WWI was a good thing. What a fool.
humm: progress through war (or let’s just say human conflict of varied types).
that strikes me as another very good encapsulation of leftist (progressive) ideology and practice.
What we have here is a perspective that shifts from the broad view to the narrow one when it suits the argument. Government is not always preferable to chaos, especially when it's trying to put your carcass into an oven for the Greater Good. Whether that beats a no-government situation in which a marauding barbarian puts a spear into your guts is one of those fine points I won't explore overmuch. Either way, you lose.
What does work is the empowerment of the individual to guard himself and his against both scenarios. If, to do so, he must make war, then once again we have shifted our perspective to the advantage of the fight. I'd offer a slight corrective: apparently we can't avoid it, so we might as well be good at it. That doesn't necessarily extend to celebrating it.
I’d like to be safer.
Can we nuke Mecca, Cairo, Jakarta, Karachi and Ankara please?
Wow, this is a thinly veiled attack on Ronald Reagan.
This is the logical fallacy, post hoc, ergo propter hoc. The author fails to adduce evidence that the larger, more organized societies would not have been created without the violent conflicts he deems to have been necessary.
In the 20th century some 200+ million people were killed by their own governments, not in wars, so I’m not sure about the claim that modern people are safer.
He’s a bean counter and it’s true that certain types of wars have a bottom line to them. People like him can reason the human suffering away, while those suffering can’t.
War is indeed the mother of civilization. Small hunter-gatherer bands were constantly in conflict. Early agricultural settlements were constantly feuding with the tribe over the hill, across the river, or in the next glen. The death toll from constant raids and skirmishes was extremely high. Leadership in such societies was usually a duopoly between the elders, thought to be wise, and the battle leaders. People eventually formed larger state to improve their chances of winning wars. States grew because they won wars.
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. “
Yep when the Communists rolled into Russia, Cuba, China, when the NAZI’s stood astride Germany and then a good deal of Europe EVERYONE breathed a sigh of relief and said “Cool, now we can live!”
war is a Darwinian mechanism that sorts out the weak and the strong.
The Germans bent on gaining territory and thus population were at bottom line intent on expanding their gene pool. ditto the Japanese.
Hitler erred...... he took on Russia and the result was a genetic dilution from death and raped women. His gambit failed miserably. The aggressive German population was and is subdued by genes. The long occupation altered the population genetic make up.
an interesting factor was the introduction of America into the mix. The American culture prevailed even though there was not much rape, there was gene swapping as a result of the influx.
Putin needs population and Russian genes to shore up his failing gene pool. Mother Russia is severely ailing
Tell it to the Carthaginians, or a dozen other peoples annihilated by neighboring empires. The winners right the history books, and conclude that “It was worth it.” Anyone who thinks the Great War was worth it is an idiot.
All he is saaaying, is give war a chance.
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.
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.
If we’d have demanded war reparations from Iraq our national debt would not be $17 Trillion and gas would not be $3.50 a gallon.