Posted on 04/26/2014 9:34:04 PM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
Norman Angell, the Paris editor of Britain’s Daily Mail, was a man who expected to be listened to. Yet even he was astonished by the success of his book “The Great Illusion,” in which he announced that war had put itself out of business. “The day for progress by force has passed,” he explained. From now on, “it will be progress by ideas or not at all.”
He wrote these words in 1910. One politician after another lined up to praise the book. Four years later, the same men started World War I. By 1918, they had killed 15 million people; by 1945, the death toll from two world wars had passed 100 million and a nuclear arms race had begun. In 1983, U.S. war games suggested that an all-out battle with the Soviet Union would kill a billion people — at the time, one human in five — in the first few weeks. And today, a century after the beginning of the Great War, civil war is raging in Syria, tanks are massing on Ukraine’s borders and a fight against terrorism seems to have no end.
So yes, war is hell — but have you considered the alternatives? When looking upon the long run of history, it becomes clear that through 10,000 years of conflict, humanity has created larger, more organized societies that have greatly reduced the risk that their members will die violently. These better organized societies also have created the conditions for higher living standards and economic growth. War has not only made us safer, but richer, too. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
We get richer indirectly about 20 years later as a result of the massive investment in “cutting edge” technologies done under threat of death. A cold war is by far the best war of all. This communication is brought to you indirectly by the Cold War invention of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). The internet boom started about 20 years after its implementation. Currently DARPA is investing heavily in robotics. 20 years from now you will own several general purpose robots... and probably have no job.
Minor point of order. It's seldom an individual that does all that killing, it's usually a vast bureaucracy, a conspiracy of paper pushers and appeasers who do the thousands of little mundane details that insure that everything ins in place, all the t's are crossed, the i's dotted, the trains move the victims to the right camps, the showers have enough Zyklon, the front lines have beans and bullets, all the right forms, and all the right people live and the wrong ones die. It's the neighbors who under government orders watch and report, who never dare interfere, the teachers and preachers who assure their charges that this is all right and proper, just as they were told, or else.
No. The most dangerous words aren't: "Hi, I’m from the government, and I’m here to Kill you.”
They are: “Hi, we're from the government, and we're here to kill you.”
They are: “Hi, we're from the government, and we're here to kill you.”
Excellent point
I stand corrected.
Most of the minions of totalitarians do not have the courage to act alone.
While government in moderation is a very good thing, more is not better. The benefit curve forms an arc. We are clearly on the downward slope right now. The source of much conflict is that people living in high density communes called cities need more government while people living in America need less. Leftists believe one size fits all for government intrusion and centralized planning, but that is clearly not the case.
Nor the imagination to connect their signature on a death warrant form with the demise of an actual human being.
Well in a sense you may be right.
Usually the mind set of these people (the true believers) is that they dehumanized the victims in their minds as vermin not deserving of life.
Some of them are merely government workers who decide it is either the victim or themselves and their families. They do the math in their head and decide that their lives are worth more. They know that they are sending someone to their death but do not have the courage to say no.
I understood the author’s point. I just disagree with it.
Hitler or Wilson?
Hard choice.
Not for me. According to all time travel fiction, any attempt to go back in time and kill Hitler will either end up causing his birth (Terminator paradox) or leading to the Nazis winning the war somehow.
Rather than killing Wilson though I would kill TR, thus preventing Wilson's election in 1912, which would probably prevent US entry into WW1, which would have meant a more favorable peace for Germany, which probably would have averted WW2, which would mean a lot more German and Austrian guys named Adolf. Adolf Schwarzenegger perhaps?
As was said above, Gavrilo Princip would’ve been the one to take out. No World War I meant no WW2, Hitler as a housepainter in Vienna with no influence...
Besides, it was Theodore Roosevelt’s selfishness that brought Wilson to the White House. A party unified behind President Taft could not have made Wilson’s win possible.
I thought it was a given that WW1 was bound to happen, no matter the specific trigger?
<<<Theodore Roosevelt’s selfishness that brought Wilson to the White House.<<<<
Exactly why I said I’d kill him.
...and Leon Czolgosz, too. With McKinley finishing out his 2nd term to 1905, it’s likely TR would not have necessarily received the nomination in 1904. Sen. Charles Fairbanks of Indiana was the most prominent for the Conservative wing, and he may have ended up with the nod (instead, he got the VP slot, which TR didn’t want him to have — and TR sandbagged him in 1908 in backing Taft, whom turned out to be more like Fairbanks).
Well, we’ll never know unless Princip was stopped. I wouldn’t have assassinated TR, as that would’ve only created another liberal martyr.
Stopping JFK’s assassination and seeing to it that the public knew his shenanigans for 1964, hence defeating him at the ballot box would’ve gone a long way to stopping the horrific big government overreach under LBJ.
It would be curious to see what the world would look like had history unfolded differently as such...
Had Princip stayed at home with a cold that day, something else would have triggered that stupid war. BTW, here’s a great description of WWI as if it were a bar fight: http://themetapicture.com/if-wwi-was-a-bar-fight/
I hadn’t thought of this before, but Impy might be correct that killing TR prior to his reaching the presidency (or maybe in 1905, soon after he started telling his full term) could have been more effective than anything else in saving Anerica from going down the liberal-fascist road.
So you think President Fairbanks would’ve saved us ?
“I know. If you could go back in time who would you kill?”
Hmmm...I often think of that exact question.
Not limiting my selection to one and in order:
1. John Wilkes Booth: just think of what a better country this would be if Lincoln had lived. No Radical Reconstruction and no racial problems.
2. Joe “the father” Kennedy: I won’t go into my EINSATZGRUPPEN tirade again.
3. FDR: where do I begin?
4. Mark David Chapman: Yeah, I’m letting my inner Beatles in. Although if there were no Kennedys, The Beatles wouldn’t have been The Beatles.
The reconstruction wasn’t radical enough (e*t me, neoconfederates). Letting Jim Crow (D) take over the South was shameful, and politically very stupid of Republicans.
Option B was Lincoln’s alleged plans for ex-slave relocation.
Oliver Cromwell
WWI created the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Clemenceau.
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