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The Warrior's Manifesto, written by Daniel Modell and published by YMAA Publication Center, is a brief, systematic apologia of the need for and role of the warrior in society--and centrally of those who choose to protect and defend under moral and legal oath.

The book is divided into seven sections: The Spirit of the Warrior; Prologue; The What of the Warrior; The Why of the Warrior; The Way of the Warrior; The Best of the Warrior and the Bane of the Warrior: The Leader and the Bureaucrat; and Epilogue.

Prologue
The Prologue frames the call of society to its warriors and the layered meaning inherent in the choice to heed that call:

"Society makes a peculiar offer to its citizenry: we have a job, if you want it. Here it is.

You must stand between the predators and the innocents of the world and hold the line with your blood.

Pay is modest—and rendered grudgingly.

You will labor across hours, long and ungodly, that will test the limits of exhaustion and tedium.

Family will suffer your absence. You will miss many meaningful moments.

You will find yourself shipped to places far away, forbidding, forgotten or assigned to patrol streets savaged by violence, poverty, madness. Your presence will not be welcomed.

You will see tragedy, hopelessness and evil at depths that will rend your soul. You will be expected somehow, some way, to keep yourself whole as you drown in these so that you may confront them again the next day.

You will be called filthy names. In the course of your duties, you will be attacked, targeted, challenged. Some will try to kill you. They may succeed.

The antipathy of the press and the animosity of the public will flank you without end until your final tour of duty. Your every action, every decision, every remark will be the subject of unremitting—and unforgiving—scrutiny.

Politicians will exploit you—for good and ill—and sacrifice you to expediency once the exploitation is done.

Your mistakes, though honest, will never be forgiven—ever.

You will save many but the one you lose will haunt you until your dying day. You will form bonds of brotherhood with your comrades, wordless in their abiding depth, forged in the rough bravery that circumstance compels. You will bury many of those brothers.

You will begin each day knowing that you may never see another.

This is the job that society offers its citizenry. Do you want it?

For most, the answer is an obvious one: no. But for a few, the answer is just as obvious: yes.

This is for the few who answer yes."

The What of the Warrior
The What of the Warrior demonstrates the inadequacy of traditional answers to the question: what is a warrior?

Through a dialectic of example and counter-example, the chapter purports to show that standard dogmas either overdefine or underdefine the warrior. The warrior cannot be defined by uniform or weaponry, nor by attachment to country, deity or organization (nor by fighting for them). To say, for example, that fighting for country is a defining characteristic of the warrior would mean that "Japanese soldiers of the Axis who conquered the Chinese and hurled infants in the air to catch them on bayonets would be warriors. The 47 Ronin of Ako would not be. Fighting for country does not define the warrior." The essence of the warrior is deeper and more nuanced than that which is countenanced by tradition.

The chapter closes by exploring the history of the slave rebellion under Spartacus and the extent to which that history signals the inadequacy of traditional language in capturing the "what" of the warrior.

The Why of the Warrior
The Why of the Warrior proposes to answer the question: does civilization require warriors and, if so, why? Do they serve an objectively definable purpose? The chapter argues that blind violence in defense of prevailing orthodoxies is the purview of the brute, different in kind from fighting for ideals required by and in harmony with human nature, the purview of the warrior. Greek defiance in the teeth of Persian invasion under Xerxes provides historical illustration of the theme.

The Way of the Warrior
The Way of the Warrior explores the essential character of the warrior and critically analyzes the nature of violence, meeting the challenge that, at its core, violence is violence, evil as such, whether employed by warrior or by brute.

The themes treated in the chapter, and specifically the intersection of character, violence, justice and how they marry to shape the constitution of the warrior find expression in the rebellion of Scotland under William Wallace.

The Best of the Warrior and the Bane of the Warrior: The Leader and the Bureaucrat
The Best of the Warrior and the Bane of the Warrior: The Leader and the Bureaucrat explores the concept of leadership in and among warriors. It argues that rank is no index of leadership, that hierarchies developed by way of bureaucracy are either irrelevant to or undermine a vibrant model of leadership and that functionaries represent a deadly virus infecting the warrior professions. The chapter examines the phenomenon of toxic command and how the phenomenon grows and lives parasitically within bureaucratic institutions as such.

The uncompromising and singular vision of Dan Daly and Jonathan Netanyahu illustrate what leadership might and ought to be.