the central

00:44:41.720 riddle of the warrior, right? That to fight violence, you have to use violence. Why is that the central

00:44:47.960 riddle?

00:44:48.780 So there's a common belief that violence begets violence, right? And so if the warrior uses violence

00:45:00.480 and surely he does, doesn't that merely perpetuate something that's not at all desirable, that is to

00:45:10.640 say in using violence, you merely beget further violence. So the warrior is really just a kind of

00:45:19.020 taking up his appointed role in this perpetual dance that never ends. So it is a riddle and it's a

00:45:30.040 challenge that's, that's worth thinking about and answering. I would say that historically, as a general

00:45:40.140 principle, it's not true that violence necessarily begets violence. I'll give you a specific example that

00:45:49.920 may be instructive. Let's take the conflict between primarily the United States and Japan during

00:45:59.540 World War II. So fighting in the Pacific was ferocious during that conflict and Imperial Japan

00:46:08.980 had said quite explicitly that they were willing to fight to the last man rather than surrender.

00:46:17.700 And partly as a result of that, Truman ended up okaying the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan.

00:46:25.900 And it wrought, obviously, horrible devastation. After that, the Japanese did surrender. And 0.84

00:46:36.000 so what happened as a result of that? The Japanese rejected the former philosophy that kind of pushed

00:46:46.560 them into alliances with the other Axis powers. They rebuilt. They reorganized.

00:46:55.000 They became an extraordinary economic power. And at this point, geopolitically,

00:47:03.600 Japan and the United States are fast allies and have been for decades. And I don't think that any

00:47:11.280 sensible person worries that Japan is secretly seething with rage, waiting for a moment to wreak vengeance 0.63

00:47:21.400 on us. So, I mean, it's instructive. We dropped atomic bombs on Japan. That didn't beget further 0.93

00:47:29.680 violence. In fact, there has been, like I said, decades of peace between the two countries since.

00:47:38.120 And let me try to bring it down to an even more individual level. When your mom or your dad or both

00:47:46.520 told you stand up to the bully, did they tell you that because they thought that standing up to him,

00:47:55.660 perhaps fighting him, would beget more violence? The answer is surely no. They gave you that advice

00:48:04.020 because, first of all, you should be willing to defend yourself. You should be willing to stand up for

00:48:11.880 yourself or you're going to be a doormat your whole life. And more than that, what they

00:48:17.880 at least intuitively recognized in giving you that advice is that on the whole, the bully will back

00:48:26.400 down if you confront him forcibly. And in fact, if you have to fight a bully, even if you lose,

00:48:33.900 it's unlikely that he's going to target you again because bullies are looking to target or attack

00:48:41.860 what they think is weakness and not strength. So, historically and logically, I don't think that

00:48:51.200 there's any real reason to accept the premise that violence necessarily begets violence. Now,

00:48:58.000 you could give me examples of instances in which it has actually the armistice at the end of World

00:49:05.900 War I is a good example of a kind of strategically ineffective of violence that ultimately led to 0.64

00:49:13.880 a worse violence. But in any case, the larger point is violence doesn't necessarily beget violence.

00:49:20.980 Sometimes violence and decisive violence is the only way to stop an initiated act of violence.

00:49:30.760 And so that's why it's just part of the necessary makeup of the warrior professions that they be

00:49:38.180 skilled at the use of violence. Violence is a tool in the end. In itself, it's neither good nor bad,

00:49:47.320 right? I mean, it's amply attested in nature. As I pointed out in the book, if a lion or a pride of

00:49:58.320 lions attack a wildebeest, rip out its throat and consume it, that's certainly violent. But it would

00:50:05.600 be silly to say that it was a good or a bad thing for the lion to do in moral terms. It's just silly, 0.95

00:50:13.000 right? So violence in itself is neither good nor bad. It's when we're talking about human action

00:50:20.880 and there's choice involved, that's when you can talk about good or bad. And intention and context

00:50:28.100 are critically important in figuring out whether a particular act of violence is good or bad.

00:50:34.780 We could talk some more about that if you want, but I've probably droned on a bit too long.

00:50:39.660 Well, so violence is sometimes the answer. You have this great line in your book that

00:50:46.400 a warrior has to be savage without becoming a savage. I mean, I imagine that's hard. There's

00:50:53.800 that line from Nietzsche, like be careful when you go look for monsters because you'll become a monster

00:50:59.580 too. So how does that look like in the life of a warrior or a law enforcement, military guy who,

00:51:06.040 someone who has to use violence and not let that, I don't know, degrade them where they start to

00:51:12.160 like it and enjoy it and they become savage, like you say?

00:51:16.320 Right. Or sure. The, so you want your warriors to fight savagely when that's necessary. And I'll be

00:51:27.160 concrete about it again, because I think that's always helpful and tackling an issue or a question.

00:51:34.200 If, let's start with something in law enforcement, say, if a pedophile attacks a child, that's certainly

00:51:47.900 an act of evil. And you want a cop, if he comes on that scene, to use violence to stop that act of

00:52:00.340 evil, that initiated act of violence. Well, by the way, it really could be anybody, right? Civilian or

00:52:06.800 anybody. You're certainly justified in using violence to stop the pedophile from attacking

00:52:11.580 the child. And let's shift to a military context. If the goal of a special operations unit is to

00:52:23.540 take a town that has strategic value or where there's munitions stored or anything like that,

00:52:32.000 they should fight savagely to achieve that end. But once the objective is achieved, there is no real

00:52:41.420 justification for then raping and assaulting and beating up the villagers, right? Or in the case of,

00:52:53.540 law enforcement, once somebody is managed and brought under control, there's no value in and no

00:53:05.360 justification for then getting in extra beatings on the person. Because if you do that, if you do that,

00:53:15.460 you then become the very thing that you exist to fight against. You've now shifted over into instead

00:53:25.340 of fighting savages, you've become a savage yourself. So that internal contradiction, right,

00:53:34.400 is something that you would look to avoid, right?

00:53:39.120 Uh, I mean, so somebody, I guess the question is like, how do you avoid that? Is it just being

00:53:46.380 self-aware? Is it talking with your comrades about this? What, what is it that keeps you from going

00:53:53.840 over to becoming a savage?

00:53:55.300 I think self-awareness is critically important in that, as in all things. So yes, self-awareness is a

00:54:03.760 critical first step. And, you know, consistently sort of questioning yourself, checking your premises,

00:54:12.660 making sure you remember your mission and the purpose for which you exist professionally,

00:54:18.720 talking to, and having a common sense of purpose with other warriors, military law enforcement,

00:54:28.680 freedom fighters for that matter, that also would tend to keep you grounded. It is, it is a difficult

00:54:36.500 thing, milling around the precincts of violence as a matter of professional obligation. And it is

00:54:44.940 possible. And some guys do succumb to, oh, that, uh, that tendency to just a wallow in the violence.

00:54:56.400 That's, that's all they come to know. But my sense of it is those guys might, the guys who do sort of fall

00:55:05.220 into that trap always did have a kind of tendency towards, towards thuggery. I mean, the guys who really

00:55:13.580 respect the oath that they take to protect the constitution and in our country, in any case,

00:55:21.040 to protect the constitution and the rights of individuals and, and, you know, protect the

00:55:27.340 freedom for people to, to everything, including protest against you. Those guys tend to be okay.

00:55:36.640 I think it's the guys who, who always did have a little bit of a tendency and a taste for violence

00:55:43.900 as such that fall into the, the, the trap of, of, of just wallowing in it and kind of yielding to it.

00:55:53.380 So we've been talking a lot about law enforcement, military. I know we have a lot of LEOs and military

00:55:59.540 guys listening to the podcast, but what about civilians? What, why do you think it's important

00:56:03.060 for civilians to understand what you're trying to tackle here with your, with your book,

00:56:08.240 Warrior's Manifesto? I think there's a couple of reasons and, and I think it, it certainly has a

00:56:14.700 value for any civilians who would be interested in, in reading it and kind of delving into the topics

00:56:23.100 that I delve into. Part of it is just that, look, there's lots of cops and lots of soldiers out there.

00:56:30.800 We all know at least one, right? And usually know at least one pretty well. And so if you do want to

00:56:39.560 have a sense of what it means to take on the obligations of the warrior in a professional

00:56:46.640 setting, I think this book will get you on, on your way towards that. But there, I think maybe is

00:56:54.560 even a deeper reason and might be a deeper appeal for civilians, those who aren't necessarily in law

00:57:02.280 enforcement or in the military. And that's this, you may meet a moment in the course of your life

00:57:10.280 where you may have to use violence, where you may have to protect yourself, where you may have to

00:57:19.440 protect somebody else, a loved one, a friend, or even a stranger for that matter. And in that moment,

00:57:28.200 you are a warrior. And so to kind of gain some understanding of, of what ultimately that moment

00:57:38.900 means, hopefully it's not much more than a moment or two, but to gain some understanding of what that

00:57:47.120 moment means, I kind of, to think deeply about it. You know, why did I, I step up? Why was it

00:57:54.320 important for me to take action in, in this moment? I think you'll, you'll get at least some answer from,

00:58:04.900 from the book, right? Anything can happen. And, you know, even as a civilian,

00:58:11.920 you should be prepared and you should think about how it is that you want to act in a situation that

00:58:21.440 calls for potentially violence, but certainly a firm stand, if nothing else. In fact, the first

00:58:29.740 section of the book, the spirit of the warrior is, is really directed towards civilians. So I think

00:58:38.220 there's some, some value in, in those two things for civilians.

00:58:43.560 Well, Daniel, this has been a good conversation. Besides the book, is there someplace people can go

00:58:47.360 to learn more about your work?

00:58:48.660 I've written some articles. The Warriors Manifesto is the only book that I have written thus far,

00:58:53.740 but I've written some articles. They are for the most part about topics in law enforcement.

00:59:00.980 I've written some articles on the active shooter phenomenon. I've written some articles on case law

00:59:09.660 and some, some of the more notorious cases involving police shootings. I think probably the most convenient

00:59:18.960 way for anybody to access that is at our website. It's www.AriesTactics.com. A-R-E-S-T-A-C-T-I-C-S.com.

00:59:33.120 And they might, they might find some value in those articles.

00:59:36.820 It does. Well, Daniel, thanks for coming on. It's been a good conversation.

00:59:38.900 Right. Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

00:59:40.880 My guest today was Daniel Modell. He's the author of the book,

00:59:43.460 Warrior's Manifesto. It's available on amazon.com. Also check out our show notes at

00:59:47.360 aom.is slash warriors manifesto where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper

00:59:51.660 into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For

01:00:08.140 more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at

01:00:11.500 artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoyed the podcast, got something out of it, I'd appreciate it if you

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01:00:26.560 this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

01:00:45.700 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - October 24, 2018

#452： The Warrior's Manifesto

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