"War is the Health of the State..."

[villager]

in "honor" of the Democrats' capitulation, it's worth revisiting Randolph Bourne's great essay, "War is the Health of the State" -- written about America... in WWI:

With the shock of war, however, the State comes into its own again. The Government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and gently and irresistibly slides the country into war.

For the benefit of proud and haughty citizens, it is fortified with a list of the intolerable insults which have been hurled toward us by the other nations; for the benefit of the liberal and beneficent, it has a convincing set of moral purposes which our going to war will achieve; for the ambitious and aggressive classes, it can gently whisper of a bigger role in the destiny of the world. The result is that, even in those countries where the business of declaring war is theoretically in the hands of representatives of the people, no legislature has ever been known to decline the request of an Executive, which has conducted all foreign affairs in utter privacy and irresponsibility, that it order the nation into battle.

Good democrats are wont to feel the crucial difference between a State in which the popular Parliament or Congress declares war, and the State in which an absolute monarch or ruling class declares war. But, put to the stern pragmatic test, the difference is not striking. In the freest of republics as well as in the most tyrannical of empires, all foreign policy, the diplomatic negotiations which produce or forestall war, are equally the private property of the Executive part of the Government, and are equally exposed to no check whatever from popular bodies, or the people voting as a mass themselves...

http://www.bigeye.com/warstate.htm

[LynnTheDem]

1. "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country

who determine the policy, and it's 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 greater danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

Not, of course, that the bush regime has done any of that.





:eyes:

[villager]

2. I guess folks on both the side of light *and* dark have that figured out..

...it's just the mass in the middle that's confused...

[villager]

3. morning kick for Mr. Bourne...

n/t

[genie_weenie]

4. Trillions of dollars are at stake

do you expect our Glorious Rulers to lose that money over some few platry poor people in a desert?

[villager]

6. or a paltry few American citizens who console themselves with the idea of "voting"

every once in awhile?

[genie_weenie]

7. Oh yes with great fanfare and much hoopla

every few years the Glorious Rulers allow the people to fantasize they are the government.

Do you require anymore bread or circuses?

[villager]

8. I wonder if the Glorious Rulers have overplayed their hand by taking away that fantasy?

Time will soon tell....

[genie_weenie]

9. Hell, they don't care. So a few of the Ruling Herd are

sacrificed to appease the masses, The System endures and the wealth and comforts continue for most, even for most of the ones charged. I

don't see DeLay in jail. And Cheney sure got away with almost murder, no way a normal plebeian would have been allowed to have not been taken into custody and given blood to test for alcohol or drugs.

[villager]

10. the most "subversive" thing we could do, really, is to stop buying stuff

it's our main form of "cooperation" with them...

[Cerridwen]

5. K & R

for the article and for some good posts in the thread.


edit to add link because I've decided to keep hammering this idea and because there were good responses in that thread, too.