# Liberty Movement > Grassroots Central >  War Quotes

## AZJoe

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism maybe traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.          - James Madison, Political Observations, The Most Dreaded Enemy of Liberty, April 20, 1795.

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.  - Alexis de Tocqueville.

In America they claim to love freedom but at the first imperial trumpet blow—the war to make the world safe for democracy, the Cold War to contain the red menace, or the War on Terror—they line up to get registered, inspected, searched, probed, approved, and certified.There seems to be no violation of their liberty so great that they would protest, nor any violation of anyone else’s that they wouldn’t applaud, and no expenditure of funds so extravagant that they would bother to ask questions.        - Bill Bonner, Empire of Debt, p 79 (2006). 

War is just a racket ... I believe in adequate defense at the coast line and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is ... the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. …  Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, …  Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service.  …  I obeyed the orders of higher-ups.  … I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests …  I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers … I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests… In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. " - General Smedley Butler, speech given 1933.

It is in War that the state really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest.       - Murray Rothbard, _War, Peace, and the State__._

Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.  - Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

War against an external foe is a most excellent means of distracting the population from grievances at home.  - General Douglas MacArthur.

War serves many purposes. It distracts from the malfeasance of the political classes as it busies giddy minds with foreign quarrels. It creates a symbiosis in which the media serves the state in its relentless grab for bigger budgets and greater police powers; while the state feeds the media’s need for high drama and the narcotic of fear. It provides for the deification of the state, which is then entitled to command all resources — human and material — without challenge or objection. If the state is divine, enemies and dissenters alike must be evil and dealt with accordingly.          - Charles, Goyette, Money and Markets, July 31, 2014

There is nothing conservative about war. For at least the last century war has been the herald and handmaid of socialism and state control. It is the excuse for censorship, organized lying, regulation and taxation. It is paradise for the busybody and the nark. It damages family life and wounds the Church. It is, in short, the ally of everything summed up by the ugly word ‘progress.' - Peter Hitchens.

War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.    - Ron Paul, _Conscription- The Terrible Price of War_, November 21, 2003.

When one person can initiate war, by its definition, a republic no longer exists.      - Ron Paul, _War Power Authority Should Be Returned To Congress_, March. 9, 1999

Determined as we are to avoid, if possible, wasting the energies of our people in war and destruction, we shall avoid implicating ourselves with the powers of Europe, even in support of principles which we mean to pursue. They have so many other interests different from ours, that we must avoid being entangled in them. We believe we can enforce those principles, as to ourselves, by peaceable means, now that we are likely to have our public councils detached from foreign views.        - Thomas H Jefferson, To Thomas Paine, March 1801.

Every war in American history has been the occasion for a great leap forward in the power of the State to interfere in and regulate every aspect of our lives.         - Justin Raimondo, April 3, 2017.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. - Sapientia Saeculum

"America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany.If America had stayed out of the war, all these 'isms' wouldn't today be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government - and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives." - Winston Churchill, 1936.

Naturally the common people don’t want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.  It works the same in any country. - Hermann Goering.

If Americans win a war and lose the Constitution, they will have lost everything.         - Lance Morrow, Time Magazine, March 13, 2003.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. - Ronald Reagan.

The term “isolationist” has been used, since the 1930s, as a slur by those upper-class and foreign-owned Americans who want the United States to intervene in other peoples’ wars … Non-interventionism… is, after all, the foreign policy the republic’s Founders …Because [the Founders] knew history and human nature better than any current U.S. politician, and because they also knew that history always repeats itself, the Founders believed that war brought death,deep debt and high taxes, internal divisions, and the tyranny that is the inevitable product of the war-engendered growth of excessive executive power.         - Michael Scheurer, September 8, 2016.

War is the tool through which the remaining Constitutional restraints on government and rights of the people will be destroyed. War will be the gateway through which total statism in any of its forms (fascism,socialism, communism) will be imposed upon the United States. They will rally the people’s patriotism, and give the laws Orwellian sounding names like the “Patriot Acts”, and “Freedom Laws”and cries of “America First,” but these acts will be anti-patriotic, anti-freedom, and anti-American.  At the core of all these activities will be one purpose – to impose ever increasing control over the citizens, marching toward total statism. They will suspend due process and Constitutional restrictions proclaiming“extraordinary times” require extraordinary measures. At first they will only be used against a few select atrocious and most heinous individuals with unfamiliar appearance, customs and beliefs.Initially, it will simply be a matter of degree, but the precedent is now set. Extraordinary measures solely for extraordinary individuals,but slowly and then more rapidly the extraordinary will become the ordinary until such measures  apply to anyone.  They will deride anyone who opposes these Orwellian acts as dangerously naïve, as pacifists, as isolationists, as unpatriotic, as sympathizing with“the enemy” whoever “the enemy” may be at the time, and as un-American. They will make war with vague, ever changing goals and objectives. They will make war on elusive, obscure enemies by proclaiming wars against “subversives” or “guerillas” or“militias” or “revolutionaries” or “aggressors” or“terrorists” or whatever ambiguous name they can imagine so that the “enemies” will always be elusive, never eliminated or fully defeated. There will always be more “enemies.” War will be perpetual, lasting years or even decades. War will be the final mechanism that destroys America from within; and the people will proudly cheer and defend and support the dismantling of their rights and destruction of their Constitutional Republic, all out of supposed“necessity” to support “the war.”

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## Occam's Banana

"*War is a racket.* It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most  vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one  in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." -- Major General Smedley Butler, USMC [emphasis added]

_War Is a Racket_, full text: https://archive.org/stream/WarIsARac...acket_djvu.txt

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## Occam's Banana

“Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.

Amen."
-- Mark Twain, _The War Prayer_

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## Occam's Banana

"[T]he State represents all the autocratic, arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces within a social group, it is a sort of complexus of everything most distasteful to the modern free creative spirit, the feeling for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. War is the health of the State. Only when the State is at war does the modern society function with that unity of sentiment, simple uncritical patriotic devotion, cooperation of services, which have always been the ideal of the State lover."
-- Randolph Bourne, _The State ("War Is the Health of the State")_

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## Xerographica

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. - Ronald Reagan

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. - Ronald Reagan

The Soviet Union outspends us on defense by 50 percent, an amount equal to 15 percent of their gross national product. During the campaign I was asked any number of times: If I were faced with a choice of balancing the budget or restoring our national defenses, what would I do? Every time I said, "Restore our defenses." And every time I was applauded. - Ronald Reagan

The people feeling, during the continuance of the war, the complete burden of it, would soon grow weary of it, and government, in order to humour them, would not be under the necessity of carrying it on longer than it was necessary to do so. The foresight of the heavy and unavoidable burdens of war would hinder the people from wantonly calling for it when there was no real or solid interest to fight for. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

When the pressure of the war is felt at once, without mitigation, we shall be less disposed wantonly to engage in an expensive contest, and if engaged in it, we shall be sooner disposed to get out of it, unless it be a contest for some great national interest. - David Ricardo, The Works of David Ricardo

Financing wars other than through taxation mask the apparent cost of the war and in turn undermine democratic accountability by slackening public opposition to the war. Without facing these costs, there is likely to be less domestic opposition to a given war, meaning that leaders can more easily initiate and perpetuate wars without the threat of electoral opprobrium. Thus, contemporary wars financed through borrowing submerge the costs of war and consequently benefit from considerably higher levels of public support than if they were financed through taxation, a historical mainstay of American war finance. - Gustavo Flores-Macías, Sarah Kreps, Bearing No Burden:How Wars without Apparent Costs Affect Democratic Accountability

War taxes create a palpable connection with the conflict that will give the populace pause in terms of engaging in costly military endeavors. Without such reminders, individuals have few incentives to put restraints on leaders, costly wars drag on, and the budget pressures intensify. We end up with policies such as the Sequester that elicits rare bipartisan agreement: that it was an outcome that no one wanted. - Gustavo Flores-Macías, Sarah Kreps, How todays budget woes owe their debt to the financing of recent wars

As was noted in Chapter 3, expressions of malice and/or envy no less than expressions of altruism are cheaper in the voting booth than in the market. A German voter who in 1933 cast a ballot for Hitler was able to indulge his antisemitic sentiments at much less cost than she would have borne by organizing a pogrom. - Loren Lomasky, Geoffrey Brennan, Democracy and Decision

Ralph Nader had a heuristic for war. He said that if you are going to vote for war, you should have a member of your family--a descendent, a son or grandson--on the draft. And then you can vote for war. - Nassim Taleb, Taleb on Skin in the Game

Whether our next President is the hawkish Hillary Clinton or a more unknown in Donald Trump, the next Presidents should have their constitutional bindings restored. All presidents should. The limits imposed by the Constitution were meant to be bipartisan. The Founders were very careful not to vest something as important as the decision to go to war to the whims of one person. - Rand Paul, We Must Restore Congressional Authority on Declaring War

The republican constitution, besides the purity of its origin (having sprung from the pure source of the concept of law), also gives a favorable prospect for the desired consequence, i.e., perpetual peace. The reason is this: if the consent of the citizens is required in order to decide that war should be declared (and in this constitution it cannot but be the case), nothing is more natural than that they would be very cautious in commencing such a poor game, decreeing for themselves all the calamities of war. Among the latter would be: having to fight, having to pay the costs of war from their own resources, having painfully to repair the devastation war leaves behind, and, to fill up the measure of evils, load themselves with a heavy national debt that would embitter peace itself and that can never be liquidated on account of constant wars in the future. But, on the other hand, in a constitution which is not republican, and under which the subjects are not citizens, a declaration of war is the easiest thing in the world to decide upon, because war does not require of the ruler, who is the proprietor and not a member of the state, the least sacrifice of the pleasures of his table, the chase, his country houses, his court functions, and the like. He may, therefore, resolve on war as on a pleasure party for the most trivial reasons, and with perfect indifference leave the justification which decency requires to the diplomatic corps who are ever ready to provide it. - Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace

However well balanced the general pattern of a nation's life ought to be, there must at particular times be certain disturbances of the balance at the expense of other less vital tasks. If we do not succeed in bringing the German army as rapidly as possible to the rank of premier army in the world...then Germany will be lost! - Adolf Hitler 

But had not those wars given this particular direction to so large a capital, the greater part of it would naturally have been employed in maintaining productive hands, whose labour would have replaced, with a profit, the whole value of their consumption. The value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country would have been considerably increased by it every year, and every year's increase would have augmented still more that of the following year. More houses would have been built, more lands would have been improved, and those which had been improved before would have been better cultivated, more manufactures would have been established and those which had been established before would have been more extended; and to what height the real wealth and revenue of the country might, by this time, have been raised, it is not perhaps very easy even to imagine. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron...Is there no other way the world may live? - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Perhaps the public is not fully culpable because others have misled them. But the nonsense majorities have endorsed practically has no limit. To take Bastiats most famous example, he accuses the public of broken window thinking  ignoring opportunity costs. People favor wasteful government programs because they fail to consider the alternative uses of wasted resources. They want a large military in peacetime because they implicitly assume that there is nothing else for discharged soldiers to do. They favor fruitless public works projects to create jobs, not realizing that the taxes that fund these projects destroy as many jobs as they create. - Edward Stringham, Mises, Bastiat, Public Opinion, and Public Choice

This problem becomes particularly acute in that tax policy - as an expediency - does not distinguish between "forced riders" and other public good consumers.  A pacifist, for example, must pay the same tax price charged for defense as any other individual, his negative marginal evaluation notwithstanding. - William Loehr, Todd Sandler, Public Goods and Public Policy

The distinguishing characteristic of [public] goods is not only that they can be consumed by everyone, but that there is no escape from consuming them unless one were to leave the community by which they are provided.  Thus he who says public goods says public evils.  The latter result not only from universally sensed inadequacies in the supply of public goods, but from the fact that what is a public good for some - say, a plentiful supply of police dogs and atomic bombs - may well be judged a public evil by others in the same community.  It is also quite easy to conceive of a public good turning into a public evil, for example, if a country's foreign and military policies develop in such a way that their "output" changes from international prestige to international disrepute. - Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty

Only the free market, then, can determine different qualities or degrees of a service. Second, and even more important, there is no indication that for a particular taxpayer, the government is supplying a "service" at all. Since the tax is compulsory, it may well be that the  "service" has zero or even negative value for individual taxpayers. Thus, a pacifist, philosophically opposed to any use of violence, would not consider a tax levied for his and others' police protection to be a positive service; instead, he finds that he is being compelled, against his will, to pay for the provision of a "service" that he detests. In short, equal pricing on the market reflects demands by consumers who are voluntarily paying the price, who, in short, believe that they are gaining more from the good or service than they are giving up in exchange. But taxation is imposed on all people, regardless of whether they would be willing to pay such a price (the equal tax) voluntarily, or indeed whether they would voluntarily purchase any of this service at all. - Murray Rothbard, The Myth of Neutral Taxation

War will go extinct when taxpayers can choose where their taxes go. - Xerographica

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## Jan2017

> War will go extinct when taxpayers can choose where their taxes go. - Xerographica


Nice.

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."

"I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way
 and let them have it."
 -(both) Dwight D. Eisenhower
https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/...ke/quotes.html

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## shakey1

War is Hell - William Tecumseh Sherman

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## Xerographica

Here's my reply to a liberal on Medium... The Sheer Stupidity Of Bundling War And Peace

Rich people give _their_ money to pro-war think tanks? At least they dont give _my_ money to pro-war think tanks.

Imagine if donors to PETA and donors to the NRA pooled their money and elected representatives to decide how to divide the pool of money between the two organizations. Do you think that this would be a good idea? Of course not.

What if vegetarians and meat-eaters pooled their money and elected representatives to decide how to divide the pool of money between the meat industry and the vegetarian industry? Do you think that this would be a good idea? Of course not.

What if peace-lovers and war-lovers pooled their money and elected representatives to decide how to divide the pool of money between war and peace? Do you think that this would be a good idea? Of course!

Personally, I agree with Jeremy Corbyn that taxpayers should be free to boycott war




> The Italian Parliament has draft legislation before it that would allow Italian taxpayers to divert a proportion of their tax from the armed services to peace building, and there are three relevant petitions before this House. Given the huge rebuilding costs that will fall to this country and others in Kosovo and elsewhere where there has been conflict, perhaps we should have a peace-building fund that could invest in conflict resolution, reconstruction and trying to prevent terrible wars and civilian conflicts.
> British taxpayers have a right of conscience not to participate in the armed forces in time of conscription and should have a similar right in time of peace to ensure that part of their tax goes to peace, not war.  Jeremy Corbyn, Taxpayers (Conscience)

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## AZJoe



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## AZJoe

Actually, for most wars truth is sacrificed in order to even begin the war.

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## merkelstan

> "[T]he State represents all the autocratic, arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces within a social group


(autism triggered)  Well no, the State doesn't represent all instances of such forces.  There are private criminals both 'on the street' and 'in business'.

Then he discounts the protective/beneficial functions of the State entirely.  States do provide some services for the money. These services however, will degrade if a republican decentralized governent gives way to a centralized one, and when correspondingly, a sense of local responsibility and civic duty is lost as a cultural norm - leading to complete corruption of the bureaucracy..

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## Occam's Banana

> (autism triggered)  Well no, the State doesn't represent all instances of such forces. There are private criminals both 'on the street' and 'in business'.


(autism counter-triggered)

I should think it rather obvious that Bourne did not abjure the existence of "private" ciminals.

That it does not subsume every particular instance of such forces does not mean that the State does not "represent" or manifest each of them in some way.




> Then he discounts the protective/beneficial functions of the State entirely.  States do provide some services for the money.


He was not attempting to address such functions. He was addressing the insalubrious effects of aggressive war, which only reinforce the "autocratic, arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces" to which he referred.




> These services however, will degrade if a republican decentralized governent gives way to a centralized one, and when correspondingly, a sense of local responsibility and civic duty is lost as a cultural norm - leading to complete corruption of the bureaucracy..


Which is the inevitable result of the manisfestation in the State of the aforementioned forces.

Republics become Empires, not the other way around ...

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## timosman

> 


C'mon, the neutrality of Switzerland has always been obeyed.

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## timosman

> Actually, for most wars truth is sacrificed in order to even begin the war.



Piece of cake in a nation of sycophants.

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## merkelstan

> Which is the inevitable result of the manisfestation in the State of the aforementioned forces.
> 
> Republics become Empires, not the other way around ...


Thanks for the reply.  

I'm interested in the question of whether The Democratic State can be at equlibrium with the rest of society for a multi-generational timespan.  Are there some means of structuring government (e.g. a republic) or some national conditions which can lead to a stable-state democratic State (non-metastasizing / growing)?

Hoppe and others have emphasized the _democratic_ elements which guarantee a trend toward growth of government.  Others point to differences in cultures as major factors in quality as well as quantity of government. Could some combination of factors yield a winning recipe for a libertarian State, or is it simply inevitable that any monopolist State expands (to collapse)  as you implied above?    

If we don't want to be quite so pessimistic, we can look at those periods in western civilization when, for example in the Levelers movement, a small but dedicated group  led to substantive repeals of and checks on arbitrary state power.  What were the political and economic conditions at the time?  How did ideas and ideology play a role? And what _tactics_ did the reformers employ to succeed?

Crises can jolt people awake and cause them to consider alternative explanations for the world around them.  

So as we prepare for the inevatible next crash, we should also learn a bit about the people like the Levelers, who rolled-back state excesses without violent means. Libertarians should make productive use of today's zeitgeist of uncertainty and make the best of any chinks in people's ideological armor -- and gently shine some light through them, e.g. "Well now that you see that they were trying to lie to you in this case, what _else_ have they been lying to you about?"

[sorry for offtopic]

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## osan

> Originally Posted by *Occam's Banana*
> "[T]he State represents all the autocratic, arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces within a social group
> 
> 
> (autism triggered)  Well no, the State doesn't represent all instances of such forces.  There are private criminals both 'on the street' and 'in business'.


Both mistaken.  There is no "state".  The distinction between "private" and "public" in this case is false.

There are only some men who paint their faces, stenciling "state" on their foreheads, with the rest taking them seriously.

WE are the root of all misery in the world; not "government"; not "the state", for attributing our woe to these is no more truthful than attributing mass loss in chemical reactions to "phlogiston" or explaining the rise of life with "spontaneous generation".

Conducting discourse in these terms is grossly and dangerously counterproductive, yet we persist and insist on doing so, wondering why nothing changes.




> Then he discounts the protective/beneficial functions of the State entirely.


How can a materially non-existent entity provide anything, good or bad?




> States do provide some services for the money.


They _do?_  Demonstrate the material existence of "state" and then perhaps we can talk about benefits and so forth.




> These services however, will degrade if a *republican decentralized governent gives way to a centralized one,* and when correspondingly, a sense of local responsibility and civic duty is lost as a cultural norm - leading to complete corruption of the bureaucracy..



A republic is Empire.  All "government" and "state" is Empire.  There are no exceptions.

There are many forms of Empire.  There is only one form of freedom.

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## osan

> Republics become Empires, not the other way around ...


Republics _are_ Empire.  Republics _may_ not be as obviously injurious to the individual as other forms, but that is a mere matter of degree and, most likely, chance.  Even the most superficial examination of the France of 1789 demonstrates just how superficially significant "republic" can be, and how endlessly vicious and destructive.

Because there is "state" in the minds of people, as well as "government", the individual is owned lock, stock, and barrel by something other than himself, ultimately speaking.  In all cases, every man is owned by another, regardless of how indirect and gossamer the thread between them.  That is not freedom.  It is slavery, no matter how superficially pretty to the inadequately trained eye.

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## merkelstan

It is sometimes educational to bend definitions and create questionable analogies, in some situations, for some people.   Maybe osan's text helped someone, but it wasn't me.

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## AZJoe



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## shakey1

War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again, why'all
War, huh, good god
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing, listen to me
Oh, war, I despise
'Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears to thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go to fight
And lose their lives
I said, war, huh good god, why'all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing say it again
War, whoa, lord
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing, listen to me
it ain't nothing but a heart-breaker
(War)  friend only to the undertaker
Oh, war it's an enemy to all mankind
The point of war blows my mind
War has caused unrest
Within the younger generation
Induction then destruction
Who wants to die, ah, war-huh, good god why'all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it, say it, say it
War, huh
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing listen to me
it ain't nothing but a heart breaker
(War) it's got one friend that's the undertaker
Oh, war, has shattered many a young mans dreams
Made him disabled, bitter and mean
Life is much to short and precious
To spend fighting wars these days
War can't give life
It can only take it away
Oh, war, huh good god why'all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing say it again
whoa, lord
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing listen to me
it ain't nothing but a heart breaker
(War) friend only to the undertaker
Peace, love and understanding
Tell me, is there no place for them today
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But lord knows there's got to be a better way
Oh, war, huh good god why'all
What is it good for you tell me
Say it, say it, say it, say it
huh good god why'all
What is it good for
Stand up and shout it nothing

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## Jamesiv1

> War, huh, yeah
> What is it good for
> Absolutely nothing
> War, huh, yeah
> What is it good for
> Absolutely nothing
> Say it again, why'all
> War, huh, good god
> What is it good for
> ...


listen to that baritone sax honking around lol

Did some other band record a version of this?  this one doesn't sound like the popular version.....

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## Jamesiv1

I wonder what the SJW's would think about Soul Train lol




apparently The Temptations recorded it first

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## shakey1

> listen to that baritone sax honking around lol
> 
> Did some other band record a version of this?  this one doesn't sound like the popular version.....


Bruce...

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## AZJoe

A Vietnam Veteran's take on war from lewrockwell.com:
Though being ex-military with two combat tours in Vietnam (5th Special Forces Gp) and having a 60% VA disability to show for it) and two sons as military combat pilots Ive belatedly come to the conclusion that no war weve ever engaged in ever settled anything for the better.

The Civil War left this nation with psychic which persist to this day.  WW I brought about the successful birth of Russian communism, which begat WW II, Red China, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Cold War, the idiotic Gulf War (which allowed us to congratulate ourselves over our ability to beat the hell out of a bunch of helpless camel-jockeys), and gave birth to the state of Israel, which has been stirring up trouble in the Middle East ever since and might well precipitate WW III.

Our nation had long periods of no significant standing armies at all  from our own revolution to the Civil War, and thereafter until WW I the US had nothing but Western frontier troops, and after WW I until WW II we had little but underfunded nominal military forces.  It wasnt until the Korean War that we began maintaining a permanent standing military, which allowed us to leap into Vietnam, a bottomless quagmire, which we finally left, disillusioned, exhausted, and  finally humiliated by a bunch of bandy-legged little rice-farmers, a ridiculous war in which success or failure was tallied by the body-count.

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## Aratus

Mark Twain eruditely labeled the time period almost immediately after our Civil War... THE GILDED AGE. 




> “Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —
> 
> For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
> 
> We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.
> 
> Amen."
> -- Mark Twain, _The War Prayer_

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## AZJoe



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