Hubris and the End of Empire

The statue of Arminius stands as a reminder of the hubris of empire and the naive faith of all empire builders in ‘universal’ ideals.

By Francis Marion

Whenever I hear someone tell me about how wonderful forced multiculturalism is I am reminded of the story of the Roman soldier Arminius.

Arminius was born in Germany around 18 BC and was the son of the Cheruscan chief Segimerus. At the time it was common for the Romans to abscond with the children of the tribal leaders they met. The purpose being not only to exert control over the tribe but to eventually integrate them into Roman society itself.

It was thought that if the children were taken at a young age and given Roman education, culture, and military training that in time they would become Romans. Eventually, they would be given positions within Roman society in an attempt to bind the competing cultures and people together and to solidify the bonds required to grow the empire geographically and demographically.

But things didn’t always work out quite the way the Romans planned.

The story of Arminius is a prime example. To be brief, the son of the German chieftain was trained, cultured and raised to be a Roman officer. But he never forgot who and what he was.

A lifetime of ‘education’ and ‘integration’ failed to change who Arminius was at his core, a German, and in the end, it cost the Roman empire dearly.

In AD 9 Arminius, serving as an officer under Publius Quinctilius Varus, convinced the Roman general to march three legions of his men and their support through the Teutoburg forest to quell a supposed uprising deep within German territory.

But it was a trap laid by Arminius himself. His native people, along with five other Germanic tribes laid in wait for the legions in the heart of the forest. With his forces stretched out in a thin line for miles bordered by heavy woods on either side of the trail in some places and by marsh in others, Varus’ legions were easy pickings for the German warriors. In a series of attacks lasting approximately three days, the Germans destroyed all three legions, sending over twenty thousand Roman men to their death.

The Roman’s mistake, of course, was not in trusting Arminius, but in believing they could take the sons of their enemy and convert them into their friends and allies simply by immersing them in the Roman culture.

The decision by the Romans to try and integrate an outwardly hostile people into their own ranks was one of the first times in recorded history that we can clearly see what happens when empires become large, metropolitan and lacking in common sense. They lose sight of human nature and begin to believe they can transcend things such as petty tribal differences.

Apparently, no one thought to question the program or to consider possible problems that might arise as a result. Three Roman legions paid the price for that hubris. Today we pay our own.

Pro “Canadian Values” Anti-Liberal Wolf Pack Meme Circulating Via Twitter

I’m not a joiner but I am a capable observer. The key to being a good observer is, to be honest with yourself, to acknowledge reality, to shelve your preferences and biases as best you can and of course to ask questions.

So a few weeks ago when a guy came into my business with a ‘Three Percenters‘ sweater on, I did just that. For my American readers, this will seem innocuous and irrelevant. Except the scene did not play out in America, but rather in the Vancouver region of British Columbia. I asked the gentleman about his shirt and he informed me the club was relatively new in BC, with a few hundred members and was currently setting up its administrative structure throughout the province.

I asked him if they were affiliated with the American club, to which he responded “loosely” (whatever that means) and that they were more affiliated with the “Alberta chapter”. I responded by telling him I did not know such a thing existed and he told me that that it did and that the Alberta chapter had “thousands” of members, although he would not elaborate further on its size or composition.

I was a little surprised. I usually notice these things but the truth is I am often so busy watching what is happening in Europe and the US that I sometimes miss what is going on in my own back yard. So I did a little research. What I found surprised me. There is a number of what the CBC calls “Far Right” groups in Canada and their numbers, well, they’re substantial by our standards.

The largest that I have found so far is actually a Quebec-based group called La Meute, or in English “The Wolf Pack”. La Meute is a political movement, trying to avoid becoming a party, whose primary focus is on preserving French European values and creating awareness of the danger of allowing mass Muslim migration into the province.

According to the CBC, the group has more than 43,000 members as of late 2016. This is not surprising. Quebec is home to some of the most ardent ‘nationalists’ in the country and the province, which in some ways is a country in and of itself, has been home to some of the more radical political movements that Canada has seen over the past one hundred years.

Other groups like “Soldiers of Odin” have appeared as well. Canada’s state-run media calls these groups “Canada’s Far Right” but a quick perusal of their Facebook page paints the picture of a service organization concerned with the safety and well-being of the general population regardless of “race, color or creed”.

I suspect the truth is somewhere in between.

Twenty years ago groups like this simply did not exist to any noticeable degree north of the forty-ninth parallel. But this has changed over the past five years as the influx of primarily Muslim migrants has gone from a slow trickle to a steady flow.

The unwillingness of the government to discuss the issue has lead to the rise of what amounts to competing tribes within our borders. When you shut down free speech and attempt to criminalize debate the result is not a more peaceful society but a more divided one.

People in the west, many of whom are reasonably well schooled by global standards, understand on at least a subliminal level the lessons that men like Arminius have taught us. Our governments have spent the past twenty years or more waging war across the middle east, mostly under false pretenses. In doing so they have killed millions, directly and indirectly, destroyed political and physical infrastructure and created a migration of human beings that shows no signs of slowing.

Subsequently, they have thrown open the borders and doors of their nations to the very people they attacked, a people whose theocratic way of life is incompatible with western liberal values. And they have called anyone who expresses concern for this policy ‘racist’ and ‘islamophobic’.

Then they and their marxist media and academic wings wonder why nationalist groups like La Meute appear from almost out of nowhere.

All of these events are predictable and understandable by historical standards. Multiculturalism is always a risky thing to the host nation. So long as immigration is slow, selective and run with a policy of assimilation and from populations of people who are not outwardly hostile or at war with the host nation it is less so. But when you bring your enemy into the fold and refuse to acknowledge that he hates you then, like the Romans, you are planting the seeds of your own destruction.

As long as we fail to acknowledge this simple truth, taught to us by thousands of years of recorded history, then groups like La Meute will continue to grow and flourish, our society will become more tribal and eventually our civilization will fail. All the name calling, the bad laws, and vitriol from the left will not serve to change this. If anything it will act as fuel for the fire.

With only 67,000 police officers in Canada and the various groups composing the CBC’s alleged “Far Right” likely exceeding this number already the wise course of action would be for everyone on both sides of the political spectrum to simply STOP. The government no longer has the resources to contain what it and its far left media and academic wings are creating.

But this will not happen. Many police officers I know will openly acknowledge to me that our country is a more dangerous place now that it has ever been. Some have expressed a desire to be retired before things truly go south. But their superiors do not listen. The politicians continue to pander to the marxists and demonize anyone that does not agree with their policy of unfettered, unfiltered immigration. Our nation is caught in the tide of a global fourth turning it can no longer avoid and as the left continues to pull to its extreme end of the spectrum I predict the currently peaceful ‘right’ will eventually respond by doing the same.

For me, at times it appears our civilization is lead by an army of Varus’s, of men blinded by their own ideology, unable to see that Arminius dwells among us, ready and willing to play the long game and always and forever, unwilling to become a Roman.

Unfortunately, their naivete and hubris will be the end of us.

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