Monday, August 9, 2010
Quote of the day--on "continual warfare"
"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 … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." — James Madison, Political Observations, 1795
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2 comments:
Damn.
Wouldn't it be nice if citizens weren't taxpayers and education wasn't learning how to be compliant workers, and people studied history to discern the future?
We are not Rome...and it turns out, we never were.
We are the people of Easter Island.
And even though we now know that building more moai isn't helping, and indeed it's actually compounding the harm, we just keep carving and fighting and carving and fighting and carving and fighting...because it's all we know how to do.
We are fucked.
Good insight, I think--not Rome, as people usually think of "the end of civilizations" but Easter Island. Could definitely be, for sure.
Before I wrote this, Defense Secretary Gates had not yet announced cuts in the military and the possible closing of a small base in Virginia. Now, in sync with this--proving what I wrote, really--Senators are coming out against it, etc., etc.
We really are screwed.
We have absolutely no will to spend less in this country.
mr
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