"A Warrior's Manifesto" by Daniel Modell. A Review

The Warriors Manifesto: Ideals for Those Who Protect and Defend by Daniel Modell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

 Warriors show up in different sizes and classifications. Some are deployed to hot zones, surrounded by hostiles. Others are Law Enforcement Officers patrolling their areas. A few are Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) standing in, and up, for those who have no voice. They could be lawyers, doctors, teachers, parents, or concerned citizens. When the circumstance calls for action and determination, the warrior becomes manifest. Yet, according to Daniel Modell, 20 year NYPD veteran, CEO of Ares Tactical and Emergency Management Solutions and an adjunct professor at the State University of New York-FIT, in his brand-new 96 page softback, “The Warrior’s Manifesto: Ideals for Those Who Protect and Defend,” there is a clear line between the warrior and the brute. And it is this clear line that works its way through the whole manual.

Modell addresses the what, why and way of the warrior in the first three chapters; while the final section teases out the difference between leaders and bureaucrats. Most of the material interacts with Thomas Hobbes, concentrating on freedom and the “will to alliance”. The author similarly seeks to engage with right and wrong, and lead the reader away from relativism. The whole book is concerned with violence and its place in a world where force is misused and misapplied: “Defending the good necessitates violence so long as there are those who would initiate violence…so long as predators threaten life, protectors of life must answer with the only thing known to stop violence: violence…Violence is his tool; justice is his goal” (42-3). Illustrative tales are rehearsed throughout, as examples of the author’s point.

In many ways a Hobbesian sense of liberty as an absolute good, runs over most of the earlier pages (I also seemed to pick up Lock and Rand in the shadows, though they were never quoted). This brings the author to assert that the “life of the individual citizen is the fountainhead of political value…Liberty is the political expression of the value of each life” (21). And yet Modell’s idea affirms that there is absolute good and justice, rather than the utilitarian and pragmatic kind. On the philosophical side of things, the author pleasantly surprised me by not ending up where I thought he was headed.

“The Warrior’s Manifesto” is not for the faint of heart, those who think we can bring John Lennon’s “Imagine” world into existence in the here and now. It is for those who recognize that evil, despotism, tyranny, injustice, ruthlessness, and violence are in our broken world, and know that they are called defend the good. And to those men and women I highly recommend this book.

My thanks to YMAA who sent me this book at my request, no strings attached. The comments in this review are all my own, and the way I see it.

You can purchase a copy here: "A Warrior's Manifesto"

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